High Ecological Integration Within U.S. Art Teacher Education: A Collective Case Study

Abstract

We live in a world of accelerating ecological devastation, where environmental violence is culturally and economically ingrained in dominant human societies. The term “Anthropocene” implies a threshold has been breached, and suggests radical reassessments of prevailing social, economic, political, and educational systems are needed. Some art teacher education programs in the United States deviate from predominant trends by embracing ecological integration and preparing art preservice teachers to implement ecological and environmental art pedagogies. Such “aberrant” programs offer rich sites to explore for methods that might be emulated beyond these singular cases. In this study, we examined how three U.S. art teacher education programs, identified as having high levels of ecological integration, infused ecological and environmental approaches into their course content and teaching methods. Themes included exposure to relational ways of being, entanglements with the land and community, collective productions of ecological integration, and infusion of art teacher educators’ multiple identities.