Characterising the approaches to teaching art practised by secondary school art teachers

Approaches to teaching art were studied through interviews with 18 art teachers at secondary schools in Hong Kong. Grounded analysis revealed that the approaches to teaching fitted into a four category model with category labels: instructional, discipline inquiry, social interactive, and personal. The categories were defined and described by six dimensional features: aim; content; role of teacher; role of student; teaching methods; and assessment orientation. The four categories of approaches to teaching could be placed under a higher-order spectrum between subject- and student-centred pole This article reports the findings of a study of art teachers’ approaches to teaching art. Before the findings are illustrated, it is necessary to deal with how the term approach to teaching is operationalised and how it relates to other constructs, such as conceptions and beliefs about teaching.