Abstract

It is sometimes said that the largest populations of people with dyslexia are to be found in prisons and art colleges. It can be assumed that those artists escaping custodial sentences and finding gainful employment as art teachers must have developed some learning strategies that facilitated success (of sorts) in navigating through formal education. This seminar presents exploratory research examining the strategies employed by art teachers who identify as dyslexic. The principal research question was ‘What learning strategies, used by art teachers with dyslexia, can be used as pedagogical tools?’ To help answer this question, twenty art teachers participated in the research; this was a purposeful choice, based on their self-identification as having ‘severe’ dyslexia. Over a period of two years, the group was narrowed down to three. The research methods employed were informal interviews, classroom observations and autobiographical accounts, augmented by reflections upon individual teaching and learning experiences. Although small in scale, the study found connections with several positive attributes, often associated with dyslexia, to classroom practices.