Inspirations: Multicultural art education

Talking with a high school art educator, the topic of multicultural art education came up when I asked, “What scholarly resources would you like to use, but aren’t aware of or don’t have access to?” And she responded: 

“I would like a resource that helps me to learn more about specific guidelines or appropriateness when teaching about art forms from various cultures. For example, when pulling art images from the Smithsonian, to teach about beaded loom work, I want to make sure that I’m showing work that is in an exhibition with the permission of the family or tribe, and not stolen art. So that is hard to know. That’s when I struggle” (High school art educator, June 2021). 

According to Joy G. Bertling and Tara C. Moore’s “The U.S. K–12 Art Education Curricular Landscape: A Nationwide Survey”, multicultural art education is one of the most emphasized approaches in art classrooms today. Last night, I was looking around for scholarly resources that would meet that teacher's particular demand and generalizing from Bertling and Moore’s survey, perhaps the demands of quite a few others. I found a few interesting articles that I may write about later. But this morning, out of the blue, I received an email from NAEA about Artura.org; open access, multicultural online database of art objects, artists, and learning resources. 

Artura.org is a project by the Brandywine Workshop and Archives, and its images are sourced from artists who participated in the BWA’s residency programs. The information in artist profiles is volunteered by the artist, and Artura.org does, when possible, include statements and descriptions directly from the artist on an art object’s page. This database is artist-centered and explicitly works to dismantle oppressive narratives in art-making. 

Registering with Artura.org, which is free and noninvasive, provides access to a PDF of the Artura.org Teacher’s Guide, which makes the case for multicultural education, discusses the purpose of the database, and provides a few examples of artworks in their collection, paired with cross-curricular items, like poetry, and some questions that align with Visual Thinking Strategies principles. 

The PDF also includes links to video tutorials on how to use the site, the first two of which-- “Artura.org Webinar - Welcome” and “Artura.org Webinar Website Demo”-- I highly recommend. Now, they’re a little over a year old, but most of what they demonstrate is still applicable to navigating the database. 

Signing up, exploring the website, and learning how to use it only took about an hour of my time, and I believe it has the potential to inspire complex and respectful multicultural lessons and projects. 

Bertling, Joy G., and Tara C. Moore. “The U.S. K–12 Art Education Curricular Landscape: A Nationwide Survey.” Studies in Art Education, vol. 62, no. 1, Jan. 2021, pp. 23–46. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/00393541.2020.1858007.

 

Inspirations: PBS and Arts integration

Discipline-based art education, or DBAE, is one of the most common approaches taken to curriculum design and lesson planning in art classrooms in the US (Bertling and Moore, 2021). And, in order to avoid assigning projects that have superficial, loose connections to other disciplines, it’s important to consult resources that can inspire meaningful lessons. 

A free, open-access, and student-centered resource is PBS Newshour’s Student Reporting Labs. In this program, students across the nation work together to research, write and produce media about current events and the important issues facing students in the US (About Student Reporting Labs). 

Teachers can use the Student Reporting Labs (SRL) to discover what interdisciplinary topics or themes are relevant to students, or they can incorporate SRL videos into their presentations and lectures, stoking creativity and presenting accessible, responsible information from students to students. 

About Student Reporting Labs. (n.d.). PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Labs. Retrieved July 7, 2021, from https://studentreportinglabs.org/about/

Bertling, J. G., & Moore, T. C. (2021). The U.S. K–12 Art Education Curricular Landscape: A Nationwide Survey. Studies in Art Education, 62(1), 23–46. https://doi.org/10.1080/00393541.2020.1858007

Foundational works: User Experience Design and lesson planning

Sometimes, lesson planning and curriculum design for art education are reactive; a teacher guides students through a method of wedging clay, but most of the students’ clay still has pockets of air, so the teacher has to reassess their demonstration to find what didn’t work. This process is, essentially, iterative design. 

But there are some flaws or problems that can be predicted before the lesson is ever taught, and tools that can be used to predict flaws in lesson design are valuable. Universal Design for Learning (or, UDL) is oriented around making accommodations for students before they are faced with something that’s inaccessible. Another design methodology that is particularly well suited to the art education classroom is User Experience (or, UX) design. 

UX Collective’s  “What does UX in education look like?”, by Alex Britez, guides the reader through possible applications of UX design in the classroom, and a reading that dives deeper into those ideas might help an art educator reflect on their own lesson design practices, teach new tools, and give names to things they already do.  

Image courtesy of UX Collective