Education Commons^™

Our Magnitude And Bond: An Ethics Of Care For Art Museum Education, Dana Carlisle Kletchka

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

This work responds to contemporary concerns about the future of art museum education and public practice and art museums more broadly in the wake of a global pandemic that has, at present, killed more than a million people in the United States and sickened millions more. I respond to questions posed by the board of the Journal of Social Theory in Art Education in relation to the theme of Inclusion Invasion, expand upon the relations between art museums and communities posited by a post-critical, socially responsive museological framework, and explore the potential for a feminist philosophical Ethics of Care …

Who Belongs In The Future?: Afrofuturism, Art Education And Alternative Narratives, Emily Hogrefe-Ribeiro

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

This paper describes an art and Afrofuturism art experience that took place during the summer of 2020. Led by an art museum educator, the virtual experience was held over Zoom with a group of ten White adults. The art experience focused on alternative narratives and introduced participants to Afrofuturism as contemporary artistic practice and pedagogical approach. A critical multiculturalism theoretical framework informed the experience, and participants analyzed Afrofuturist art and representations in mass media to interrogate the ways that Whiteness influences conceptions of the future in Western culture and their own lives. Participants built on what they learned to create …

Whose Art Museum? Immersive Gaming As Irruption, Jason M. Cox, Lillian Lewis

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

This paper introduces Mantles in the Museum, an immersive game that helps ameliorate student discomfort in art museums and to support discourse in, through, and around art museums. Within the game the students take on the roles of critics who use one of five interpretive frameworks, often differing from the student’s own, to select works from a real museum to go to an international exhibition. Assuming these roles empowers students to be in the museum and to assess the works, students are given leave to engage in a vigorous critique process and to examine the art-world from a new perspective.

Pórtate Bien Con La Maestra And Early Childhood Maker Education: How The Border Questions Quality, Heather G. Kaplan, Diane E. Golding

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

This paper troubles and retells the story of quality art education in a STEAM makerspace in an elementary school along the U.S.-Mexico border. Through questioning quality, we embrace the multivalent nature of belonging and the complexity of teaching art and researching with, among, and about others. Boundaries, borders, and belonging are explored through sites of conflicting quality. We consider the Mexican colloquialism ‘Pórtate bien con la maestra” along with progressive art education as antagonistic notions of quality that produce contrasting educational technologies and complicated notions of belonging, invasion, and settlement.

Monumental Impact – Honoring The Life & Legacy Of Dr. Melanie Buffington, Caitlin M. Black

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

The article honors the impactful work of the late Dr. Melanie Buffington. The author discusses their experience recognizing the overlap between Dr. Buffington’s work and the work of Monument Lab, a public art and history studio based in Philadelphia. Honoring Dr. Buffington’s legacy, the author recommends Monument Lab’s field trip guide as a tool for engaging students in critical thinking and meaningful conversations considering and reimagining public art and public spaces.

Jstae V42 Front Matter, Manisha Sharma

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

No abstract provided.

Editorial: Inclusion Invasion, Manisha Sharma

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

No abstract provided.

Creating Commons: Photovoice Philosophy In A Third Space, Jason M. Cox, Lynne Hamer

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

Teach Toledo is a program that the authors co-coordinate using community assets to create a third space to confront systemic racism’s impact on teacher education programs and facilitate hybridity (Bhaba, 1994). Diverse student cohort members use their lived experience as the base for their individual and shared urban educational philosophies, coordinated in a first-year horizontally and vertically integrated curriculum including written compositions and a PhotoVoice project. “Creating commons” refers not only to provision of a third space as a common space where private experiences can be combined to create a hybrid, new understanding, but also to the creative act of …

Jstae V42 Full Issue, Manisha Sharma

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

No abstract provided.

Isolation And Empathy: Documenting Cancer Culture, Timothy B. Garth

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

In this article, the author provides insight to a culture of cancer by describing a single day of chemotherapy treatment. The author and his caregiver document the process through photography. Wrapped in the context of a global pandemic, the author draws connections between life in cancer culture and broader cultural modifications created by COVID-19. Through this manuscript, the author shares a personal narrative with the hope of building empathy and community.

Inclusion And Disability As Curricular Practice, Kelly M. Gross

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

As policies regarding students with disabilities in education have changed to support inclusive approaches, the field of art education must consider the translation of these concepts to Prek-12 art and design curriculum. This study examines inclusive curriculum content regarding the inclusion and representation of disability in Prek-12 visual art and design classrooms in Illinois. It utilized a descriptive survey design that involved art and design education teachers throughout the state. These data provide information on the general state of art and design education while also considering the connections between theory and practice. Data from this study indicate that although art …

Visualizing Data To Engage Intra-Active Art: Unsettling Gender Roles And Promoting Educational Responsibility, Amber Ward

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

This paper introduces Sweep it Under the Rug as an exhibition that occurred at a university gallery in the Southeastern United States during February 2020. The exhibition aimed to unsettle gender roles and promote educational responsibility by visualizing data from survey participants and installation collaborators on the topic of gender. The survey addressed the role of personal and cultural expectations on gender expression through a series of questions about family, language, and more. The author shares memories from and writing about the exhibition and thinks with Karen Barad’s concept of intra-action to explore the ways in which visualizing data might …

“Press Charges”: The Intersection Of Art Class, White Feelings, And The School-To-Prison Pipeline, Albert Stabler

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

I reflect on the decade I spent as an art teacher in a Chicago high school where so-called "behavioral issues" are rampant, as well on my experience working with incarcerated adults, in order to explain the concept of the school-to-prison pipeline with the aid of recent research on discipline and policing. I go on to talk about a September 2019 thread in an art teacher group on Facebook. On this thread, predominantly white teachers overwhelmingly called for a teacher who was hit while breaking up a fight to press charges against the student who struck him, purportedly for the student’s …

Critical Hermeneutics And The Counter Narrative Of Ledger Art, Katie Fuller

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

Too often historical artworks in schools, textbooks, cultural institutions, and public spaces share a narrative that bolsters white-centered histories, but when an historical artwork is studied as text it creates room for multiple perspectives (Newfield, 2011) expanding the narrative to include subjugated histories. Looking at art through the philosophy of hermeneutics opens up questions and conflicts that arise within texts based on interpretations of those texts (Leonardo, 2003). This paper will apply the philosophy of hermeneutics to critique historical memory, and it will present ledger art as a visual text and counter narrative to dominant white narratives. Ledger art emerged …

Typographic Interventions: Disruptive Letterforms In Public Space, Clark A. Goldsberry

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

We are surrounded by typography—on billboards, aluminum cans, pill bottles, and pixelated screens—but artists and art teachers, seeking out the materiality of their lived environments, should be able to look at text in different ways. Many artists utilize letterforms as a medium of juxtaposition and recontextualization (Gude, 2004) by placing text in places we don’t expect to see it, or they subvert the messages we expect to read. Typographic interventions can be seen everywhere, by all types of artists, makers, activists, and dissidents. These interruptions could be framed as forms of socially engaged art (Helguera, 2011; Mueller, 2020) that “suspend …

Appointment Notes/On Unwanted Help And The Misuse Of Empathy, G. H. Greer

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

The pandemic has shed light on a number of injustices. In this context, I revisit a comic I wrote to sort through an experience of ableism in academia. I encourage readers to think deeply about what teachers mean when we offer help as members of a caring profession, and consider some ways that the misuse of empathy can impede impactful help. I end with a call for systemic organization and resources to support workers in caring professions.

Encounters With Care: Mentoring Beginning Art Teachers Amid The Pre[Care]Ious Conditions Of Neoliberalism, Christina Hanawalt

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

Arguing that significant encounters with care often go unnoticed in a United States’ educational system largely defined by a neoliberal agenda, in this article I undertake a deep investigation of encounters with care that emerged in my experiences mentoring beginning art teachers. I approach these encounters as provocative disturbances that might reveal the nuances and intricacies of the entanglements at work. Through this exploration, I aim to show that these caring entanglements are, in consequential ways, run through with precarity—not only as an existential condition of life, but as a specific set of social, cultural, political, and material relations …

Index Of Dirt: Composing And Composting In Art And Education, Circa 2020, Carol N. Padberg

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

This photo essay presents an abridged version of a performative lecture addressing strategies for regenerative art education and arts-based research. Using an alphabetized compilation of stories, texts, objects and lessons, the index provides examples of how embodied, field-based art education can provide appropriate learning methods for art students of the Anthropocene who bear the burden of the economic, environmental, and emotional precarities of our times.

Stigma, Confinement, And Silence : On The Precarious Life And Death Of John Derby, Kevin Tavin, Mira Kallio-Tavin

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

In this commentary, we take seriously the question of what does it mean to be in a precarious position and a precarious subject within educational institutions. Structured around three concepts, Stigma, Confinement, andSilence we discuss the life and death of art education scholar and colleague, John Derby. We attempt to address how John’s scholarship helped other researchers in art education orientate themselves and take a critical stance based on disability studies.

Cissexism And Precarity Perform Trans Subjectivities, Kevin Jenkins

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

Precarity is not experienced by all. Rather, as Judith Butler (2009) notes, it is the extreme state of precariousness—a heightened exposure to institutional and social violence imposed on marginalized populations such as people of color, non-white immigrants, people of non-Christian faiths, and LGBTQ+ people. Nor does precarity impact the people in these groups evenly.

The three digital artworks in this series highlight some of the ways in which trans people navigate precarity and are performed by it. The lifetime suicide attempt rate for trans and gender non-conforming people averages at 41% with the highest rate at 46% reported by trans …

Translingual Public Pedagogy, Precarity And Inquiry: Learned Limits And Limitlessness Through Memoir, Melisa Cahnmann Taylor, Sharon Nuruddin, Tairan Qiu

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

In this paper we document the precarity of translingual pedagogies (Canagarajah, 2013), those occurring when languages are in contact and mutually influencing each other with emergent meanings and grammars. Sharing translingual art and literature during a public Lunar New Year Celebration, we turn to memoir methodologies for understanding “trans” practices: those that transgress singular codes, modalities, human/nonhuman cultures, and personal-scientific boundaries. Our findings (and lost things) identify the challenges and possibilities of working in the liminal space of fractured social and linguistic identities.

Don’T Call This World Adorable & Other Salvaged Stories, Brooke A. Hofsess

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

In this contribution to the special issue on Precarity, the author builds salvaged stories that touch ecological precarities related to place-based discourses within art education. Tsing’s (2015) attentiveness to precarity and Alaimo’s (2012; 2016) suspicion of sustainability cascade upon the author’s thinking/living/writing with Ecologies of Girlhood, an interdisciplinary, intersectional, intergenerational arts program considering living feminist lives co-creatively with place (Ahmed, 2017). New material feminism moves alongside an Indigenous ontology of land-based pedagogies creating “inter-theoretic conversations” (Rosiek, Snyder, & Pratt, 2019) about sustainability and place. These accounts are simply told and cultivated from everyday practices that explore a craftsmanship of attention …

Stickiness As Methodological Condition, Cala Coats

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

Stickiness is introduced as a cultural concept, affective condition, and performative practice. The author suggests a process of methodological conditioning rooted in responsiveness and attunement in response to shared vulnerability embedded in precarity. Drawing from Felix Guattari’s ethico-aesthetic paradigm, new materialisms, and affect theory, the author invites readers to engage with a narrative score as an aesthetic pedagogical exercise. The score and additional provocations act as creative material for connective and collective performances tracing and creating encounters across time and space.

Precarity In Feminism And Feminist Art Education: Decentering Whiteness Through Reproductive Justice Activism, Michelle Bae-Dimitriadis, Olga Ivashkevich

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

The article addresses precarity in mainstream feminism and feminist art education as a systemic dismissal and exclusion of the critical concerns and voices by disenfranchised women of color from its narratives and agendas. It draws on a case of the reproductive justice feminist activism to illustrate how the mainstream pro-choice feminist movement neglected the urgent and often life threatening reproductive concerns by Black, Brown, Indigenous and immigrant women, which led to an establishment of the reproductive justice coalitions by activists of color. The reproductive justice movement is an important call to action to challenge and decenter Whiteness in mainstream feminism …

Discarded: Exploring Material Stories And Movements Through Participatory, Public Art Interventions, Kira Hegeman

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

Drawing on DeCerteau’s (1984) philosophy of tactics, which subvert dominant ways of being through creative appropriations of space and behavior, and New Materialist philosophies that offer vitality and agency to non-human objects (Barad, 2007; Bennett, 2004; 2010), this paper explores a three-part series of participatory, public art interventions related to waste, consumption and material relationships. The three installations were distinct but connected, situated in public spaces and corridors as a means of disrupting daily moments while encouraging moments of pause to be with discarded, material objects in playful and creative ways (de Certeau, 1984; Debord, 1956). With these installations we …

Troubling The “We” In Art Education: Slam Poetry As Subversive Duoethnography, Gloria J. Wilson, Sara Scott Shields

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

Scholarly dialogues are filled with discussions of teacher’s personal perspectives, experiences, and challenges - but rarely do these dialogues include the narratives that lie beneath the surface. The subversive tales confronting stories of microagressions, alternate histories, and institutionalized norms that shape the educational landscape we navigate daily. This paper is focused on bringing to the surface a call and response lament of two social justice-oriented art educators--one Black, the other White. Using the dialogic methodology of duoethnography and the performative aspects of slam poetry, we share our racialized-teaching accounts as a multisensory experience, where text and performative orality share a …

Public School Art Teacher Autonomy In A Segregated City: Affordances And Contradictions, Albert Stabler, Jorge R. Lucero

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

Over the past two decades, the Chicago Public Schools have seen a lot of change. First there was the opening of magnet schools, and other gestures at reform, followed by school closures and the flourishing of charter schools. In this essay, two former Chicago art teachers, one who taught in a prominent college prep magnet high school on the north side, and one who taught in an under-resourced neighborhood high school on the south side, examine the commonalities of their otherwise divergent experiences, particularly with regard to the freedom allotted to both them and their students by the administrative affordances …

Losting + Founding Poetry: Sub/Versive Academic Love Letters, Mindi J. Rhoades, Vittoria S. Daiello

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

No abstract provided.

Sub/Versing Mentoring Expectations: Duration, Discernment, Diffraction, Natalie Leblanc, Valerie Triggs, Rita Irwin

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

The three of us have shared co-mentoring relationships over the last decade. Rita was the PhD supervisor for both Natalie and Valerie and while working with them and other PhD students, came to believe that goals are reciprocal in many ways. In this article, we attend to the concept of co-mentoring, an exchange that includes three qualities guiding ongoing artistic, professional and scholarly work. These subversive qualities are described as: a) duration, b) discernment, and c) diffraction. From a practice-based, new materialist lens, we take turns describing how each quality is important to co-mentoring relationships and we provide theoretical …

Editorial: Fault Zones, Melanie L. Buffington

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

No abstract provided.