Literature Review

In the article Do-it-Yourself Professional Learning Community by Linda

Whelihan (2015), a unique form of professional development is outlined. This review
takes a fascinating look at this form of professional development that involves a
community of learners. This professional development involves collaboration between
teachers, just like a classroom environment where peers surround students. Peers are a
valuable part of the learning process, as they encourage and support each other. This
article particularly focuses on the creative nature of art teachers, and how professional
development can be tailored to their needs.
The famous artist Henri Matisse said, Creative people are curious, flexible,
persistent, and independent with a tremendous spirit of adventure and love of play,
which I feel wonderfully describes art teachers. Whelihan (2015) echoes this thought in
her article when she postulates on art educators development: In our classrooms, we
encourage these traits in our students by setting up supplies and facilitating discussions
that lead to inquiry and discovery, but how often do we make time to nurture ourselves
through such artistic explorations? (p. 14). As an artist who lacks the time for my own
artistic practice, I can certainly relate to this sentiment. Creating art is a catalyst for
developing new ideas, projects, and methods to be used in the classroom.
Recently in education there is a focus on the core subjects, which schools embrace
by developing PD to guide those teachers. For art teachers, this type of PD can be
tedious and uninteresting because it is not very applicable to art classrooms (p. 19).
Whelihan (2015) decided to take matters into her own hands and create an informal

professional development program for fellow art teachers. Her model was as follows:
We met at the museum, toured the exhibits, and brainstormed. We spent time studying
the art, using it to inspire our discussions and investigations of materials. Our
collaboration varied in some ways from more traditional professional development
activities, and I believe that those differences contributed to the success of our efforts
(p.15). In this way, Whelihan (2015) created a peer group of teachers who developed a
relationship that allowed for mutual creativity to create lessons, critique famous artwork,
and explore new project ideas. In this case, it was important that Whelihan was/is a selfstarter. Even though there was no specific PD for her group of art teacher pals, she
decided there was a need, and created a solution. Though this is very informal and
dissimilar to other forms of professional development, it directly addresses the need(s) of
the students.

Reference
Whelihan,L.(2015).DoItYourselfProfessionalLearningCommunity.
StudiesInArtEducation,52(1),1420.