Course
CourseThe master’s course Education in Arts offers you support in laying the foundation for your vision and in boosting your practice as an artisteducator. You will do Arts-Based Research, learn to reflect deeply and ask burning questions – also to yourself. Based on your own expertise, you will investigate social issues in the context of recent and inspiring developments in arts-based pedagogy.
Curriculum: 6 modules in 2 years
The course curriculum for this master's course consists of 6 modules, each worth roughly 10 credits (ECTS). The modules are divided into three periods, each based around specific subjects and skills.
Period 1: Your identity as an artisteducator
In modules 1 and 2, you will (once again) go in search of your own identity as an artist and as an artisteducator: in search of your unique strength and added value. You will investigate where you currently stand, why you are there and where you would like to get to. By reading, thinking, making, doing and reflecting, you will define your research question more and more clearly and formulate your goals.
Period 2: Collaborative research
Those big plans need support. Which is why, during modules 3 and 4, you will work together closely within the learning community comprising you and your fellow students, lecturers, tutors and external parties. You will conduct a research project in an unfamiliar environment: outside the academy and outside your own workplace, with a partner you don't know yet. You will do so with a small group of fellow students, many of them with backgrounds in different artistic disciplines. You will jointly address a social issue, while at the same time broadening and deepening your knowledge within the interdisciplinary environment of your group.
During the second period, there will also be a strong focus on cultural project management. You will write a project plan, and then execute it.
Period 3: Motivated interventions in practice
In modules 5 and 6, the focus shifts again to your own research question: you will conduct an artistic research project at your workplace in practice. This project marks the end of the master’s course. At the same time, it serves as the starting point for everything that follows. The skills and insights you have acquired during your studies will become part of your daily activities, as well as the open and inquisitive perspective with which you have learned to engage with the world.
Ruth van Lenthe's performance 'Verwikkeld in ruimte' - a participatory performance about the in-between space in higher education | photo by: Kees Muizelaar
The gap between theory and artistic practice has become much smaller. My interest in science and art has converged. I already have 2 contacts with Wageningen University, who are also looking for new forms of scientific research sharing. I dare to take a better position."
Arts-Based Research
In this master’s course, the emphasis is on Arts-Based Research: different research methods are combined in order to explore and answer a question from different and variable perspectives. So as a student, you will explore academic literature in one moment – and in the next you may be in front of a group of school pupils exploring how dance in the classroom can enrich their understanding of themselves and others. By taking different approaches, you will combine the best of both worlds, which can lead to the most unexpected and valuable results.
Research in your own workplace
You don't need to have a permanent workplace in practice in order to start this master’s course. If you are self-employed, for example, you can join a group of fellow students during the first year of study. However, please note that at the end of the second year, in the last two modules of the program (5 and 6), you will carry out a graduation assignment with a focus group. If you have a fixed workplace, you can choose to work with the learners or community you are already collaborating with. If you don't have a fixed workplace, it is up to you to choose and arrange a focus group for your research.
Want to gain a teaching qualification and a master’s degree in Education in Arts?
Do you already have a bachelor's degree from an art course and are you keen to get your teaching qualification and a master’s degree? If so, the Fast track double degree programme bachelor’s/master’s Education in Arts is for you. In this double degree programme, you gain two qualifications in just three years, you develop into a socially engaged researcher and you can go on to teach art at secondary and VET level.
I am much more confident now. Doors were opened during the master's course,and I discovered how to make new contacts and gained more self-confidence.