CON • TEXT - Arkitektur- og designhøgskolen i Oslo - AHO

D E N K U L T U R E L L E S K U L E S E K K E NThe A&C teachers and Artists that collaborated in the DKS project wereasked to give their story of the particular project. They were asked to focuson how they understood the project and their own role in terms of qualitystandards, content and subject-matter competence.The setting was chosen because of its familiarity for the actors. The teacherswere encouraged to give their stories in their workspace at school, while theartists told their tale in their office. The aim was to make the situation asrelaxed as possible, to allow the narrative to flow easily, while still being tiedto their professional surroundings. The digital recorder was small andsoundless.I made an informal focus guide that consisted of a few points that I wantedthe actors to comment on. No fixed questions were formulated, but thethemes were brought into the stories as they surfaced. The first point I wantedto access was how they told the story of the particular collaboration project.How and when did it start, what happened in the process, and what was theresult? I did not interfere with the telling, because the proceedings and theirown experience of the collaboration was expressed in the narratives. Thenarratives centred on the parts of the projects the actors thought mostimportant. The second point that I found it necessary to ask them to reflect onwas what expert knowledge they themselves considered they possessed inrelation to the project execution, and what expert knowledge the otherprofession brought in. I decided to include a follow up question to the second,as it seemed difficult, especially for the teachers, to make any claim to expertknowledge. The question I chose to ask concerned what they would change ifthey could do the project one more time. This was done to make themformulate their expert knowledge specifically, without calling it that. Thiscreated rich answers where they reflected on what they thought could havebeen better planned and executed — i.e. they activated their professionalexpert knowledge. I also included reflection into what the actors considered aknowledge gain they could bring with them from the project in terms offuture use. I wanted to know if the professionals involved saw an increase intheir own expert knowledge after meeting another profession.Interview of an American researcherThe National Endowment for the Arts in The United States has run a programfor artist visits in schools for almost 40 years. The AinR project is verysimilar to the Norwegian DKS, both in organisation and aims (Bumgarner1993). In 1993, an evaluation of the project was done. The researcher behind42