Vol. 20 No. 3 (2024): International Journal of Education Through Art

Editorial

Educational Futures

Tara Winters
Principal Editor, University of Auckland Waipapa Taumata Rau

Education is undergoing much change post a global pandemic in response to inequitable access, the pervasiveness of technology and in preparation for future challenges. Principal Editor Tara Winters observes how many of the pedagogies and practices present in art education and research align with future-oriented transformations of education. Articles in this issue reveal and envision peda­gogical design and action that parallel many themes occurring in contemporary discourses on thinking differently about learning, teaching, knowing and being in the world.

 

Article

Exploring the challenges faced by elementary school students while learning socioscientific issues through comics

Fadhlan Muchlas Abrori
Johannes Kepler University

Zsolt Lavicza
Johannes Kepler University

 Branko Anđić
University of Vienna

The use of comics in education presents significant promise as a tool for enhanc­ing comprehension of educational concepts and advancing scientific literacy. Our research is centred on the development of comics to introduce socioscientific issues (SSI) content to elementary school students, recognizing SSI as a complex soci­etal concern intertwined with science, encompassing diverse scientific and social perspectives. This study adopts a case study approach and places a substan­tial focus on assessing the challenges faced by students in their utilization. We probed the obstacles experienced by elementary school students when engaging with SSI-laden comics through semi-structured interviews with ten participants. Thematic analysis was applied to scrutinize the collected data, leading to the iden­tification of three primary challenge-related themes: technical complexities of read­ing comics, unfamiliarity with genre conventions and difficulties in grasping SSIs. Most of our findings were rooted in both the structural aspects of comics (includ­ing technical reading and genre) and the complexity of SSI content. These insights offer valuable guidance for our future endeavours and for researchers venturing into the creation of comics for similar educational content.

 

Visual Essay

Mapping collaborative art practices with youth collectives

Carolina Silva
Institute of Social Sciences – University of Lisbon

Duchamp & Sons are the Whitechapel Gallery youth collective, a group of young people aged 15–24 that meet regularly to develop collaborative art projects. I worked with them as a participant researcher in the six-month project De/construct (2013–14), co-developed with architect Nick Wood (United Kingdom) and artist Steven Morgana (United Kingdom). In this visual essay, I present my diagram­matic drawings of their encounters, including research, discussion, experimenta­tion and decision-making moments. The latter create visual cartographies of the youth collective’s encounters and speak to their performativity. I use a selection of Duchamp & Sons tweets, which are posted by a different member of the group in each session, to create a timeline of the project. My reflections on collaborative art projects and the pedagogies that come together in these practices draw on notions of experimentation and proto-performance, emphasizing the processes rather than the outcome, in this case, an exhibition presented at the Gallery.

 

Articles

The creative act in the studio: A plea for rethinking potentiality in art education

 Tyson E. Lewis
University of North Texas

This article outlines three dominant ways in which the concept of potentiality is discussed in art educational literature, and in particular the connections between actualizing potentialities and creation. It then pivots to the works of Giorgio Agamben in order to problematize some of the basic ontological assumptions embedded within the three dominant views of the potentiality–actuality–creativity relationship. Agamben focuses his analysis on the (im)potential remnant of potentiality that remains within any given actualization and highlights the role of such (im)potentiality in creative acts. To illustrate this role, the article offers four ways that (im) potentiality exhibits itself in various art forms before concluding with implications for imagining the artist’s studio as a space and time for (im)potential acts of creation. 

 

Harnessing the power of performing arts: Fostering pedagogical change in the education of special cultural groups

Angelica Edna Calo Livne
Tel-Hai College

Noam Malkinson
University of Haifa

 Irit Sasson
Tel-Hai College and Shamir Research Institute, University of Haifa

In education, performing arts offer crucial pedagogical tools, fostering verbal and non-verbal communication skills and essential ‘soft’ workplace skills. Particularly vital for minority communities due to cultural traditions, this qualitative action research centres on a Druze village elementary school in northern Israel. The study investigated a performing arts programme, designed to catalyse systemic pedagogical change, and prepare students for seamless integration into Israeli society. Data were collected through eleven interviews with the educational team. The study analyses the change process from initiation through implementation to institutionalization. Findings highlight how the successful integration of the performing arts programme enhanced pedagogical efficacy. This research empha­sizes the performing arts’ pivotal role in education, showcasing its potential to drive transformative changes in minority settings.

 

Visual Essay

Teachers’ data-based storytelling in a STEAM professional development programme

Joy G. Bertling
University of Tennessee

 Amanda Galbraith
University of Tennessee

Increasingly, contemporary artists have turned to data as a source of inspiration, artistic medium and site for enquiry, experimentation and discourse in ways that have blurred, complicated and transcended disciplinary boundaries. Research suggests that when arts-based data visualization is integrated into K-12 curric­ula, these approaches can support students’ art learning and creative data litera­cies. Despite the burgeoning interest in literature surrounding the benefits of data visualization for K-12 students, less attention has been directed towards the ways in which teachers can be supported in designing and implementing data-visualization integrated curricula. This visual essay explores a science, technol­ogy, engineering, art and mathematics (STEAM), arts-based data visualization professional development programme that was centred on socially and ecologically

engaged storytelling in the Appalachian region of the United States. Throughout this programme, teachers told stories of relevance to themselves and their commu­nities – a fundamental undertaking for teachers interested in empowering their students as data storytellers.

 

Articles

Creative Place-Based Education: Thinking, creating and inhabiting a commonplace with children

Estella Freire Pérez
Santiago de Compostela University

Vicente Blanco
Santiago de Compostela University

 Salvador Cidrás
Santiago de Compostela University

In this article, we advocate for the incorporation of a novel pedagogical approach in educational practice to mitigate the effects of standardized and decontextualized neo-liberal curricula. Conscious knowledge of our physical surroundings ensures a collective sense of belonging, transfers learning through so-called imaginaries of proximity and promotes an arts education sensitive to daily life. This Creative Place-Based Education research incorporates place-based education studies with a creative approach inspired by the design of workshops for children. As artists and teachers in a teacher training faculty, our research primarily focuses on designing workshops and pedagogical materials, which emphasize the importance of incorpo­rating ideas, methods, techniques and processes from the arts as fundamental tools for exploring, analysing and questioning our immediate reality. We exemplify this approach by analysing the proposal Inhabiting a Common Place, which was designed and carried out with different groups in primary and preschool education in L’Alcora, Valencian Community, Spain. 

 

Self-care for preservice and in-service art educators: A matter of survival in the profession

Audrey M. Hilligoss
Bowling Green State University

This article presents an overview of a case study that uses an arts-based research intervention to support the development of self-care strategies for preservice and in-service art teachers towards improved work-life balance. Three recommenda­tions are provided: (1) the necessity for teachers to individualize practices of self-care; (2) creating communities of care to support the collective design and use of self-care practices and (3) defining boundaries that promote a healthier work-life balance. The author shares reflections on how these recommendations influenced her own pedagogy at the university level, preparing preservice art educators and sustaining the practices of in-service art educators. Assignment prompts, exem­plars of self-care artist trading cards and juggling act visualization artmaking activities are presented as well as a discussion on how to model self-care practices for art educators.

  

Visual Essay

Archives, youth and firing up imaginations

Natasha Doyon
Concordia University

This essay offers educator insights from a video project entitled ‘Performing the Jewish Archive’. I use videos, still images and text to suggest pedagogi­cal methods for developing historical empathy among 12–17-year-olds through cross-curricular trans mediation. In what ways can instructors engage students’ imaginations to consider historical artists, art educators and community figures who have impacted our cultural landscape? I suggest a morphing with the archive in artmaking, treating artefacts as living objects with stories to share.

 

Article

Using visual journaling in preservice teacher education and arts-based research: Discovering connections and building practice

 Alexa R. Kulinski
Indiana University Indianapolis

In this article, I revisit and re-analyse the visual journals that two graduate preser­vice art teachers and I created during my arts-based dissertation study. Through this re-search study, I sought to better understand the connections between how I used my visual journal to enhance my arts-based research process and how my preservice art teachers used their visual journals to enhance their development as future art teachers. Re-analysis of these visual journals revealed a set of three common, productive visual journaling strategies: (1) noticing and document­ing, (2) mapping and (3) discovering a personally relevant practice. Collectively, these strategies demonstrate how visual journaling can support dialogue, creative inquiry and knowledge generation in art education research and art teacher prepa­ration courses.

 

Book Reviews

Slow Wonder: Letters on Imagination and Education, Peter O’Connor and Claudia Rozas Gomez (2022), Series: Cambridge Elements in Creativity and Imagination (ed. A. Abraham)
Reviewed by Kathryn Grushka, Independent Researcher

A/r/tography: Essential Readings and Conversations, Rita L. Irwin, Alexandra Lasczik, Anita Sinner and Valerie Triggs (eds) (2024)
Reviewed by Michael Whittington, University of Newcastle, Australia