Inspirations: Preservice teachers

 There aren’t that many open access articles on the Taylor and Francis Online’s Art Education webpage, but access to the journal’s contents is provided by Grand Valley State University. So, while the Instructional Resources of Art Education, published as part of every bi-monthly issue, might not be a good fit for in-service teachers who have left Grand Valley, or their respective institution. But they are worth exploring for a preservice art educator. 

Attending NAEA’s webinar, “Writing for Art Education”, on July 22, I learned a few interesting things about the official journal of the National Art Education Association (NAEA); what they prioritize, the kinds of articles they publish, etcetera. But what stood out among those things was their Instructional Resources. 

Art Education’s Instructional Resources are, explicitly, articles that are meant to inspire art educators by telling stories about personal experiences. There are a couple of interesting components of an Instructional Resource, as described by the hosts of the webinar, Asavari Thatte and Ashley Mask, the co-editors of the Instructional Resources section of the journal. 

Every Instructional Resource has a positionality statement, where the author lets the reader know about relevant facets of their identity and perspective. Instructional Resources are also not meant to be lesson plans or how-to guides; they connect to practices in art education, but the author of an Instructional Resource doesn’t tell the reader how they’re supposed to use what they’ve written. These resources are submitted by art teachers, but also museum educators and community educators, voices that are exciting to hear in an academic context in art education. 

Grand Valley's EBSCO results, after searching "art education."

The Instructional Resources from Art Education are something that I wished I had a chance to use in my curriculum development class; I highly recommend them to other preservice art teachers at Grand Valley or other schools that have also secured access to the journal. (For Grand Valley students, the journal should be the first result when you search “art education” on EBSCO, with the Resource Type “journals” selected. 

Explainers: Visual/material culture

Visual/material culture, or awareness of visual/material culture, is one of the top five highest-ranked focuses of art classes in Melody Milbrandt’s “Visual Art Curricula, Art Teacher Goals, and Instructional Time: Findings from an International Survey” (2015), and was one of the three most emphasized approaches in Joy G. Bertling and Tara C. Moore’s “The U.S. K–12 Art Education Curricular Landscape: A Nationwide Survey” (2021). 

Speaking from personal experience, visual culture, semiotics, and the sublime have been challenging subjects, which is why I wanted to read Nicholas Mirzoeff’s An Introduction to Visual Culture. It has been a good read, with Mirzoeff providing engaging touchpoints for readers to enter into the discussion, amid the dense language and theory of the field. 

I classify An Introduction to Visual Culture as a foundational work, but because it has been a fairly dense reading experience, and because Mirzoeff has offered several interesting frameworks in the first twenty pages of the book, I thought to post about a small section of this book in the explainers tag. 

In his introduction, Mirzoeff discusses Martin J. Powers’ idea of “a fractal network.” Mirzoeff goes on to advocate for people to “[recast] visual culture as fractal, rather than linear” (1999, p. 25). Despite its connection to chaos theory and mathematics, Mirzoeff’s fractal framework has been one of the more accessible ideas so far. Comparing visual culture to the Mandelbrot set, he explains that visualizing visual culture as a fractal, which produces new patterns the closer you look, reflects the fact that visual culture is made of plural realities, not just the white, Western one that has been the only reality that is represented in some academic setting. 

Expect a full post on An Introduction to Visual Culture in the foundational works tag soon, but in the meantime, enjoy this video of someone zooming in on the Mandelbrot set for sixteen minutes. 

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. 

Milbrandt, Melody K., et al. “Visual Art Curricula, Art Teacher Goals, and Instructional Time: Findings from an International Survey.” International Journal of Education through Art, vol. 11, no. 1, Mar. 2015, pp. 137–56. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1386/eta.11.1.137_1.

Mirzoeff, Nicholas. An Introduction to Visual Culture, 1999, pp. 24-25. 

Explainers: Community-based art education

While not one of the most popular, or least popular, approaches in the current art education landscape, community-based art education, or CBAE, is still relatively common (Bertling and Moore, 2021). Because of its unique place among other approaches, a digestible, compelling framework for CBAE might be useful. Also, in conversation with an experienced high school art teacher, student connections with local professional artists were valued as highly important; a statement echoed in the following framework (High school art educator, June 2021).  

Flávia M.C. Bastos’ “Making the Familiar Strange: Teachers' Interpretations of Community Art: A Case Study” is a 15-page explanation of the Making the familiar strange framework. Drawing upon Paulo Freire’s emancipatory ideas, Bastos’ framework illuminates the value of the art-making scenes in communities that are typically left out of the academic or critical conversation. Making the familiar strange encourages teachers and students to critically examine what is not considered art, to see that it is, in fact, art (Bastos, 1999, p. 11). 

What students are examining is local art; in a case study described by Bastos, which aligned with her overarching point, students partnered with a local furniture factory, taking part in a project where they designed and built their own chairs, and even took part in simulated job interviews (1999). 

An unfinished manuscript of “Making the Familiar Strange” is available online, courtesy of Iowa Research Online, at this address. The article is also collected in Contemporary Issues in Art Education, is available at 10 Michigan libraries, including Grand Valley State University, Calvin University, Michigan State, University of Michigan, Northern Michigan, and Wayne State. Used copies are also available for purchase on Amazon.com. 

Bastos, Flavia M.C. (1999). Making the Familiar Strange: Teachers' Interpretations of Community Art: A Case Study. Contemporary Issues in Art Education, 70-83.

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. 

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

Explainers: "Is Your Continuous Improvement COLORBLIND?"

Sarah Fiarman, Kristen Kyles-Smith, and Alison Lee's "Is Your Continuous Improvement COLORBLIND?" is a helpful, relatively quick read that could be helpful for school administrators and researchers in schools; however, it also clearly communicates how racial bias impacts a school's ability to help its students. So if you're working in a school, the topics discussed in the article probably affect you. 

Fiarman, Kyles-Smith, and Lee identify the colorblindness with which many schools approach continuous improvement and problem-solving, and offer a framework to help teachers and administrators work towards equity these tools focus on race, but could be used to address many different kinds of discrimination. 

1. Disaggregate data on race
2. Focus on impact
3. Avoid a deficit mindset
4. Identify root causes & ways to change

Unfortunately, this article is not easily accessible via open access; however, if you are a student or faculty at GVSU, you can read it after copy-pasting the title into the library's main search function. You can also find open access readings on continuous improvement in the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) database. 

Fiarman, S., Kyles-Smith, K., & Lee, A. (2021). Is Your Approach to Continuous Improvement COLORBLIND? Educational Leadership, 78(6), 16–21.