An exploration of the role of creative industries experience in the pedagogical practice of second-career teachers

Abstract

Internationally there is a growing emphasis on the role of the creative industries in future economies and on related career strategies for young people. There is no research however which explores how teachers with prior creative industries experience can have an impact on this. This study explored the accumulated capital, knowledge and skills, and educational philosophy of six second-career teachers, three with creative industries experience, as they underwent the transition from student to probationer teacher. It consisted of a small-scale, longitudinal, qualitative research design, analysed through a professional and cultural capital theory lens. The findings indicated that the students’ accumulated professional and cultural capital had limited value in the field of teaching with the exception of one who was able to draw on their digital knowledge. For those with existing capital in the form of knowledge and skills in the expressive arts, the participants perceived this to be considered of lower value within the field, with few opportunities to apply this to practice. The study highlights an issue with how prior experience and accumulated capital is valued within the field, which potentially also has an impact on the diversity of the teaching profession and of the curriculum that is delivered in practice.

Keywords:

• Second-career teacher
• creative industries
• cultural capital
• professional capital

Context

As countries around the world respond to global events and the rapid expansion of technology in our lives, they seek to ensure economic prosperity for the future. One sector which is receiving ever more attention within governments is the creative industries (British Council, no date; Creative Industries Council, no date; Creative Industries Federation, no date), an umbrella term drawing together people working within the arts and culture sectors with industries such as advertising, design, fashion and computer games (Creative Industries Council, no date; Davies and Sigthorsson 2013; Hesmondhalgh 2013). This interest is under continuous evaluation by various researchers and groups (Bakhshi, Djumalieva, and Easton 2019; Carey, Florisson, and Giles 2019; Chung, Yang, and Caldwell-French 2018; EY 2015; Powell, Cauldwell-French, & Easton, No Date) who have identified a range of barriers to growth (Carey, Florisson, and Giles 2019; Chung, Yang, and Caldwell-French 2018; Powell et al. No Date). Of significant concern is a developing skills gap in recruitment resulting from the fact that many of the associated jobs and careers are resistant to automation (Bazalgette 2017). Additionally, there are concerns that a diverse creative industries workforce is limited by barriers linked to finance, lack of social capital, geography and attitudes (Bazalgette 2017). This results in scrutiny of education systems and their ability to prepare children and young people for the future workforce (Arts Council England & University of Durham, 2019; Carey, Florisson, and Giles 2019; Easton and Djumalieva 2018; Henley 2012, 2013); it seems that understanding of the creative industries within schools is limited, with narrow perceptions of opportunities available and “a lack of visible role models” (Bazalgette 2017, 43).

Teachers are central to this issue. A significant number of teachers are recruited as second-career teachers (SCTs) with a variety of prior skills and knowledge as a result (Troesch and Bauer 2019). This specific group are recruited in response to a shortage of applicants for initial teacher courses, and high levels of teachers leaving the profession, meaning that alternative ways are sought to recruit teachers quickly (Ruitenberg and Tigchelaar (Ruitenburg and Tigchelaar, 2021). The paper begins to consider the current value of this knowledge and experience within the field of education and its potential value in beginning to address the skills gap identified earlier.

Second career teachers (SCT) contrast with first career teachers on the basis of the range of skills, experience and outlook they have in relation to teaching (Brindley and Parker 2010; Chambers 2002). They are therefore uniquely placed to draw on this to inform their practice and make meaningful links between the two domains of education and the work environment for the pupil (Haggard, Slostad, and Winterton 2006). SCTs however face a number of challenges in the early stages of their careers in that studies show there can be limited respect among existing teaching professionals for this previous experience (Brindley and Parker 2010; Haggard, Slostad, and Winterton 2006; Powers 2002). There is also more scope for SCTs to have a developed sense of a personal educational philosophy prior to undertaking qualification which can contrast with the school system (Varadharajan, Buchanan, and Schuck 2018). This can result in a sense of restriction in what they perceive they are allowed to do. The studies do question whether the high level of optimism with which a SCT enters the field actually leads to naivety on their part (Brindley and Parker 2010) or whether there is a sense that SCTs have established a work ego which they feel needs attended (Haggard, Slostad, and Winterton 2006).

There is currently limited research exploring the connection between education and the recruitment issues in the creative industries, and these tend to be commissioned by government or independent organisations with an invested interest in developing the field (Arts Council England & University of Durham, 2019; Bazalgette 2017; Henley 2012). A search of the literature indicates that there is currently no evidence of independent academic research having been undertaken which explores in depth how primary or secondary schools in the United Kingdom or internationally are supporting pupils in developing interests in the creative industries. In addition to this it was not possible to find research which focused on SCTs who have prior experience in the creative industries and the impact of this on them, on their pedagogical approaches in the classroom, or on the pupils that they encounter during their teaching career. It would seem therefore that this is an underdeveloped area of research but one which has significant implications both for the future of the creative industries and the nature of education and curricula around the world.

Conceptual framework

This paper draws on the concept of capital which people acquire in various forms through life. It is grounded in the work of Bourdieu (1979) who examined the relationships between people in society and the resulting class systems that emerged. Over time, he believed that individuals acquired capital (Bourdieu 1986) in tangible and symbolic forms which were held by the individual but could also be used by them to positive effect on their lives. Their ability to do this however is determined by the value of the capital which is determined by the structure of the fields within which an individual inhabits. These fields are non-physical and governed by a set of unconscious rules which the people within the fields follow and replicate, the habitus (Bourdieu 1977a). Self-regulation is key to the habitus and the structure of the field, and within this people find comfort and conformity, however the habitus and field are not static. Fields evolve over time as different generations of people enter and leave the field (Bourdieu 1977a) making adaptations and providing links to the past and the future. The value of capital within a field is determined by the structure and habitus of the field which results in mechanisms to exclude or include people and to give them various levels of status (Bourdieu 1977a, 1979, 1986; Bourdieu and Passeron 1977). It is this that leads to the existence of class systems. The field, the habitus and capital are therefore both productive and divisive.

Bourdieu (1986) identified three forms of capital, economic, social and cultural, however over the years various other forms of capital have been identified. For the purposes of this paper the focus will be on cultural and social capital and their relationships to the more recent concept of professional capital defined as “the resources, investments, and assets that make up, define and develop a profession and its practice” Hargreaves and Fullan (2012, 92)

Professional capital consists of social capital, human capital and decisional capital (Hargreaves and Fullan 2012). As with Bourdieu (1986) social capital is focused on the network of relationships and contacts that a person has and how these manifest within a field (Nolan and Molla 2017). For Hargreaves and Fullan (2012) essential to this is the role of trust and confidence in one another which they believe leads to increased levels of confidence within the individual. The social capital element also establishes the “norms of reciprocity” (Nolan and Molla 2017, 11) within the field, essentially defining how people within the field behave towards each other. This element therefore plays a key role in determining the power structures at play within the field, and within the context of this paper, establishes the position of a newly-qualified SCT in relation to more experienced colleagues. Alongside this is decisional capital which is tied to autonomy and a teacher’s ability and confidence to make professional judgements and decisions in their role. It is closely linked to social capital in the sense that confidence comes from knowing that the decisions one person makes aligns with the structures and expectations of others within the field. Finally, human capital consists of the knowledge required to do the job as well as knowledge of the people within the field; for a teacher, this means pedagogical and subject knowledge as well as a secure knowledge of the pupils and people within the local community. Nolan and Molla (2017) found that the higher the level of professional capital the more likely a person was to critique policy and practice and take responsibility for their own professional development in line with their personal professional values and educational philosophy; they had higher levels of confidence in themselves and their ability.

The professional capital model has clearly defined elements covering all aspects of the profession however the model does not acknowledge the sense of self that an individual has through the embodied state of cultural capital (Bourdieu 1979, 1986). Additionally it does not acknowledge the other two forms which also play a role (Bourdieu 1986): an objectified form which primarily consists of tangible objects that can be acquired and more importantly institutionalised cultural capital which consists of widely-accepted forms of recognition such as educational qualifications. People can only become teachers, and ultimately increase their status through their career, by acquiring particular qualifications associated with that profession.

Cultural capital is also fascinating because it straddles the divide between the unique individual and the accepted conventions of the field; people will conform by obtaining the necessary qualifications but there is also potential for an element of resistance to convention through the embodied state. Instead professional capital theory seems to focus on conformity and homogeneity and a sense of what Hall et al. (2021) describe as positive and negative capital. In professional capital theory (Hargreaves and Fullan 2012), there is little sense of the embodied form of cultural capital that is unique to each individual but could play an essential role informing their identity and thus the human capital element of the model. Instead the model presents teachers as being moulded into a particular way of being which ultimately increases their levels of confidence but runs the risk of being contrary to their sense of identity that has been curated over time through the acquisition of cultural capital. The question is whether these multiple identities can co-exist, inform one another or be subsumed by one another, and if the latter, which one becomes dominant (Beech 2010).

This paper focuses on SCTs as they begin their teaching career moving from one professional field to another, some with creative industries experience, some without. They have all accumulated professional and cultural capital however in order to be accepted into the field they need to acquire cultural capital in the tangible form of a teaching qualification and relevant professional capital. Previous research (Brindley and Parker 2010; Haggard, Slostad, and Winterton 2006; Marom 2019; Powers 2002) would indicate that this can be challenging for some SCTs. This paper seeks to add to this body of literature, as well as exploring the specific relationship between capital accumulated through a professional career in the creative industries and its impact on the development of professional capital in the field of teaching. What happens to the professional and cultural capital previously accumulated and are these people able to retain their sense of identity in multiple forms or does the new identity as a teacher subsume the other/s? The research was therefore guided by the following main question: To what extent does a background in the creative industries influence pedagogical practice as a beginner primary teacher? In addition, the following sub-questions were explored, reflecting key aspects of Professional Capital theory: How is a beginner teacher’s educational philosophy informed by prior experiences?; What skills and knowledge gained from prior experience are used by the beginner primary teacher?; How does prior experience in the creative industries influence teacher confidence in the classroom?

Research design

This paper is drawn from research funded by a research incentive grant from the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland. A pilot project to explore these issues was planned and implemented in 2019. The aim of the research was to identify and explore emerging themes that arose when SCTs with a background in the creative industries embarked on a career in primary teaching. As this is an under-researched area it was decided that the research be small-scale and exploratory to allow for attention to the depth of individual experience. Emergent issues will be highlighted and then explored in subsequent larger scale research projects with mixed methods designs (Cohen, Manion, and Morrison 2011).

A qualitative, interpretivist framework (Cohen, Manion, and Morrison 2011; Sarantakos 2005) underpinned by a subjectivist ontology was adopted to explore the experiences of the individual participants. It was decided therefore to adopt a longitudinal narrative inquiry methodology (Clandinin and Connelly 2000) drawing on individuals’ autobiographical memory (Fivush 2012). The focus was not on obtaining essential truths but on the individual’s experience of their world (Flick 2018) as a result of making a transition from one career to another. The methodology therefore needed to provide structure to the discussion while supporting individual experience.

Participants

As there is limited research in this area it was decided the focus in this project would be on people who had creative industries experience and who had recently made the decision to become a teacher; essentially those at the start of their career. Participants were drawn from a cohort of postgraduate (Primary) students from a university in Scotland. In Scotland, postgraduate teaching students embark on a one-year university course from August through to June. By the end of this they must meet the Standards for Provisional Registration (General Teaching Council for Scotland, no date) in order to commence their probation period in a primary school, usually in Scotland. The probation period consists of a full school year (August to June) and by the end they must meet the requirements of the Standards for Full Registration (General Teaching Council for Scotland, no date) in order to become a fully qualified teacher.

The aim was to work with six participants in total recruiting three students with a creative industries background and three who did not in order to provide some comparison in the themes that emerged from their experiences. Volunteer sampling was employed (O’Leary 2017) and initially eight students expressed an interest, however after the initial volunteer meeting, two decided to withdraw and six students became the participants. Data were anonymised however to align with the narrative approach each participant was then given a gender-neutral pseudonym. The project was scrutinised by the university research ethics committee prior to commencement. The project was conducted by a member of staff at the university however this person was not involved in the teaching or assessment of the participants while they were on the teaching course. A key issue was ensuring that the project was sensitive to the participants’ individual circumstances as they progressed through a qualifying programme. In particular the research needed to be sensitive to a participant who failed a placement. When this happened, the participant was asked if they wished to continue with the research project. If so, the data gathering activities proceeded as per Figure 1 but it was not going to be possible to follow them into their probation school as this would be postponed by a year. Prior to each data gathering session, participants were also reminded of the option to opt-out at any point. Undertaking a course such as this is a challenging endeavour; it was important that the participants were reminded of this option, and that the research responded to individual circumstances. Two participants were unsuccessful in a placement however no participant decided to withdraw from the project.

Figure 1. Implementation.

Data methods and implementation

Data were gathered over the course of 2019 from January through to December. The data gathering period for this research therefore covered the last six months of the teaching course, the summer break and then the first five months of their probation year. Data were gathered at three time points during the course of the year (Figure 1).

Data were gathered in the form of open-ended episodic interview stimulated by an introductory visual metaphor activity (Flick 2018). Participants were encouraged to share their story and then reflect on their current practice. Subsequent open-ended interviews were then undertaken and two other data points through the year to explore how the participants experiences and thoughts were developing. This paper is based on the data from the interviews.

Analysis

Analysis of narrative data is complex and messy, reflecting the real world situation that the data was gathered in and so a socio-cultural approach to analysis was adopted (Grbich 2013). This involved identifying specific narratives within the data and considering the content of each, focusing on how the participants made sense of them in relation to their sense of self and their life story. Essentially the data were analysed through what Clandinin and Connelly (2000, 50) state is a “three-dimensional narrative inquiry space” consisting of interaction, continuity and situation. To increase the level of depth of analysis, the narrative inquiry space was examined through a capital lens, specifically that of professional capital and cultural capital. A 5-stage process (Flick 2018, 299) was put in place and the computer package NVIVO was used to identify specific narrative themes and write notes. A research analysis diary was also kept within the NVIVO project which was updated regularly to reflect the researcher’s thoughts and how these were influencing the interpretations arising from the data. Arising themes were discussed through the interviews with participants however it was not possible to arrange separate analysis sessions with each participant due to the nature of the course, school placements and the structure of the probation year (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Stages of analysis.

Findings

Each participant had a unique set of knowledge of the world and prior professional expertise. They also each experienced the transition from this world into teaching differently. In line with the narrative inquiry methodology, three particular timepoints in the participants’ lives were examined: deciding to become a teacher; being a student teacher; being an SCT on probation. The findings reflect how educational philosophy plays a role in the minds of the participants in the first and the final stages for those with creative industries experience; the middle stage, learning to be a teacher, is where the participants seem to focus more on developing the knowledge, skills and confidence. The final stage however does also reflect how individual the probation experiences are for each participant and so this section is focused on the individual rather than the collective.

Deciding to become a teacher

Of the six participants, two experience working in the arts for a number of years (Ainsley and Billie), one had worked in marketing in the creative industries (Ellis), one had a degree in marketing (Francis) and two had experience of working in the corporate world (Dana and Jude). In line with Laming and Horne (2013), each had a distinct personal reason for becoming a teacher, responding to a significant life event such as redundancy, health or an appropriate next stage to developing their career. In terms of their professional capital, Ainsley, Billie and Ellis all had experience of working with children at some point in their careers in a teaching capacity though not as primary teachers.

In common with all the participants however were the altruistic reasons for becoming a teacher (Laming and Horne 2013). The participants had already developed a sense of an educational philosophy which had motivated them to apply to the course. They wanted to give something back to a community, in this case a school community and its pupils. Ainsley, Billie and Ellis had all had opportunities to do this in previous careers but not consistently as a sole occupation. Francis, Dana and Jude had not had these opportunities and presented a sense that up till then their jobs had been unfulfilling.

I just thought, you know, it’s not what I want to do. And I knew, I was like, it’s not a career. This is a job. It’s not a career. I’m not excited to go. I’m not excited to try. I’ve lost all interest and I feel more myself now again. – Dana

I went to school for a week … and I loved it. The end of the second day I sat on the bus home and thought, I wanna do this … I want to be the teacher that people will come to, or that kids can come to, if they have a problem whether it’s academic or not. I want to be the teacher that people can come and speak to. – Jude

These participants came to the course with high levels of professional capital in their previous careers and the motivation to work with children in a teaching capacity. Each individual had a distinct range of interests and a strong sense of self (Bourdieu 1979; Giddens 1991). There was also a sense that their altruistic need to support and work with others, aligned with an appropriate time in their life story, had pushed them into making the decision to become a teacher. Of all the participants Ainsley was the one who indicated that they had already considered themselves to be a teacher prior to commencing the course, but that they, like the others, were ready to embark on a formalised route in order to gain the qualification which would give them the status as a primary teacher within the field of education. By embarking on the programme, they would develop the necessary knowledge and skills and gain experience in different schools.

Being a student teacher

At this stage the students were all experiencing the same university curriculum and applying this differently in their placements. There were therefore commonalities of themes emerging in their words, linked to the professional capital model, and so this section has been grouped by the three aspects of this model.

Developing knowledge, skills and understanding

When discussing how they had used their previously acquired knowledge and skills as student teachers, the participants primarily emphasised the skills rather than knowledge and this was particularly so for those without any experience or knowledge of the creative industries.

I mean, some of the skills, like obviously the computer skills that I’ve got, PowerPoint, things like that. I mean, I know how to do all that kind of thing, but not the actual … other than communicating and actually being able to stand and speak in front of the children. So, that’s been the transferable skills there. In some cases, in meetings and stuff, I’ve had to stand up and have a conversation with people and present things. That’s kind of helped in that sense, that I’m not so scared to stand up and be in front of a class and have all these children’s eyes on me. I just kind of cope with it. - Dana

Ellis however was able to draw on a specific set of skills that made them distinctive and valuable within a school. It seems that they were able to apply this successfully both in practice and across the schools that they entered. The subject knowledge that they could draw on resulted from extensive experience of IT and digital technology.

In [the first placement] I did a lot when I took ICT, there was no ICT specialist and a lot of the teachers they admitted themselves that they weren’t too fond of teaching ICT because they didn’t maybe have backgrounds in that. Some of them were the opposite and brilliant in other areas. So I took ICT every single opportunity I could take and then I couldn’t, I was asked if I’ve got ICT lesson, I tried to incorporate it when it lends itself to doing that with other tasks - Ellis

Ainsley and Billie, also had extensive experience in the creative industries but their backgrounds were in the performing arts of music and drama, respectively. Unlike Ellis, however they seemed to find it more challenging to draw on their knowledge of the subjects in their practice, particularly during their first year as a student.

I don’t think it’s necessarily my knowledge that I’ve drawn on because the extra-curricular dramatic knowledge and stuff is quite specific and I haven’t done a lot of that specifically. - Billie

Then the music thing I squeezed it into my past and present IDL which was the previous one, so I did an electronic station and an acoustic station, and each child got to improvise and that was the lesson that they were so passionate about, I had one child say, “I LOVE IT, I LOVE IT!!!”, and I was like, “okay, I’m glad your passionate but could you sit down please” [laughter]. - Ainsley

Developing confidence and autonomy

During placements, students have to establish themselves as teachers quickly in the classroom by developing relationships with pupils. The participants drew on their prior experience to develop strategies in order to do this.

If I’m speaking to a child that I know loves football, I’ve got an easier way in there because I can talk, even it comes to again to control in the class or control that one child or a group of children, the easy way for me is to talk about communication and teamwork related to football and instantly they’re there … - Ellis

I think the thing about marketing and primary teaching that I liked was, in marketing you’re trying to sell product to appeal to a customer or a target audience. In primary teaching, it’s the same basically but in the sense of, you’re teaching about certain aspects, well, everything basically in primary schools in the curriculum, to appeal to these children, engage them, get them, kind of, excited about it, learning, you know, wanting to … it sounds bad, but buy into this and do it … - Francis

The other challenge that the participants had was that they were conscious of being different from the established class teacher. Dana reflected on this challenge specifically after completing the second and third placements:

It’s quite hard because you’re walking in and they’ve obviously built that relationship with their teacher. You’re walking in and you’re only there for a short amount of time and you’re trying to build some sort of relationship, but at the same time, you’re going away again, so it is very difficult. And the children know that themselves as well, so it is quite hard to kind of get a good balance

Developing identity within an established network

In addition to building effective relationships with pupils, the participants also had to build relationships with the teacher mentors and other school staff, again in a relatively short amount of time. During placements they worked most closely with their mentor who was also the teacher of the class that they had responsibility for. The success of the relationship was a significant factor in how a student felt about a placement. Ainsley was conscious of having a personality which contrasted significantly with her mentors and had an impact on the classroom environment. Jude, Dana and Francis also highlighted this in particular with Jude saying:

I was so lucky in my first placement that I had a school that I became part of the school really quickly. I felt I belonged there. I had a mentor who thought similarly to why we had similar interests. So, we had a lot to engage each other with.

It was my second mentor that I didn’t have that good a relationship with. At the end of that placement I was counting down the days thinking I hate this stage, I don’t feel comfortable in this school, I don’t feel I can be me.

Neither Billie or Ellis commented particularly on challenges in relationships with the mentors. It could be that they found they had enough in common with each mentor during each placement. However it could also be that they had different approaches from the others in terms of engaging with the staff on placements, by drawing on their prior work experiences and capital. For example, Billie was comfortable dealing with different people and receiving confronting feedback and as a result had learnt not to get focused on personal issues.

… performing is pretty tough; you audition in front of people and you get people saying no to you straight away. I became very resilient in doing that and that’s something that I’ve definitely taken into this that you take feedback well and you learn not to take things personally.

Being an SCT on probation

As the year progressed, only four of the participants moved into probation period: Ainsley, Billie, Ellis and Jude. Dana and Francis continued with the university programme. At this point in their development the participants focused primarily on the link between developing their human capital and their social capital but through the lens of their individual probation schools; this section therefore focuses on how each individual experienced this.

Jude did not have any professional capital linked to a subject or teaching to draw on but continued to express enthusiasm for the profession. They did however comment on two issues which they felt had helped them during the first term of probation: effective relationships with a colleague in the school, and the usefulness of having taken part in children’s clubs in the past:

… the supports been really good because my stage partner is literally over there.We can look at each other and kind of gauge how things are going which is great. I think the most beneficial thing from what I’ve done in the past is Brownies. Brownies and Guides and Rainbows. Just to kind of know what kids are into. I think that’s almost more important at this stage than the skill to teach. It’s all about engaging them and actually getting them to want to be at school for the first term.

The experience was different for Ellis. They continued to draw on their digital knowledge to inform both their human capital and social capital.

I’m going to create a newsletter for my own school that has this because I’m bringing loads of new stuff here that they do not know about … That they don’t all know about, but then they’re starting to learn, starting to do things in the classes, and I think just by doing like a you know, fortnightly or even monthly upgrade, yeah. – Ellis

It seems that Ellis’ knowledge and confidence with technology allowed them to create a leadership role within the probation school, supporting colleagues in a variety of ways. Interestingly though, they do not credit this knowledge with their prior work experience but rather to experiences during the teaching course:

… but the lecturers at Uni do the same. They find new things somehow. Somehow, but it’s amazing, and then feed all that to everyone at Uni, as well as the philosophies and you know, everything else, but all the cool stuff that I call cool stuff, the digital stuff, that’s all learnt from Uni … 

The experience was different for Ainsley who seemed to be particularly struck by the contrast between their teaching experiences as a music specialist and as a primary teacher (Marom 2019). Their school experience seemed to be more tightly structured with little opportunity for teacher autonomy (Olsen 2019):

In music … because I do still have one to one … students or even if I was still running workshops, I always aim to teach in a really holistic way, so I don’t just want them to learn the pieces, I want them to understand why they sound the way they sound.

I don’t really feel like I’ve, well, been able to bring much of my music experience to the table. There is a music teacher in the school, and it was timetabled that when my class go to music, I have … I’m not there.

I’m working in a room with two other teachers and I have a head of reception who is in charge of the room. So, I have to deliver a lot of material which is chosen by somebody else. Which means that I can’t promote exactly the sort of open-ended material … that I’d like to maybe choose if it was up to me.

Ainsley is the one participant who reflected deeply on their sense of a changing identity and their educational philosophy as they progressed through the course and probation. Like Billie, they had significant experience of working with children prior to undertaking the course however they acknowledged that there were significant differences in these teaching and learning occasions. The contrast between their past experiences and the current experiences in school were also felt by Ainsley in terms of interacting with the adults that they encountered:

So, I’ve worked with core people or under people like quite a lot in my life, but I feel like those kind of relationships are still quite sparky … but there’s a kind of excitement of sharing which I’m not really getting at the moment … in kind, you know, teaching … and much of my energy is being drawn towards like trying to learn how to navigate the relationships with the adults … 

The use of the word navigate is interesting in that it implies that Ainsley is having to steer through a set of challenges. Also when they discuss the previous creative world they were part of words such as sparky and celebrated are used in contrast to terms such as tight when describing the world of the school in probation.

Like Ainsley, Billie also had extensive teaching experience but there was no evidence of discord in Billie’s words. Professionally, Ainsley and Billie had come from creative industry careers based in the expressive arts where originality and the uniqueness of the outcome were key (Davies and Sigthorsson 2013). Both acknowledged that there were minimal opportunities to draw on their knowledge of their subjects, music and drama, primarily caused by a lack of sufficient time in the school timetable, acknowledge also by the other participants. Ainsley and Billie diverged however in their reactions towards this issue: Ainsley seemed frustrated, while Billie was willing to accept this. In fact, Billie seemed to be willing to accommodate the established pedagogical practice and as a result adjusted their educational philosophy and views on the value of the creative subjects that they were once immersed in professionally.

The time is there [for teaching the arts] and generally it tends to be afternoons and times when they feel like they’ve got all their, I’m hesitant to say, important learning but their priorities are out of the way and then they kind of go: oh well now we’ve got time to do other stuff.

You’ve only got so much time and I think there are ways of building into other learning. You can do your art illustrations and stuff and work on other things and there isn’t the opportunity for ideal stuff but I think it’s stand-alone stuff. You are really limited and I can see why they’re not pushed.

There is an acceptance in these quotes on Billie’s part of the existing rules of the field they have entered, that creative subjects are valued less than other subjects, they have made sense of it and are happy to engage with it on this level (Bourdieu, 1977b). The practicality of time during a school week takes precedence over the teaching of certain subjects and leads to some subjects being prioritised over others. In fact as a student, Billie believed that teaching the expressive arts through extra-curricular activities, instead of direct teaching in the classroom, would perhaps be more beneficial.

Thinking back to my own skills experience, it wasn’t my skills experience that encouraged me to go and follow what I did, that was extra-curricular stuff and I’m aware that that’s not like a possibility for all kids. I think probably I feel more passionate about it being something that probably I would end up doing extra-curricular clubs or lunchtime clubs and it would be something like to really focus on like drama skills or music or that kind of thing.

However Billie seemed more able to draw on their drama teaching experience to inform their classroom practice. Drama activities were incorporated into lessons in an interdisciplinary manner, and they also used as activities to engage pupils with the subject.

I’m trying to do more and more of it all the time and I think I’m doing quite well, I think. I mean I don’t want to say amazing, but I will use sort of my drama stuff. I’ll use a lot of role play and stuff with showing children things. – Billie

Discussion and recommendations

This paper set out to answer the question ‘To what extent does a background in the creative industries influence pedagogical practice as a beginner primary teacher?’ using the lens of capital theory and specifically professional and cultural capital. From the individual perspective, each participant had a different experience of the transition into teaching. Additionally, each participant’s experience will have been influenced by the particular schools that they worked in. It would seem however that the transition was smoother for those people who seemed to accept that their previous professional capital was of limited value in the field of teaching and were willing to embrace the new field, its habitus and the type of professional capital that they would need to gain in order to have a status within that field. The three participants who have significant experience in the creative industries however provide an interesting and varied picture of the significance of their capital and highlights the challenges that the change of profession can present in terms of making adjustments to their educational philosophy.

Ellis had accumulated professional and specifically digital capital (Seale 2013; Selwyn 2004) while working in the creative industries and they were able to use this both as a way to inform their practice, as well as build relationships with the pupils and more significantly with colleagues; they had knowledge and skills that were deemed of value to the professional field that they had now entered. Their levels of confidence in their new profession also appeared to be higher than the other participants. The result was that they were able to create leadership roles within the schools that they worked in which would indicate that this form of capital was valued in the field of education and particularly in the schools that they worked in Bourdieu (1977). Setting this in context, the role of digital technology in education has been a growing area of interest, further accelerated by recent global events resulting from the pandemic (Coker 2020) so the value of Ellis’ professional and digital capital makes sense.

For Ainsley and Billie the story was different. From a cultural capital perspective, they both had extensive knowledge and skills in the arts however the opportunity to draw on this in the teaching was limited. This was due to how they were expected to manage their time and the delivery of curriculum, and these expectations were placed on them through the people who currently inhabit the field (Bourdieu 1986; Bourdieu and Passeron 1977). Additionally they had extensive experience of teaching with children, though not as primary teachers, however again, this did not seem to have significant value (Nielsen 2016; Powers 2002). They both inhabited a liminal space between two fields (Bamber, Allen-Collinson, and McCormack 2017; Beech 2010): the creative world they had been immersed in for an extensive amount of time and where they had high levels of cultural and professional capital that were valued, and an education world where they moved to, where there are systems and procedures to learn, and their accumulated capital has minimal value (Bourdieu 1979, 1986). Where this is of most significance is in relation to the human capital aspect of professional capital (Fullan, Rincón-Gallardo, and Hargreaves 2015; Hargreaves and Fullan 2012; Nielsen 2016; Nolan and Molla 2017). Essentially they are required to put aside what they have learnt about teaching and pedagogy so far, and their sense of a pre-existing educatonal philosophy, and start again by completing a university course, school placements and a probation year.

Ainsley and Billie responded to this situation differently. Over the course of the year Billie seemed to tacitly accept this position, and in this regard they had this in common with the other participants; they accepted the parameters of the field and made the decision to work within this, essentially exchanging one professional identity for another (Bourdieu and Passeron 1977; Varadharajan, Buchanan, and Schuck 2018). Additionally Billie, seemed to react to this by changing their view of the value of the arts in schools. Ainsley however indicated that they were not so easily prepared to exchange one identity for another. Indeed, taking part in the research seemed to encourage Ainsley to explore the liminal space, discuss the dilemma and provoke deep reflection on the role of the teacher and what this meant in different contexts.

The study is limited by four significant factors which would allow us to explore in more depth how the participants responded to the dilemmas as presented above. Firstly, the small-scale, longitudinal scope of this research means that we are unable to follow the participants as they progress through probation and on into permanent positions as teacher. This means that it is not possible to determine how their identities, knowledge and skills, and confidence developed through their careers; essentially the research is a snapshot of the first year of their professional career. Secondly, the small-scale nature of the study also means that the findings of the study are not generalisable however from a qualitative perspective the transferability of the study means that it could be applied and developed on a larger scale in other settings. Thirdly, the lack of the voices of the other stakeholders in the field of education during this period, mean that the data consists of the perceptions of these participants only. How they perceive the value of their previous experience and how colleagues and pupils believed they valued this experience could be at odds. Finally, this paper has focused on the perceptions of the participants however these perceptions may differ from their practice in the classroom. The study would be strengthened by the inclusion of other types of data gathering activity such as observations of practice.

These individual experiences reveal some insights which established people within the field of education should consider though. Firstly, this small-scale study indicates that certain knowledge and skills may be valued over others; in this case the value of the knowledge and skills developed through careers in the expressive arts seemed to be lower than that of digital knowledge and expertise. People working within the education field should consider the value of subjects in the curriculum and also how the depth of knowledge that some SCTs bring to the field could be drawn on to support teaching and learning in some of these subjects. The study also provides an indication of the power structures potentially at play within the field, with the majority of these participants being willing to change and be moulded into an expected identity as a primary teacher. There is a risk however that certain people feel excluded from the teaching workforce, leading to a homogenised group of teachers who do not reflect the diverse communities that they work within. This in turn has the potential to have a negative impact on the teaching environment, where the aim should be on richer teaching and learning experiences that connect the pupils to world outside of the classroom. By essentially devaluing knowledge in the arts for example, children have fewer opportunities to explore the world around them in a curious and imaginative way and may not consider careers in the creative industries as a result.

This paper begins to address the under-researched area of the value of the professional capital of teachers with creative industries experience in the classroom. Future research needs to consider these issues in more depth through longitudinal, multi-method, case study approaches, focused on SCTs with creative industries experience which also draws on the pupils, professional colleagues, and senior management teams at both school and local authority level, across a number of years, their perceptions and their practice.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the participants for their contributions to the research. Due to the nature of this research, participants of this study did not agree for their data to be shared publicly, so supporting data is not available.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s)

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland under Grant RIG008273.

Notes on contributors

Anna Robb

Anna Robb currently works at the University of Dundee in the School of Education and Social Work, on initial teacher and Masters education programmes. Her areas of expertise are primary art education, children’s voice, identity and visual methods. More information is available here https://discovery.dundee.ac.uk/en/persons/anna-robb