Kate Coleman will respond to Max’s ‘The Art Teacher as Role Model‘ and how this informs her practice as an  educator in pre-service visual arts and design teaching at MGSE. As Max stated quite clearly in this paper: “The idea of teacher as role model is one, I believe is most critical for art teachers everywhere. Everyone is a role model. What kind of role model are you?”

Dr Kathryn Coleman is an arts-based researcher, teacher and Senior Lecturer in Visual Arts & Design Education at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education. She is interested in the intersection of art, digital spaces, practice, and culture, and teaches this through art and design. Kate’s research into practice includes teacher practices, creative practices, practices of identity, knowledge as practice and digital practices.

Dr Shelley Hannigan has worked as a visual art education academic at Deakin University since 2007. This followed her work and training in creative arts therapy and art education. Her teaching and research focuses on the individual and overlapping fields of artistic practice, creative arts therapies, art and transdisciplinary education. She regularly presents at conferences and has published her research in over twenty publications and continues her practice as a professional artist with regular exhibitions.   

Adele’s PhD  thesis  “Common Threads” focussed on the place creativity holds in the emotional development of an individual. Adele used a narrative methodology and wrote it in her own narrative voice. Alongside her teaching and research career, Adele has continued her own artistic practice. Her 16 solo Exhibitions have  focussed on the  landscape both in Australia and countries through which she has travelled. She is currently preparing “At the Water’s Edge” a series of 30 paintings that reflects Lake Illawarra and its environs. Adele is a past president of the Australian Institute of Art Education (AIAE, now AEA), served on the Council of InSEA, represented Australia at UNESCO summits.