Investigating the Nature of Arts-Based Professional Learning Principals Incorporate in Teacher-Professional Development: Understanding Its Utilization and Perceptions of Its Impacts

This study investigates the nature of arts-based activities principals incorporate into their schools’ professional development (PD) programs and their perceptions of how engagement with the arts impacts their teachers and schools. It’s been suggested by scholars and PD facilitators that the arts can impact often neglected behaviors such as emotional intelligence, self-reflection, creativity, and effective collaboration. However, not much is known about how including the arts in school-based PD may affect educators. For this study, an abductive qualitative approach to inquiry was employed, whereby eight principals from a midwestern state engaged in semi-structured interviews. The principals discussed the arts they utilize with their teachers in school-based professional development programs in order to affect teachers’ behaviors and the school environment. Working with an assumption, based on a theoretical framework and review of literature, that engaging with myriad arts in professional development settings can benefit teachers and the school, the data were coded to form themes and core categories. These, in turn, provided two conceptual insights that engaging with the arts bolsters (1) empowerment and (2) humanism for educators. It was concluded that the arts can impact teacher behaviors, when properly implemented into a school’s PD offerings; however, a haphazard infusion of the arts can be ineffectual for school outcomes and frustrating for participants.