Art Education Commons^™

The (In)Visible Display: Reconstituting Museum Experience Through Performance Pedagogy, Eunjung Choi

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

In this article, I reconceptualize my understanding of Korean objects in terms of how they perform pedagogically within a context of an art museum in the United States. A pedagogical performance occurs when a contextual shift initiates a process of learning that exposes, examines, and critiques the conventional, pre-existing discourse of objects and cultures. Understanding the museum as a performative site, I describe my experiences in the Arts of Korea gallery at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. By juxtaposing past and present and visible and invisible cultural elements, I play with the standards and assumptions of cultural display. Based …

Art Education As Potential Space: A Conversation About Navigating Divides In The Process Of Becoming An Art Teacher, Karyn Sandlos, Miriam Dolnick

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

The authors reflect on some challenges, opportunities, and lessons learned in the process of planning and implementing an artistic investigation of physical space in a public high school in Chicago. This article is the result of conversations between a student teacher and a preservice teacher educator working in collaboration. Our definition of ‘divides’ includes both the sense in which divides function as obstacles, barriers, and/or forms of constraint, and also productively as opportunities to navigate and work through tensions between opposites. Working with the psychoanalytic concept of potential space, we suggest how students, art teachers, and teacher educators might make …

Artitudes: Mapping Lines Of Demarcation In Art Education, Pamela Harris Lawton

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

This essay explores the conscious and un-conscious divides art educators create as they map their careers as art educators. It begins with a discussion of possible causes for lines of demarcation to develop through examination of how art educators self-identify, the structure of teacher preparation programs at institutions of higher education, degrees in art education, and a visual and written narrative of my own journey navigating lines of demarcation within the profession. It closes with suggestions for strategies to diminish or erase the dividing lines that contribute to negative perceptions, attitudes (artitudes), low professional self-esteem, and teacher burnout.

Re-Imagining Inclusion/Exclusion: Unpacking Assumptions And Contradictions In Arts And Special Education From A Critical Disability Studies Perspective, Alice J. Wexler

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

Inclusion is usually defined “as a student with an identified disability, spending greater than 80% of his or her school day in a general education classroom in proximity to nondisabled peers” (Baglieri et al., 2011, p. 2125). This term, although seemingly benign and even beneficial, is nevertheless the outcome of polarized and divided terminologies. As a result, inclusion within the public school system can suggest not belonging. In this article I examine the invisible barriers to children’s full inclusion and participation hidden within the terminology and practices of special education, and suggest how the arts might be a natural ally …

Untangling Gender Divides Through Girly And Gendered Visual Culture, Alice Lai, Yichien Cooper

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

The rise of girly culture has brought new dimensions and challenges to art education. As art educators, we are concerned about what we can do to meaningfully understand and educate children—girls and boys—growing up with girly culture. To this end, this paper presents our exploratory study, utilizing the methods of literature review, focus group discussion, and classroom observation, and findings on the following: (1) discourses of girly (visual) culture specifically related to age metaphor, visual representations of sexuality, and girly aesthetics; (2) postfeminist conceptualizations, critiques, and justifications of gender divides manifested through girly visual culture; (3) preadolescent children’s perceptions of …

The Ceiling Is The Sky: Affective Constructs, Event, And Community In The Marginal Spaces Of Art Education, Kristopher J. Holland, Nandita Baxi Sheth

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

This article sketches philosophical concepts of affect and event within the canvas of lived experience in a university art education teacher preparation course. We claim that by embracing architectural and metaphorically marginal spaces the course manifested transformative experiences for students, instructors, and community. We position and celebrate the often marginalized spaces of art education as potential sites of becoming through curricular rich environments and as thresholds of event for the educator of art within the community at large. Specifically, we describe the deconstructed space of the “classroom,” the curricular arc of learning, and the occurrence of an unplanned, emergent, student …

Avatar|Avatar: Reflections In/On The Virtual, Aaron D. Knochel

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

Utilizing a documentary I created involving Dr. Christine Ballengee Morris, called Avatar|Avatar, I reflect on the concept of the virtual to understand the site of agency in art education. The documentary focuses on Ballengee Morris’s work with her avatar Rain Winkler and explores the inter-relations of identity construction in both online (virtual) and offline (physical) spaces. In revisiting our encounter in the documentary, I extend the concept of the virtual through the simultaneous conditions of actuality and potentiality using the work of Manual DeLanda and assemblage theory. My reflection in/on the virtual explores a broader actualization of the avatar …

Desirable Difficulties: Toward A Critical Postmodern Arts-Based Practice, Gloria J. Wilson, Sara Scott Shields, Kelly W. Guyotte, Brooke A. Hofsess

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

Prior scholarship on collaborative writing projects by women in the academy acknowledges sustained attempts of intraracial and interracial collaboration/divides. Interracial collaborative scholarship, while noble in effort, may result in unacknowledged tensions surrounding racial identity politics. In these collaborative environments the problematics of race cannot be denied, with Black women often drawing upon their racialized identities, while White women emphasize their gendered identities. An unawareness and/or invisibility of Whiteness as a racial construct of privilege further problematizes feminist postmodern discourse. This polyvocal text focuses on responding to and working within the tensions of identity politics encountered in interracial scholarship among four …

Re-Imaging City Walls: Engaging Children To Replace Hostile Wall-Chalking With Their Drawings, Rabeya Jalil

Teaching Resource Archive

Experience how two art educators lead a community-based initiative by engaging children from suburban districts to revamp public walls; erase hate graffiti and wall- chalking and replace them with interactive drawings.

Power Issues In Everyday Life ÷ Socially Engaged Art = Empowerment, Hoyun Richter

High School Resources

This lesson is facilitated so that students can identify and expand their perspective on a power issue relevant to their lives through dialogue, analysis of relevant artworks, and everyday examples. Artists Suzanne Lacy, Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, Emily are introduced to discuss power and powerlessness.

Art Integration: A Turning Point In Becoming, R. Darden Bradshaw

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

This article uses personal narrative to articulate one art educator’s journey through the first year of teaching middle school. Highlighting the tensions that accompany navigating the liminal spaces between pre-service teaching and in-service teaching, the author articulates the potential of visual culture art integration as a site for meaningful student engagement and teacher empowerment. The article concludes with a call for the intentional inclusion of art integration pedagogy within pre-service art educator preparation programs.

Crescendo, Jeffery A. Pabotoy

Theses and Dissertations

Artist Statement

I have always found comfort and warmth in my family. When I am not with them, I find myself clinging to the objects they leave behind as a substitute in their absence. As I began to re-create these objects through paintings and ceramics, I realized that I was creating symbolic portraits of my family. These portraits are tangible family moments preserved in pigment and clay.

In recent years, my siblings were deployed to war and I began to represent them as various instruments. These instruments, both musical and tools of war, chronicle who they were and who they …

Design Thinking For The Development Of Formal Operations: A Team-Based Middle School Design Curriculum, Stephanie K. O'Dell

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I propose a team-based design curriculum that aligns with the cognitive development of middle school age students. The ability to think abstractly develops at a specific time in development, according to widely accepted cognitive theory. The middle school years are the launching pad of abstract thinking. At this age, students are also primed for learning through social activity. The design process often includes abstract problem solving challenges, and working within a team structure. These ideas build a foundation for a research question—could a team-based design curriculum in middle school strengthen students’ natural cognitive development by providing opportunities …

Failure To Operationalize: Investing In Critical Multicultural Art Education, Joni Boyd Acuff

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

ProPublica (2015) completed a study looking at three decades of federal data on fatal police shootings and found that Black males are 21 times more likely to be shot dead by police than White males the same age. The deaths of unarmed Black males by armed White males and police officers has moved America into a tense racial divide in many areas of the United States. With this data in mind, the author makes a call for art educators to assume an educational framework that guides the destabilization of institutional power and places equity at the forefront of art teaching. …

My Failure With An Ojibwe Artist: Reflections On Initial Intercultural Relationships, Kevin Slivka

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

In this article, I examine a first meeting with Ojibwe artist, Terry Kemper, during which I failed to initiate our meeting with the gift of tobacco. I explore failure in a relational event with Kemper and discuss the intentions of my ethnographic research, my researcher-identity, and my mistake of initially neglecting Ojibwe protocol during my first meeting with the artist, in addition to the role of tobacco in Ojibwe communities. Through aesthetic inquiry I reframe failure in an installation entitled, "Toward Reconciliation” that has potential pedagogical implications, with hope that it avoids a static and impotent result. I intend the …

The Failure Of Whiteness In Art Education: A Personal Narrative Informed By Critical Race Theory, Sunny Spillane

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

This article explores failure from the perspective of a white art educator interested in social justice and educational equity. Interconnected notions of failure are explored, including: the author’s learning from personal failure as a process of professional growth over the course of her career; the specter of “school failure” and its impact on K-12 students’ educational opportunities and experiences; entrenched, systemic inequities in public schools and their failure to serve marginalized students and communities; and the potential complicity of the author’s individual professional failures – if left unaddressed – in perpetuating racialized inequities in art education. Whiteness, or white power, …

On Being Naïve: A Queer Aesthete In Art Education, Adam Greteman

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

In this article, the author utilizes the work of Quentin Crisp to explore the possibility of cultivating the naïve as a way to reframe failure. To be “naïve” is perhaps a form of failure; a failure to be worldly or knowledgeable in one’s doing and becoming. Accusations of naïveté are used, after all, to distinguish the work one is doing from others that have not “gotten it right” or fail to see what you as a scholar see in a more critical, less naïve, vein. What I ponder here then is this thing called “naïveté?” How might the “naïf” help …

Failure To Be A “Real American”? → Challenging Failure: An Impetus To Shape Scholarship And Teaching, Christina Chin

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

The author reflects on personal experiences, highlighting vignettes of her perceived “failure to be a ‘real American,’” and recounts these stories through her own voice. With the hopes that her journey might inspire, inflame empathic frustrations with an inegalitarian status quo, and remind others of how important it is for us to participate in fighting for justice, she shares her experiences and developing understandings as she has learned to embrace more counterhegemonic scholarship and practices. She describes how her childhood experiences and daily life experiences as an adult have shaped her work as a researcher and teacher of art education. …

Failed Paper: Skirting The Call For And About Failure Through Failure., Jorge R. Lucero

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

No abstract provided.

(Re)Constructing Erased Narratives: Unearthing Strange Fruit, Maria D. Leake

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

This article focuses on the artistic practices of Vincent Valdez, who (re)constructs hidden narratives regarding the lynching of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans in South Texas from 1848 until 1928. Valdez counters the historical gaps and omissions of Latino history from textbooks as a form of failure which he addresses not as a historian, but as an artist looking at the past through a contemporary lens. The conceptual framework of this research references critical race theory and its relationship with culturally sustaining pedagogies to challenge exclusionary practices that selectively privilege the histories of some groups over others. Implications for confronting the master …

Toward A Poor Exhibition: The Fail(Lure) Of Curare And Currere, Laura Lee Mccartney

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

This article offers a look at a/r/tographic inquiry designed to interrogate curator fail(lures) in Dress Stories, an exhibition of 150 personal clothing objects rendered in the Cora Stafford Gallery at the University of North Texas from September 25-28, 2012. The article presents opportunities to linger with the four steps for experimenting with currere, outlined by William F. Pinar and Madeleine R. Grumet in Toward a Poor Curriculum (1976) to consider the benefits of allowing for uncertainty in curating the curriculum of my lived experiences. A poor exhibition allowed me to become lost so I might be found as a …

Reflective Communities: Mentoring Teacher Candidates During The (In)Between Spaces Of The Practicum, Joana Hyatt

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

This article critiques traditional student teaching formats that fail to examine the social conditions of the spaces between the time of becoming and the place of being educators during practicum fieldwork. The lack of negotiable spaces for student teachers to resolve problematic situations, myths, cultural differences, and relational aspects of teaching have been documented. Exploring the methods of arts-based inquiry, a group of teacher candidates illustrated their experiences of becoming art educators by producing artwork, videos, and narratives. Student teachers then reflected on their shared roles, making other avenues of collaboration available. When the affective domains of learning to teach …

Access And Failure, Beth Balliro

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

Many art education advocates call for expanded arts offerings in schools, particularly in urban settings. These calls for greater and more equitable arts access are presented as efforts toward racial and social justice, yet often lack a vision for a culturally affirming pedagogy. Through the dialogue of the author and her former student, this article explores how more arts access, without significant pedagogical revamping, may in fact reinforce the persistent failure of urban schools to provide purposeful education, particularly for Black male artists.

Reframing New Art Teacher Support: From Failure To Freedom, Christina Hanawalt

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

In order to support new art teachers and encourage them as leaders of contemporary art education curricula, those invested in the preparation and development of beginning art teachers must examine the forces at play in new teachers’ professional lives, as well as the problems with existing support structures. In this article, I present seven perspectives on the new art teacher experience, ranging from feelings of failure, to problems inherent in preparation and induction practices, to issues of teacher identity and socialization, to the pursuit of professional agency within school cultures. I suggest readers view these perspectives as seven artworks hanging …

Editorial: Reframing Fail(Ure): Failure To See? Failure To Connect? Failure To Be?, Sharif Bey

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

No abstract provided.

Let's Collaborate! Process-Based Sculptures, Lena Isenberg

Middle School Resources

To begin this lesson, students will study action painting from the Abstract Expressionist movement. Students will watch videos of Jackson Pollock and Dale Chihuly painting, and compare their processes. Students will also view Pollock and Chihuly’s art-making processes in the context of existentialism. They will understand that an artist’s actions are what give his or her life meaning. Taking inspiration from these artists’ processes, students will create collaborative sculptures in response to their materials. While creating their collaborative sculpture, students will be challenged by the dynamic interplay between individual ideas and group decision-making.

Public Space Interventions: Collaborating With New Craft Artists In Action- Finger Knitted Basketball Nets, Jody Boyer

Middle School Resources

A variety of artists make artwork that intervenes in public spaces. There are many reasons why artists engage communities in their work. This lesson explores a variety of artists who make artwork that intervenes in public spaces and engage communities with their work and teaches students to finger knit a 4 foot piece of yarn with excellent technique and craftsmanship. This lesson explores how the NCAA New Craft Artists in Action Net Works project and their public space interventions with handmade basketball nets. This lesson explores how artists collaborate to make artwork and empowers students to collaborate with their peers …

Urban Pets As Social Practice: Constructing Pets With A Purpose, Carrie Pope

Middle School Resources

I developed this lesson in my fourteenth year of teaching. I had just transferred to sixth grade general art after primarily teaching pottery classes in a high school for thirteen years. I was at a low income, high poverty school and was having a difficult time engaging my students. I had seen Robert Marbury’s work about ten years earlier and had wanted to do something with it but had never had the opportunity. Recognizing the student's need for play, I first approached this lesson with one class bringing in several garbage bags of stuffed animals my daughter had discarded.

The …

Representation By Design: Mining The Source, Kris Heintz Nelson

Higher Education Resources

This unit is a hybrid, combining art history, studio instruction, and visual culture and has been interwoven into a freshman foundations drawing course where students are taught observational skills, use of media and process, and introduced to the creative processes of generating ideas and developing personal inquiry. The inquiry is intended to guide students to question dominant assumptions regarding representation and how artists engage in visual research.

Sankofa Art Education: A Cultural Basis For Ghanaian Art Education, Esi Sam Annan

Theses and Dissertations

This study is a curriculum research project that focuses on teaching the traditional arts of Ghana and enduring artistic ideas to Ghanaian basic school students. It has been designed based on data from a survey conducted with experts in Ghana arts history and on the traditional arts of Ghana. The curriculum covers the major arts practiced by the traditional artists. It also recognizes some contemporary Ghanaian artists and their artworks.

This study offers insights into Ghanaian basic school art teachers’ philosophies and experience with their traditional arts. Through analysis of the findings, the major themes that emerged were changes in …