Vol. 20 No. 2 (2024): International Journal of Education Through Art

Editorial

Ever-embodied arts and education

 Hyunji Kwon

Editor, University of South Carolina

As an editor of this journal, I have the pleasure of presenting the editorial for this issue. Introducing the contents, I observe how the concept of embodiment or the connection between the body and the world, is embedded in all the works featured. From authors across the globe, the discourse of an ever-embodied andever-evolving education through art is present, articulated through current practice and future visions of what is yet to come in arts education.

Articles

Supporting kindergarten pupils with developmentally appropriate activities through process art: Ghanaian teachers’ practices

Rita Yeboah University of Ghana

Bernard Sprehe Godomey Technical University

This study focused on how kindergarten teachers engage pupils in developmen­tal art activities in Dodowa in the Greater Accra region of Ghana. A case study design was used to collect data through interviews and observations. A purpo­sive sampling technique was used to select eighteen teachers from the nine basic schools in Dodowa. While some of the kindergarten teachers had an understanding of process and product art, others were unfamiliar with these concepts. Product art is typically utilized by teachers to engage pupils in art activities, although this approach may deprive the pupils of the benefits of other developmentally appropriate art activities. Alternatively, process art helps the learners to construct their own knowledge, fosters self-confidence and creativity, and improves visual communication, problem-solving and decision-making skills.

 

Children’s artistic expressions inspired by nature during early childhood garden pedagogy

 Inkeri Ruokonen University of Turku

 Jaana Lepistö University of Turku

The aim of this case study was to investigate how children learn about gardens and gardening through art; how they express their thoughts through visual expres­sions and stories. The research data include eleven drawings and stories from chil­dren about nature and gardening and were collected during the summer of 2021 in Finland’s only campus garden for teacher education. Additionally, six teachers were interviewed about their experiences with garden pedagogy. The data were analysed using descriptive thematic analysis. The findings include: the natural garden environment supports children’s creative thinking as expressed visually and verbally; children learn a great deal about nature and gardening and outdoor pedagogy in gardens can be integrated with play, excursions, imaginary thinking and knowledge related to natural environments. The positive findings underscore the imperative to implement arts-based garden pedagogy in Finland, which has diminished greatly in recent years.

 

Visual Essay

Photographic practice as a mode of non-representational self-world engagement

Wanfei Huang Chongqing Normal University

This visual essay presents my journey of coming to experience and conceive photography through the lens of non-representational theory. In the light of non-representational notions of landscape and embodiment, photography is more than an aesthetic and representative medium of one’s outer and inner seeing of the world. Rather, photographic practice can be ‘a perceiving-with’, that with which the new camera-I (eye) sees, and the expressive photograph becomes embodiment as body a-where-ness. This journey of photographic artmaking and conceptual speculation has taught me to live photography as a set of creative tensions between self, camera and the world instead of merely using photography to express and represent one’s life. 

 

 Articles

 Art activities for staff in healthcare institutions

 Niina Oinas University of Lapland  

 Maria Huhmarniemi University of Lapland  

Arts and arts-based methods are increasingly used in professional development. This study involved two artists facilitating art activities for 21 staff members from three care institutions in Finland: a nursing home, a day-care centre for individu­als with dementia and an organization that supports individuals facing challeng­ing life situations (e.g. unemployment or the need to relearn everyday skills). The primary objective was to enhance work satisfaction and well-being among staff members. Initially, the staff members displayed scepticism towards art activities, but their attitudes became more positive as they engaged in the artistic process. Interviews revealed that the activities positively impacted group spirit, improved individual well-being and inspired the staff to explore new methods in their profes­sional roles. Many participants suggested that art activities could be structured into regular work supervision sessions in their workplaces. The findings highlight the importance of further investigating the benefits of having artists and artistic activities within care organizations.

 

 Initial teacher education as a dialogic space for agile art curriculum design

 Will Grant University of the West of England

 Amelia Kidwell Green House Education Project

In this article we draw on our positionality as teacher educator and student teacher to reflect on initial art teacher education as a forum for novel disciplinary curricu­lum design. We describe how, without new system thinking, much taught school art curriculum may remain conceptually esoteric, or cumulatively dysfluent, and therefore increasingly vulnerable to new measures of accountability. We review the English context and consider the discrete challenges curriculum designers face in this national policy landscape. In response to our findings, we propose a locus for curricular development that might satisfy expectations of external auditors, but more excitingly, connect school art to authentic artistic practices. Here, student art teachers are promoted to key stakeholder in the development of new materials, rather than positioned as inheritors of habit. We defend this proposition by high­lighting three potentially beneficial characteristics student teachers can contrib­ute to curriculum design: disciplinary relevance, objective criticality and latent agency.

 

Visual Essay

The tyro’s perspective: Art and science as an auto-didactic project

Isabel Crabtree Parker Lancaster University

The voice of the student reflecting on the processes of auto-didactic experimenta­tion is little heard, yet their perspective provides insights into the interdiscipli­nary contexts that inform and constitute diverse art disciplines. The artworks and discussion offered in this visual essay were inspired by the photographic archives of the European Space Agency, focusing on Mars and Lunar imagery. The inten­tion is to offer a feminist critique of neo-colonialist explorations of deep space and to project subtle visual messages in public space regarding the gendering of art. This visual essay conveys the need for closer engagement of formal art education with interdisciplinary knowledge, specifically science. Here, the esoteric and tech­nical language of the earth sciences is enriched by the alternative meaning-making practices of visual art.

 

Article

Hopes, dreams and regrets: Exploring the power of metaphoric imagery
Hsiao-ping Chen Grand Valley State University

 This study outlines a new approach to engaging students in artmaking within an undergraduate classroom by employing metaphors as artmaking strategies. Mark Ryden’s painting, The Apology, was used to teach preservice PK-6 educa­tion students how to derive meaning from art. Strategies of exploring students’ hopes, dreams and regrets indicate the importance of curriculum design focusing on students’ lived experiences and their social world. The study also offers exam­ples of questions, creative inquiry and artmaking strategies that can be effectively integrated into students’ artmaking to foster deeper understanding and enhance conceptual thinking. Stories of students’ metaphoric images demonstrate how metaphor and imagery can be powerful tools for self-reflection and discovery as well as how teachers can develop art activities for and with students while empow­ering them to create a sense of self through art.

 

Visual Essay

Visual essay of the performance El peso del pensamiento

 María Vidagañ Universitat Jaume I

 Amparo Alonso-Sanz Universitat de València 

Since the 1960s, performance has been one of the leading practices of feminist artists. This photo essay introduces our performance entitled El peso del pensam­iento (2020–22). It denounces the cultural and symbolic violence suffered by women in academic environments through the legitimization and dissemination of gender-biased scientific and literary publications. The performance took place in 26 libraries at three public universities in the Autonomous Community of Valencia (Spain), namely ten libraries at the University of Valencia (UV), five at the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV), and eleven libraries at the Miguel Hernández University of Elche (UMH). Within the context analysed, we conclude that the weight of academic thought is decidedly masculine.

Article

The Jarring Affects of Participatory Practice: A more-than-human reappraisal of the Linnentown Mosaic Project (LMP)

Lynn Sanders-Bustle University of Georgia

 Using affect theory as a guiding theoretical frame, in this article a university artist/educator explores how participation in a socially engaged public art project might be rethought through jarring. Jarring refers to the use of jars as an artistic material and metaphor for participation which led to an installation titled, The Jarring Affects of Participatory Practice. Comprising 150 glass jars, the instal­lation served as an iterative reappraisal of participatory art through the creation of a material register of natural, manufactured and handcrafted items, loosely and directly related to the Linnentown Mosaic Project (LMP). The LMP was a community-led effort to create a permanent tile and mirror mosaic honouring Linnentown, a once-thriving Black community erased through urban renewal by the University of Georgia and the city of Athens during the 1960s. Jarring as a form of research-creation reveals moments of resonance that in their precarity suggest new ways for thinking about participating as ever-changing iterations for undoing, waiting and feeling forth

 
Book Reviews

De-/Anti-/Post-Colonial Feminisms in Contemporary Art and Textile Crafts, Katy Deepwell (ed.) (2023)

Reviewed by Shelley Hannigan, Deakin University, Australia

Inside Hong Kong’s Arts and Cultural Scene: Conversations with Hong Kong’s Leading Arts and Cultural Administrators, Educators, Producers, and Presenters, Patrick Lo, Rebekah Okpoti, Wei-En Hsu, Hermina G. B. Anghelescu and Dickson K. W. Chiu (2023)

Reviewed by Yichang Liu, University of Newcastle, Australia

The Cancer Plot: Terminal Mortality in Marvel’s Moral Universe, Reginald Wiebe And Dorothy Woodman (2023)

Reviewed by Hana Tiro, Independent Scholar