“Art cannot be taught.” The saying is often heard in discussions about arts education and the path to life as an artist. Is the teacher therefore useless and teaching unnecessary within the arts? What, in fact, is meant by teaching and learning in the context of art?
In this text, I aim to distinguish between teaching and learning, and to explore possible ways of perceiving a teacher within the arts and artist education. Through this lens, I seek to illuminate the interrelation between arts pedagogy and artist pedagogy, particularly from the perspective of higher arts education.
In arts education it is possible to identify different techniques, material competencies, and bodily skills that can be practiced and taught. In contrast, individuality, the artistic vision and voice, creativity, expressiveness, and charisma are often perceived as more elusive – innate traits, even glimpses of “genius and divinity” as Michelangelo1 suggested.
Artist training has long relied on the master–apprentice model, in which the less experienced practitioner develops toward independent agency through the presence and support of a recognized expert. This model facilities the transmission of tacit know-how, embedded within disciplinary traditions. Learning in this context focuses on domain-specific forms of knowing and doing that perhaps evade verbal explanations. Such disciplinary specificity has historically manifested in guild-like structures and insider mentalities, which continue to echo within arts education. The professional field, or discipline, can be seen as a closed and guarded community, where rules are defined and quality assured (see e.g. Kauppila, 2024). When researching artist pedagogy, the stance on who is an artist and where it is decided guides the framing.
As a contemporary extension of the guild system, higher education in the arts is often divided into silos – such as distinct degree programmes – each of which tends to lean on “their own” ways of working that are passed on to the next generation as they feel special to those inside teach silo or subfield. These recognizable, identifiable features are called as signature pedagogies where the values, working methods, and practices of each field are strongly perceived as distinct and separate from others (Shulman 2005; Orr and Shreeve 2018). At the university level, these pedagogical distinctions do not necessarily engage in dialogue with one another, unless intentional efforts are made to foster such interaction.2 As artist educators look toward the future, critical questions emerge: do these established models and structures reinforce gatekeeping and exclusivity, thereby obscuring the potential for diversity and the unforeseen? Should the circle be opened?
Ghosts are often perceived as invisible and, if they appear, are often transparent, blurry, and shadowy. They also disappear unexpectedly. In our international research group on artist pedagogy,3 we have been exploring the multiplicity of teacher roles in the arts. For the purposes of our recent workshop,4 we designed a task that approached teaching through the conceptual framework of the gift. We considered teaching situations from the perspectives of giving, receiving, and taking something forward. Pedagogical exchange rarely follows a linear trajectory. Learners often do not acquire precisely what the teacher intends to “give,” and the relationship between teaching and learning seldom adheres to a direct cause-and-effect logic or immediate temporal alignment. A teacher may offer something; the learner may receive something else; and this received element may further transform as the learner moves into new contexts.
In our workshop, we examined teacher positions through the conceptual triad of guest, host, and – thanks to a serendipitous typographical error – ghost. This accidental inclusion of the ghost figure introduced a compelling metaphorical dimension also to this contribution. The notion of the teacher as ghost – invisible, disappearing – resonates with the concept of the ignorant schoolmaste in Rancière (1991). What is the pedagogical significance of a teacher who is present, yet not visible through their mastery of content, expertise, or performative acts? What happens when the teacher disappears at a certain point in the process, allowing the learner to become their own teacher – or even a teacher to others? What does an “ignorant” teacher teach? Is such a figure irresponsible or arrogant, or might they instead serve as a witness who affirms and activates the learner’s agency?
Rancière’s narrative introduces the case of Jacotot, who taught French to students with no prior knowledge of the language – and with whom he shared no common language. Jacotot’s pedagogical approach led these students to learn French with considerable success. This account has often been interpreted as suggesting that the teacher is unnecessary and that anyone can learn without one. Rather than suggesting the redundancy of the teacher, Rancière sought to highlight something fundamentally different (Biesta 2017).
In Jacotot’s example, the students do not follow the teacher’s intellect or expertise; rather, they construct their own understanding in relation to the subject matter. What the learner learns is not filtered through the teacher’s know-how. Instead, the teacher points toward something – anything – at which the learner is free to direct their own intellect. In this view, the teacher’s role is essential but not determinative. The teacher’s task is to validate the learner’s activity, enabling the learner to recognize themselves as capable of approaching the content independently. According to Rancière, this dynamic enacts the equality of intelligences: the teacher does not, through their actions, render the learner intellectually subordinate or passive (Rancière 1991). Ultimately, this perspective offers a significant insight for artist education: the essential task of the teacher is to create conditions that enable learners not to follow the teaching as a one given way but to seek within themselves meaningful ways of forming their unique relationship with the subject matter.
The concept of artist pedagogy refers to artists who teach future artists (University of the Arts Helsinki 2025).5 The prefix “artist” signals a focus on the individual maker and implies a framing that is likely to vary depending on context and definitional authority. In pedagogical discourse, subjectification denotes the process of becoming a self – of becoming a subject (Biesta 2020; Hietamäki 2022). It is closely tied to the notion of the artist as a singular, autonomous, and unique individual.
Subjectification, as a pedagogical principle, is entangled with the practices of socialization and qualification – sometimes in tension with them. It emphasizes the individual’s relationship to the world and to themselves as part of that world. Arts pedagogy encompasses theoretical, practical, and research-based articulations of learning and teaching in the arts. It is both a mode of action and a mode of thought, characterized by a deliberate orientation and ethical reflection on questions of power and responsibility. The relationship between artist pedagogy and arts pedagogy can be framed as follows:
In arts pedagogy, knowledge formation and learning of new approaches are connected to the perception, searching and form giving happening within art. Seen this way, arts pedagogy is a generic concept comprising artist pedagogy and university pedagogy in the arts (Kauppila & Rouhiainen 2024, pp. 25–26).
In our research project From Me Towards We, artist pedagogy is examined as a relational practice, with the aim of expanding understandings of an artist as a pedagogical agent. A central question is how artistic action and thinking become arts pedagogy. We explore what exercises, tasks, and working methods can be developed in educational contexts for artists, where the goal is to share perspectives and experiences through articulating personal relationships within arts – and to co-develop diverse arts pedagogies.6 Each artist’s personal orientation becomes a reflective surface which, when examined together with other frameworks, generates experiential, articulated, and verbalized knowledge. This, in turn, contributes to the development of artist pedagogy as both a practice and a field of enquiry.
Contemporary educational policy discourse has seen a growing shift from examining teaching practices to analysing and assessing learning processes. Biesta introduces the concept of learnification to describe a discursive tendency that emphasizes learning and the learner, while silencing teaching and the role of the teacher (Biesta 2024). Why has the teacher been displaced from the scene of learning? Is the idea of a teacher who actively teaches somehow frightening?
What does teaching – or the often unexamined assumptions surrounding it – mean in the context of arts and artist education? Perhaps teaching is implicitly linked to didactics, which in turn is associated with control and normative definitions of what constitutes “good” teaching within a given discipline. Freedom – a crucial aspect of learning, though not synonymous with autonomy in the sense of complete independence from others – is both a foundational premise and a goal of teaching. Misunderstood, this notion of freedom can lead to the assumption that any teacher-led or initiated activity necessarily restricts the learner’s freedom and determines what is learned.
Learning that is detached from teaching can proceed in multiple directions, depending on the learner. Biesta points out that such a logic positions the learner as one end of the learning process, while the object of learning – whatever it may be – is situated elsewhere, separate from the learner. In this framing, freedom refers to the individual learner’s capacity to assign meaning and to understand the world “out there” (Biesta 2017).
What if we were to reconceptualize the learner’s relationship to the world? Could it be that the object of learning is not merely external and objective, but rather deeply intertwined with the learner’s lived experience? Might it be possible to illuminate this perspective within the domain of the arts, and actualize it through arts-based pedagogical practices?
Placing the learner’s relationship to the world at the centre of teaching implies, in Biesta’s thinking, that freedom in learning is not about unlimited choices, but rather about the search for meaning and articulation of a justified direction. In this view, the teacher is not a random or peripheral element in the learning event, but plays a crucial role in pointing toward, suggesting, sketching, or revealing a direction – to which the learner may direct their attention.7
The learner may choose to respond to this invitation. In other words, the teacher introduce something that is not yet within the learner’s experiential horizon,8 and therefore would not otherwise attract their attention. The teacher creates an opportunity or potential for something to become part of the learner’s relationship to the world, should they choose to engage with it. The learner, from their situated position, has the opportunity to construct a personal relation to what is offered.
To offer the learner the opportunity to expand their relation to the world as a pedagogical act is to engage in ethical, responsible encounter – that is, to listen attentively to what is unfolding within the learner. In doing so, the teacher simultaneously locates themselves within their own position. It is the teacher’s responsibility to be aware of their situatedness, their background, and the partial nature of their perspective within the shared situation (Kauppila, 2024). The learner’s freedom to respond to what the situation asks or requires of them presupposes that the teacher understands that pointing something out is not equivalent to the content of learning. Rather, it is an opening – it is an invitation to transformation shaped by the intersection of situations, interpretations, and networks of meaning, which may ultimately be recognized as learning.
In artist education, viewed through this lens, the teacher’s position is grounded in co-presence and unfolds as a dynamic constellation of roles: inviter, mediator, verifier, and co-explorer. Just as ghosts can be encountered in liminal spaces – where their presence is invisible, quiet, and non-dominant – this constellation of roles makes space for the unknown, change, and transition. This constellation is relational, and also ontological, emphasizing the teacher’s being-with the student in moments of uncertainty and emergence. Within a space of encounter that evokes personal resonance – grounded in sensory and embodied presence, empathy, immersion, enchantment, and imagination – teaching continues to constitute a necessary pedagogical engagement, with the teacher integral to that process. Learning unfolds through processes that elude precise definition and measurement. This is where artist pedagogy finds its place: in demonstrating how the undefined, ambiguous, uncertain, multivalent, disordered, unstructured, obscure, and tacit dimensions of knowing can lead to multifaceted collaboration, wonder, and ethically grounded co-existence.
1 Author’s interpretation of the Finnish translation of Michelangelo’s poems by Yrjö Kaijärvi (1975).
2 Since 2014, the programme of university pedagogy in the arts (Taidealojen yliopistopedagoginen koulutus) has served as a platform for academic staff at the University of the Arts Helsinki to engage in cross-disciplinary dialogue, transcending the boundaries of individual degree programmes and academies.
3 From Me towards We – Artist Pedagogy as Relational Practice is an international research project (2024–2026) conducted in collaboration between the University of the Arts Helsinki, Aalto University, and Munich Fine Art Academy. The project is funded by the Research Institute of the University of the Arts Helsinki.
4 A workshop related to the research project was held at Kallio-Kuninkala from 26 to 28 May 2025, bringing together twenty students from the collaborating universities and six members of the research group: Frank Brümmel, Minna Suoniemi, Notburga Karl, Mirja Reuter, Ursula Rogg, and the author.
5 https://www.uniarts.fi/en/units/artist-pedagogy-and-artistic-thinking/
6 A pertinent example is the 60-credit programme in pedagogical studies for teachers in the arts at University of the Arts Helsinki. https://www.uniarts.fi/en/study-programmes/non-degree-pedagogical-studies-for-teachers-in-the-arts/
7 Gert Biesta (2024) refers to Klaus.Prange’s (2011) conceptualization of the teacher’s role, which Prange described using the German term zeigen. Both the original German and its English translation, to point or show, carry more nuanced meanings than, for instance, the Finnish equivalent osoittaa. Rather than merely indicating or directing attention, zeigen implies a relational and intentional act. It is an invitation to perceive, to engage, and to make meaning.
8 Maija Lehtovaara (1996) coined the notion of the experiential horizon – structured through perceptual and experiential meaning relations – which resonates strongly with foundational ideas in phenomenology. In Husserlian terms, the horizon is the implicit experience that frames and gives context to any act of consciousness; it is never fully present but always suggests further possibilities of meaning. Lehtovaara’s emphasis on the openness of the experiential horizon aligns with Husserl’s idea of intentionality, where consciousness is always directed toward something beyond itself. Furthermore, the inclusion of both I and we relations in Lehtovaara’s framework echoes Merleau-Ponty’s view of embodied intersubjectivity, in which perception is not a solitary act but one embedded in a shared world. Lehtovaara’s pedagogical insights can be seen as extending phenomenological thought into the realm of educational theory, emphasizing the relational and interpretive nature of learning and understanding.