Art Educators Research Articles

Analysis of the Impact of the "Rural Teacher Support Program" Policy on Educational Equity in China

In China, educational equity is a significant public concern. To address the urban-rural educational gap, the government launched the "Rural Teacher Support Programme." This paper analyzes the policy's impact on educational equity, detailing its background, objectives, and implementation measures. It assesses the programme's effectiveness in enhancing rural education quality, narrowing the educational divide, and boosting rural students' learning engagement. The research also identifies challenges in implementation, including teacher training, career development, cultural differences, and teacher composition disparities. Recommendations include promoting digitalization, increasing joint funding, and optimizing teacher incentives. Findings reveal notable improvements in the rural teaching workforce, including increased teacher numbers, quality, and living conditions, alongside enhanced stability and professional development opportunities. However, disparities in policy effectiveness persist across provinces, with local governments showing bias in policy tool application, particularly in recruiting and training arts educators. Overall, the programme has successfully diversified policy tools to improve rural teacher retention.

UNESCO AI Competency Framework for Teachers (2024)의 미술교육적 함의

As a result of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, new digital technologies, vastly different from those of the past, have emerged in society, with artificial intelligence (AI) receiving the greatest attention. Consequently, research is actively being conducted in art education to determine appropriate approaches for utilizing AI. This study focuses on the role of teachers as central figures in art education, positing that teachers' AI competencies are essential for the effective integration of AI into art education. The purpose of this study is to identify the AI competencies required for art educators, based on this perspective. To achieve this, we focused on UNESCO's (2024) 'AI Competency Framework for Teachers,' which outlines AI competencies for educators applicable to school education worldwide. This framework was reinterpreted in relation to the competencies outlined in the 2022 revised art curriculum. As a result, we identified five key AI competencies for teachers in art education: aesthetic AI competency, ethical AI competency, creative AI competency, educational AI competency, and developmental AI competency. It is hoped that this study offers insights into implementing AI in art education in ways that preserve the intrinsic value of the arts.

The Scarred Womb

Ruchika Wason Singh is a visual artist, art educator and independent researcher based in Delhi, India. In 2016, Ruchika founded A.M.M.A.A. -The Archive for Mapping Mother Artists in Asia, a project fostering the mapping, visibility and mobility of mothers/artists of Asian origin through documentation, workshops and artist residency programs. The Scarred Womb series, shared here, aims to create a visual resonance with the emotional value of the trauma of loss. Through forms created with pencil, ink and paint, followed by scraping, etching, and digging into the paper's surface, these works explore embodied experiences of the trauma of communal violence.

The language of collaboration: art inquiry among art and early childhood educators

This research explores the potential for collaboration between art and early childhood educators, who both face unique challenges when it comes to incorporating art inquiry approaches for young children. One major challenge is the current policy emphasis on the economic advantages of early childhood education, which makes it more challenging to incorporate art into early childhood settings. This includes using prepackaged curricula that promote language focusing on learning for school readiness and presenting young children’s development in individualistic, linear, and predictable ways (Moss & Urban, 2020; Mueller et al., 2019). Art is seen as a supplement activity. Consequently, researchers in both fields have become concerned about the limited attention given to inquiry-based learning and, more specifically, collaborative art inquiry approaches. The study involved art and early childhood education researchers who aimed to bridge the gap between the two fields through a professional development initiative for educators. They designed and investigated an online workshop series using an art-based education research approach emphasizing collaboration in art inquiry. The researchers drew inspiration from the Reggio Emilia Approach’s pedagogy and included theories and questions collectively explored through structured but open-ended art-making processes. Through reciprocal and generative engagement with art materials and artmaking processes, the participants discovered the transformative language of art. The research calls for collaboration among researchers and practitioners in art and early childhood education to co-create pedagogical approaches that value collaborative art inquiry and reciprocal relationships in meaning-making. Ultimately, this can inform art curriculum frameworks, professional development initiatives, and policies that transcend both fields.

Multidimensional analysis of art education teachers’ attitudes and self-efficacy toward artificial intelligence: exploring relationships and strategies for enhancement

ABSTRACT This study investigates the attitudes and self-efficacy of university art education teachers in Wuxi, China, toward Artificial Intelligence (AI). Using Social Cognitive Theory and Diffusion of Innovations Theory, 384 valid questionnaires were collected. The results show that teachers generally lack confidence in AI, with only the “ease of use” dimension receiving positive feedback among five dimensions: relative advantage, compatibility, ease of use, trialability, and observability. Differences in attitudes and self-efficacy were found, with single teachers, associate professors, and digital art instructors exhibiting more positive attitudes and higher confidence. A significant positive correlation was found between teachers' attitudes toward AI and their self-efficacy in applying it in classrooms. The study proposes strategies to foster more positive perspectives and self-efficacy regarding AI for art educators.

Enriching Educational Landscapes

As an arts educator, I spent a month in Bhutan engaging Bachelor of Education students in project-based learning activities aimed at enhancing creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills. These activities served as a dynamic capstone to their theoretical literacy unit. I documented students' collaborative efforts and creativity through photos and videos, which have been transformed into eBooks. These resources are now integrated into courses at my Australian university, enriching learning experiences for our culturally diverse student body with authentic examples of cross-cultural project-based learning. The eBooks showcase student outcomes and offer reflective analyses to inform future teaching practices, inspiring innovative and collaborative learning strategies globally. Moreover, these resources contribute to the university's commitment to global education and cultural diversity, demonstrating how experiential learning can transcend geographical boundaries and enrich the educational journey of students promoting global citizenship. To address a broader audience within Bhutan, and globally, the lesson plans and resources I developed to deliver the project-based learning activities, are now available on the Artist in Residence Education Program website. This provides an opportunity for any educator to access and adapt these materials to their own contexts. Teaching in Bhutan highlighted how factors like collectivist culture, religious beliefs, and the Gross National Happiness Index support traditional teaching practices and how complex it is to break down traditional teaching practises and encourage valid creative ways learning. The students greatly enjoyed the new activities and even requested additional lessons. It was rewarding to see them realise their potential for creativity and innovation in teaching, enhancing their approach to learning and self-perception as future educators. In conclusion, understanding sociocultural norms in Bhutan offers a wealth of insights that can inspire and inform academic approaches to teaching in countries with traditional forms of education and limited access to resources.

The art of leadership: holistically leading and engaging post-pandemic visual arts education

ABSTRACT Within the post-pandemic landscape of education across the United States, educators have found themselves floundering and rallying to navigate teaching and learning, amidst the personal and collective need to cope and survive. In response, with particular attention to visual arts education, our undergraduate and graduate art education programs are providing transformative professional development for our pre-service and in-service Artist Educator students, through contemplative practices that focus on the heart in order to discover and promote holistic leadership in visual arts education. This conceptual essay examines specific tenets for embracing holistic leadership for Post-Pandemic Visual Arts Education, through the deconstruction of a contemplative model containing three essential components that are integrated practices: (1) Know Thyself: Being Authentic, (2) Hone Emotional Intelligence: Cultivating Empathy and Compassion, and (3) Think and Act Creatively: Engaging Reflectively and Reflexively.

Omissions and Marginalization: Asian American Representation in Art History and Education

Asian Americans have been historically marginalized and underrepresented in U.S. history and education due to stereotypes and the essentialization of diverse ethnicities and cultures. This article explores the exclusion of Asian American arts and artists through the lens of Asian Critical theory. The near invisibility and misunderstanding of Asian American arts have impacted art education, which remains centered on Whiteness and Euro-Western perspectives. To disrupt the status quo, more artists and art educators are striving to enhance the representation of Asian American arts and address the racism against Asian and Asian American communities. The article suggests two pedagogical approaches: (a) designing an inclusive curriculum incorporating diverse representations of Asian American artists; and (b) creating spaces for students to engage in counterstorytelling. It concludes by urging art educators to incorporate Asian American arts and experiences and foster critical discussions on racism against Asian Americans in the U.S. in their teaching and research.

Autoethnographical Research on the Experience of Identity Change as an Artist, Teacher and Teaching Artist

AbstractAn autoethnographic exploration of identity formation raises the question of how individuals inhabit, negotiate, accommodate and resist the social groups to which they belong, continually coming to terms with who and what they are. This paper discusses, through this researcher's autobiographical exploration, the ways in which pedagogical discourse and practice produce identities that are constructed within the broader sociocultural context of arts education. As an art educator who has been learning and teaching in the Korean sociocultural context since the 1970s, I have experienced the struggle between my identity as an artist and my identity as a teacher amidst the changes in educational ideology reflected in the Korean national curriculum, which is a set of pedagogical discourses and practices that are constructed within a particular sociocultural context. It can be said that my autobiographical narration has important implications for the practice of art education in connecting individuals and society in an ambiguous and complex future society by enhancing theoretical understanding of wider social phenomena. In this paper, the narrative interpretation of my changing identity as an artist, an art teacher and a teaching artist provides a timely insight into identity shifts in how the artwork we encounter and our perceptions of art are shaped and transformed by our own cultural experiences and recollections of our own personal experiences within the interconnectedness of art and education across time.

The Tallulah Falls Industrial School and Craft Education: Investigating the Role of Place (and Space) in the Educational Reform Efforts of “Good” White Clubwomen During the Progressive Era in Georgia

This article focuses on the reform-driven efforts of three elite White women from Athens, Georgia, during the progressive era. Laura Blackshear, Mary Ann Rutherford Lipscomb, and Sarah Hunter Moss were pivotal in the creation and development of the Tallulah Falls Industrial School, which aimed to educate children in the North Georgia mountains through industrial training, including craft education. My investigation of the historical and place-based context that formed the basis for rural reform efforts suggests that practices aimed at “good,” such as building model industrial schools in rural Georgia, were intertwined with efforts to maintain systems of White supremacy, patriarchy, and classism. Using Massey’s theorization of spatial politics, I highlight how Blackshear, Lipscomb, and Moss’s efforts were entangled in the complicated spatial relations of the places in which they pursued reform, and I suggest that art educators become attuned to and responsible for the spatial contexts they are navigating.

ReShaping Worlds: Thinking with and through positionality for thriving futures

Art theory as taught in Australian higher education still predominantly focuses on Eurocentric artistic practices, methodologies and histories, with practices by First Nations artists and artists of colour often relegated to tokenistic one-off lectures. This approach to syllabus fails to reflect the depth and breadth of contemporary art and creates an inherently imbalanced perspective disconnected from the diverse experiences of students. Simultaneously, students are expressing their own expectations for an empowered and critically reflexive art education. Using the undergraduate art theory course, ReShaping Worlds, as a case study, this collaborative article discusses the importance of developing curriculum that provides students with an expanded perspective on artistic and curatorial practices by decentring hegemonic Eurocentric art narratives and reflecting on positionality. In doing so, we also highlight our roles as arts educators in facilitating and supporting reflexive and critical practice amid climates of political, social and ecological uncertainty.

Complicating the connections between curriculum, sustainable development and socially engaged design

The relationship between design education and sustainable development has come a long way since the Stockholm Conference in 1972. Today, universities worldwide acknowledge the critical role of education in progressing the United Nations’s (UN) 2030 Agenda for sustainable development launched in 2019. This article argues that art and design educators must refocus on addressing and problematizing the UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs) in post-pandemic curricula. To substantiate this call for action, we provide an overview of key shifts in both Australian design education and design for sustainable development (ESD). We report on the contradictions in our audit of references to SDGs in course descriptions for the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Bachelor of Design (Integrated) and student’s project descriptions in the Design Honours programme. Contextualized within the frameworks of social reconstruction and the pluriverse, we outline plans for further initiatives to turn the rhetoric of SDGs into action and develop design education that contributes to just and equitable societies for all people and the planet.

Кант 300. Размышления о Международном Кантовском конгрессе в Калининграде

From April 22 to April 25, 2024, the Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University (Kaliningrad) hosted the International Kant Congress (hereafter referred to as the Congress), attended by over five hundred philosophers and scholars (art critics, educators, cultural experts, and others) from twenty-three countries. The theme of the congress was encapsulated by Kant’s well-known expression: “The World Concept of Philosophy”, encompassing diverse orientations that formed the basis for the main discussions. This quote primarily urges us to revisit Kant’s inter­pretation of philosophy as a rational means of harmonizing all spheres of human activity, while also highlighting its interdisciplinary, synthesizing nature. Parti­cipants of the congress were united by a characteristic feature aligning with the theme and spirit of the conference: an ideological focus on cooperation, a drive for compromise, and the search for formulas of equal free interaction among modern people. The congress showcased the complex, branched system of contemporary Kant studies and identified the most significant trends in the ac­tualization of Kant’s philosophy. A central theme in the fundamental works was the effort to identify a crucial aspect of Kant’s critical philosophy and substanti­ate it as a systematizing principle, forming the answer to the question “What is man?” The leitmotif of all applied reports was the application of Kant’s philo­sophy as a tool to determine the prospects of humans and humanity in today’s multi-religious, polyethnic, multicultural world. Together, fundamental and ap­plied research not only create an overall picture of contemporary Kant studies but also indicate the directions of development in modern world philosophy

Exploring Bolgatanga Senior High School Students’ Engagement With Contemporary Drawing Techniques: A Phenomenological Study

Drawing instruction in Ghanaian high school art education traditionally emphasizes observational and technical skills grounded in realism. However, contemporary drawing has evolved to prioritize innovative techniques, conceptual thinking, and process-oriented approaches. This phenomenological study aimed to understand Bolgatanga high school students’ experiences learning contemporary drawing practices and their engagement with these methods. Data collected through interviews, reflections, and observations with 12 Bolgatanga high school students completing a contemporary drawing unit revealed initial discomfort yet excitement when departing from realism, pride in mastering unfamiliar techniques, deeper engagement through personal material and subject choices, and appreciation for expression over replication. Findings suggest contemporary drawing instruction enhances student engagement in art by shifting focus to experimentation, conceptual thinking, and meaningful self-expression. The study concludes with recommendations for high school art educators to introduce contemporary approaches effectively that engage students in diverse artistic possibilities of drawing.

Diagrammatic devices in early to mid-twentieth-century American art pedagogy

ABSTRACT Diagrams demonstrating principles of formal arrangement (what is commonly called composition or design) were pervasive in the production and interpretation of pictorial art in the United States throughout the first half of the twentieth century. This essay surveys three of the most influential: a Japan-inspired design manual written by art educator Arthur Dow and first published in 1899; a WWI-era proportional scheme devised by illustrator and amateur classical archeologist Jay Hambidge, and a series of essays from 1926 on the ‘mechanics of form organization’ by painter (and, at the time, Art Students League of New York instructor), Thomas Hart Benton. These and similar devices were an integral part of the relentless standardization and self-conscious modernization of artists’ methods modeled on industrial processes of mass production and pursued between the Civil War and the Great Depression by educators and policy-makers interested in establishing the teaching of art in the United States on a more practical basis than that provided by the European academic tradition. Despite their once near-ubiquity and pivotal role in the development of several generations of American modernists, including Georgia O’Keeffe, George Bellows and Jackson Pollock, as described here, these hugely popular devices are almost entirely forgotten today.

Engaging Queer Joy Through Art With 2SLGBTQIA+ Atlantic Canadians to Challenge Gender-Based Violence

Queer and trans communities face increasing rates of gender-based violence (GBV) in North America, yet efforts to address GBV often fail to be inclusive. This article draws on a study that uses a participatory arts-based methodology to engage in intergenerational dialogue with queer and trans folks ages 14 to 50+ that highlighted queer joy as a method of resisting the oppressive cultural norms and policies that lead to GBV. We ask: What might queer joy offer art educators? We argue that, through the production and exhibition of over 300 images with queer and trans participants, we highlight queer joy and show the limits of cisheteropatriarchy—and systems that support it like settler colonialism and ableism—to offer an expansive vision of queer joy that centers solidarity building and queer temporality.

Integrating Art into STEAM Education: An Interview-Based Study of Interdisciplinary Art Educators

Extensive research has shown that students proficient in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) subjects are more likely to succeed later in life. However, by adding the arts to the STEM curriculum (creating STEAM) and providing educators with a more interdisciplinary framework, students can be better prepared to understand and solve global problems and engage more effectively in social activities. This study employs a narrative approach to collect data and interpret results through interviews with three interdisciplinary art educators. The primary research question is: What is the self-perception of interdisciplinary art educators? By exploring how these educators integrate their specific fields into the arts to develop unique, comprehensive curricula, the study aims to highlight their role. Currently, the arts are viewed as optional rather than essential in education. Therefore, to create a truly effective, comprehensive, and engaging interdisciplinary educational system that benefits students, it is crucial to conduct in-depth interviews and research with interdisciplinary art educators, demonstrating that the arts are a vital component of all core curricula.

The transnational entanglements of James Liberty Tadd’s drawing curriculum: a curious chapter in the history of human potential

ABSTRACT In 1928 the Yugoslav journal Radna Škola put forward the perplexing claim that James Liberty Tadd (1853–1917) was one of the most significant and influential American educators. Why was this otherwise unknown art educator put into transnational circulation as responsible for the perceived success of education in the United States? Following the 1898 publication of his magnum opus, New Methods in Education, Tadd enjoyed a modest international reputation, but he is little known today. Adopting an “entanglement” approach to global histories of education, this article focuses on the messy tangling together of different actors, devices, discourses, and practices involved in this transnational transit. The article argues that the most salient aspect of Tadd’s introduction to a Yugoslav educational public in the late 1920s is an educational approach that purported to be transformational in how it unlocked human potential. This is to view “potential” as an object that circulates in the world and to suggest that histories of education should include study of the ways that the uppermost possibility spaces of human experience have been understood in relation to education in different times and spaces.

Short videos of Great Artists on the Douyin platform: Content Analysis and Value

Modern Chinese artists differ significantly in terms of their dissemination power. Some famous artists' short videos can receive hundreds of millions of likes, while others can only get sporadic likes. Xu Beihong, a Chinese modern painter and art educator, played a pivotal role in the history of contemporary Chinese art. The study aim is to explore the common value characteristics of great artists' short videos and fill the research gap by analysing the content, subject matter, and presentation forms related to the artist. Based on the theory of art economics, the study takes the top 100 liked short videos of Xu Beihong on the Douyin platform as the research object. First, the accounts that posted these short videos were analysed. Second, content analysis is used to categorise the content of these short videos. Finally, the value behind the data was assessed. Research has found that many short video accounts featuring artists include commercial windows, and many of these short video contents involve commercial aspects. Favourable evaluations of artists are often associated with higher commercial value of the artworks. The results indicate that audience participation and interaction with artworks offer considerable value on short video platforms. Artworks presented through these new channels provide aesthetic and experiential value. The commercialisation of these artworks represents the value derived from audience behaviour and engagement.

AI art education - artificial or intelligent? Transformative pedagogic reflections from three art educators in Singapore

ABSTRACT With growing interest in the role and integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and AI pedagogies in transformative art education this paper voices the pedagogic reflections of three art educators in Singapore who have engaged AI in their art provision. It discusses and exemplifies the advantages (intelligent), like interdisciplinary opportunity, enhanced student engagement and increased connectionism, and limitations (artificial), like ethical and moral dilemmas and positioning, of AI integration in three art education settings showcasing how educators and learners engage. Model of pedagogic reflection is used to reveal how the educators provided transformative learning with AI, whilst showing the influence of personal art interests, technique modelling and professional reflections on teaching and making involving AI. Paper contributions include insights into and examples of AI practices and pedagogies (like AI literacy and prompt engineering), that are and could be used in art education, reflections on their successes and limits and commentary on the position of AI integration in the circular economy of art education. The paper is positioned to mobilize educator and student voice as an influential driver in the transformation of art education given ongoing developments in digital education futures.