Art Education Commons^™

Food For Thought: Rituals In Place Based Learning, Natalia Pilato

International Journal of Lifelong Learning in Art Education

In my mother’s kitchen lasting bonds among family, friends, and newcomers are created. Using that space as a point of departure, I explore the significance of pedagogical places outside of classrooms that serve as flavorful ingredients for performative and participatory learning. This article articulates ways in which rituals associated with Sicilian cultural traditions are interwoven and complicit in establishing dispositions for socially engaged learning and teaching in the arts, showing how an ethic of care can transcend generations. With a focus on place-based learning, making art and enjoying food are investigated to show how healthy productive relationships, appreciation for beauty, …

Art Nights: Reimagining Professional Development As A Ritual, Libba Willcox

International Journal of Lifelong Learning in Art Education

Art teachers’ need for connection, passion for artmaking, desire for mentoring, and quest for renewal led me to ask, what happens if we reimagine professional development as ritualized artistic practice? What would occur if our ritual was collaborative and intergenerational? How might ritualized professional development aid the quest for renewal? Pulling imagery and quotes from a larger qualitative and arts-based research study (Willcox, 2017), this visual essay shares what happened when an intergenerational group of art teachers met and engaged in artistic inquiry about their teaching practice. Specifically, it weaves together imagery and quotes to illustrate how our ritual, art …

A Growing Ritual Of Animal Rock Painting, Mary L. Stokrocki Professor Emerita

International Journal of Lifelong Learning in Art Education

This visual essay explores a growing art form that blossomed into a community demand for memorial images. Such curiosities draw people’s attention to look closer, spot details, and become closer to nature. To understand the intense attraction, a neighborhood community formulated more demand, interest, and references to spirituality that reflect life’s rituals.

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.

Lola's Story: Love And Resiliency, Susan R. Whiteland

International Journal of Lifelong Learning in Art Education

Lola, a hand puppet, tells her story of being constructed in a university’s special topics class for the purpose of encouraging older adults who may be experiencing loneliness and isolation. Lola is introduced to an elderly woman who bonds with the puppet. Engagement with the puppet encourages positive emotions that contribute toward resilience and subjective well-being. Lola’s story supports the idea that feelings of happiness and positivity attributed to puppetry may be instrumental in memory retention and overall socio-emotional health.

An Exploration Of Restorative Artmaking During Covid-19, Linda J. Helmick

International Journal of Lifelong Learning in Art Education

This research explores a curriculum, delivered on Zoom, that blended art education with art therapy to support educators’ well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic. To understand the restorative aspects of collective artmaking and reflection, I established a series of artmaking workshops for educators via Zoom. As an artist/researcher/teacher, I made collages as an arts-based inquiry method. I found that participants needed a safe place to express, create, and share in a community of others who have similar needs, desires, and experiences, a respite from the early, terrifying days of the pandemic. Meditation, blended artmaking experiences, and reflection encouraged everyone to feel …

Relational Ecologies: Artistic Engagement And Mentorship Of Adults In Community Spaces, Rebecca Bourgault

International Journal of Lifelong Learning in Art Education

In this article, I share insights from research and experience working as a teaching artist and mentor inside and outside traditional institutions. I investigate how relational and contemplative pedagogies promote and sustain authentic relationships of reciprocity. Narrating recent experiments with mentoring practices that emerged from the cultural landscapes of adults engaged in arts learning, the paper highlights new connections discovered through a research model borrowed from intuitive inquiry. Findings are presented as reflective stories, journal entries, or field notes gathered while mentoring graduate art education students and participating in a community of practice in the visual arts. The article demonstrates …

Grandma Layton: A Cinderella Story, Sierra R. Mccloskey, Liz Langdon, Zoe K. Vincent, Katie A. Rice

International Journal of Lifelong Learning in Art Education

Students and their professor created a method of arts-informed research (AIR) in the practice of community-based art education to bring community members together, separated by age and distance. Essential features of this method included analyzing how local artist Elizabeth “Grandma” Layton addressed issues of ageing and mental health in her art and the direct engagement of participants in coloring her line designs. This postcard coloring project was designed during a time where extreme social distancing was in place and adapted for fifth-grade art classes and residents of a retirement community.

In AIR the choice of artist, activity, medium of expression, …

Intergenerational And Intragenerational Connections Within A University Art Museum Program For People With Dementia, Sujal Manohar, Jessica Kay Ruhle

International Journal of Lifelong Learning in Art Education

This visual essay highlights the impacts of the Nasher Museum of Art’s Reflections program, which engages people with dementia (PWD) and their care partners through interactive art museum tours. This program’s conversation-based tours with built-in time to socialize are designed to foster intergenerational and intragenerational connections between PWD and museum gallery guides, PWD and care partners, and between PWD. Discussions about artwork are visitor-driven and encourage lifelong learning among participants. Anecdotal feedback from Reflections participants and gallery guides confirms the value of relationship building, improving quality of life for PWD.

By fostering community and strong connections, Reflections programs help reduce …

Liberation Kitchen: Annotating Intergenerational Conversations Among Black Women In Art And Education, Gloria J. Wilson, Amber C. Coleman, Pamela Harris Lawton, Asia Price

International Journal of Lifelong Learning in Art Education

In this essay, we, four Black women art educators, draw from Black feminisms and Afrofemcentrism. Our practice considers nuanced ways that Black women curate spaces of communal care, which position forms of dialogic encounters with one another. We put forward aspects of Black life, as lived in and through sharing intimacies of the geospatial and as continuation of Black radical traditions. We argue that a kitchenspace indexes a Black praxis, centering intergenerational knowledge-sharing and methodology toward liberation. We think with Black feminist scholar/artists and insist a method of self-annotating, indexing our lives into the otherwise absences of Black women’s narratives …

Pearl Greenberg Award Lecture, Pamela H. Lawton

International Journal of Lifelong Learning in Art Education

No abstract provided.

Pearls Of Wisdom: A Portrait Of Artist-Educator Pearl Greenberg, Pamela Harris Lawton, Angela M. Laporte

International Journal of Lifelong Learning in Art Education

This article examines the life of Dr. Pearl Greenberg, artist-educator-researcher and co-founder of the Committee on Lifelong Learning through narratives of remembrance by the authors, art education colleagues, and students who knew her. Using the qualitative research method of portraiture, an image emerges of Pearl as characterized by three patterns or themes consistently mentioned in the narratives: experiential knowledge, candidness, and supportive/mentorship. In addition, quotes from the “Aging Monologues,” Dr. Greenberg’s own narrative inquiry research, collecting narratives from participants aged 21 through 96 on their perspectives on aging, are incorporated to complete a rich, artful, and multi-layered portrait of Pearl.

Journal Theme: Reflections, Susan R. Whiteland, Angela M. Laporte, Liz Langdon

International Journal of Lifelong Learning 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.