Paradigmatic Assumptions, Paths, and Crises:

Forging Fields of Practice in Art Education

Christina Bain, Ph.D.Jeffrey Broome, Ph.D.D. Jack Davis, Ph.D.Nadine Kalin, Ph.D.Rina Kundu, Ph.D.

Department of Art Education and Art HistoryCollege of Visual Arts & Design

University of North Texas

PresentationTexas Art Education Association

November 13, 2009

Paradigmatic Assumptions, Paths, and Crises: Forging Fields of Practice in Art Education

Faculty at an art education program discuss how they negotiate practices in the field in relationship to their beliefs, changing discourses, and undergraduate and graduate learners preparing for careers.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?

Paradigmatic

Of or relating to a paradigm Paradigm

A pattern or model.

A set of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that constitutes a way of viewing reality for the community that shares them, especially in an intellectual discipline.

Assumption

Something taken for granted or accepted as true without proof; a supposition.

Path

A trodden track or way; the route or course along which something travels or moves; a course of action or conduct.

Crises

A crucial or decisive point or situation; a turning point;

Forging

To give form or shape to, especially by means of careful effort;

Negotiate

To confer with another or others in order to come to terms or reach an agreement.

DECONSTRUCTED TITLE

Concepts, values, and practices taken for granted; courses of action taken; and turning points encountered that give form or shape to art education practice

DESCRIPTION

Faculty at an art education program discuss how they negotiate practices in the field in relationship to their beliefs, changing discourses, and undergraduate and graduate learners preparing for careers.

Research Trends in Art Education

Conflict with the real issues facing art education practitioners.

Conflict in methodologies: Qualitative vs. Quantitative.

No change in the last 50 years.

Do not have the data that we need to guide student learning and influence positive change for the field.

NAEA Higher Education Division Mission

Core Values Envision broad and comprehensive understandings of art, design and

visual/material culture education

Advance viable educational and artistic theories, curricular practices, and programs of study in art, design, and visual/material culture education as inspired by many varied interests, diverse career trajectories, and multiple endpoints

GoalsIn Research and Knowledge:

Continue to refine research methodologies and identify new ways of disseminating our research within the field of art education and to other educational stakeholders

Divergent Definitions Of The Field Ongoing and complex conversation within the spaces between

resistance and acceptance

Negotiated parameters of art education, open to redefinition

Facilitating openings for diverse ways of knowing art education at the graduate level

Seeking mutuality, validation and collegiality across experiences and priorities

How can we nurture interactivity across a range of perspectives What can I learn about my field and myself from your experiences?

Dialectical play among perspectives and values

No one paradigm is entirely or exclusively privileged or powerful

Practice-Based Research

Sustained inquiry into any of our practices including art making and teaching Ex. action research & arts-based inquiry Something educators do informally already Form of professional development

Little narratives and how they can be in conversation with other dialogues within and outside the field Speak back to research, discourses, and abstracted perspectives claiming to speak for

all of us

Inviting us to reconsider our practices, contexts, and identities Try on the role of researcher Art practice as form of research

Generative Versus Prescriptive Curriculum

Paradigmatic Assumptions:

Hierarchical forms of knowledge and power give way to multiple ways of knowing and broad-based collective action

Discoverers vs. Constructivists

Relational Art

Internet

DIY Approach

Service-based Economy

Curriculum

How can universities model teaching and learning in relationship to contemporary cultural practices at large?

How will museums adopt processes that encourage communities to reach into museums to significantly influence agendas?”

QUESTION:

HOW IS AN AIRPLANE FLYING AT 30,000 FEET A METAPHOR FOR THE

NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND ACT?

QUESTION:

IF THE MAJORITY OF K-12 ART STUDENTS WILL NOT GROW UP TO BE PRACTICING ARTISTS, WHY DOES ART CURRICULUM STILL FOCUS SO HEAVILY ON PRINCIPLES/ELEMENTS AND TECHNIQUES? HOW ARE WE NOT MEETING THE NEEDS OF 21ST CENTURY CHILDREN?

So what is my role in this presentation?

“Faculty at an art education program discuss how they negotiate practices in the field in relationship to their beliefs, changing discourses, and undergraduate and graduate learners preparing for careers.”

Paradigmatic Assumptions, Paths, And Crises:Forging Fields of Practice in Art Education

Perhaps the field of art education, while still with room for growth and expansion (and susceptible to outside influence), is in a very healthy “place” at the current time.

Perhaps my role is to play

the Devil’sAdvocate . . .

My Own Instructional Experiences in HigherEd. and the Mission Statement of the Higher Education Division of NAEA

“Develop ways to help teachers, students, and others understand, create, disseminate, and learn about life through the study of art, design, visual/material culture, and new media.”

“Value intellectual, creative, and educational work that attends to vital social, political, economic, and ecological dimensions of life on earth as it relates to artistic endeavors.”

“Enhance and support venues and strategies for discussion, inquiry, and action relating to world affairs, issues, and problems as they relate to art education.”

The focus of student artmaking around Big Ideas makes the process relevant. By using big ideas, students find that artmaking is more than creating an interesting design or learning a particular technique with a specific medium: artmaking also becomes an expression of important ideas related to their own life and the lives of others.

Big ideas are broad, important human issues – characterized by ambiguity, contradiction, and multiplicity (Walker, 2001). Whether stated as single terms, phrases, or complete statements, big ideas do not completely explicate an idea, but represent a number of concepts, such as power, personal and social values, justice and injustice, and winners and losers

The Mission Statement of the Higher Education Division of NAEA

“Study new and evolving forms of cultural production, uses of emerging technologies, and nonschool-based sites for learning (including but not limited to the contemporary art world, cultural institutions, arts agencies, PK-12 schools, museums, online programs, early childhood centers, senior care facilities, detention centers, community art centers, hospitals, and postsecondary educational settings and institutions of higher education).”

“Build collaborations and alliances with other NAEA Divisions and Issues Groups; as well as build mutually beneficial partnerships with art teachers and cultural workers in schools, museums, virtual communities, early childhood centers, senior care facilities, juvenile detention centers, prisons, community art centers, hospitals, and the many others places where art is taught.”

“Conduct research into the kinds of programming in the existence of and enrollments in community arts programs and alternative sites where art education takes place.”

The Mission Statement of the Higher Education Division of NAEA

“Facilitate the work of teachers and future teachers in ways that promote the creation, dissemination, and critique of culturally diverse artistic and scholarly viewpoints including multicultural, intercultural, and environmental education to help connect learning in the arts to the realities of contemporary classrooms.”

“Re-envision curriculum to consider globalization, local conditions, local art, immigrant and minority populations in schools that bring a greater cultural diversity to classrooms.”

“Conduct and disseminate interdisciplinary research that promotes a fundamental commitment to the advancement of knowledge, diversity, social justice, sustainability, civil society, and international issues of human rights as they relate to artistic representations.”

Paradigmatic Assumptions, Paths, And Crises: Forging Fields of Practice in Art

Education

So What Is Your Path?

Questions, Comments, and Concerns