Category: Art Inquiry

Objects are being knocked down.
My elementary school for a glass and concrete institution,
The local restaurants in my neighborhood for big condos,
A standard work week,
My silence and compliance.

The world is always testing us. This year, it took a world-wide pandemic for people to break their nine-to-five work cycle, fast forward the future of education to a hybrid learning model and shake the city up to the point where they actually needed to care for the homeless. Black lives were and are at the disposal of systematic racism, brought to light by major protests across the world. Education has an increasingly important role to play amidst chaotic realities that lie just a few feet from the playground. As an art educator, I know that the arts are vital in guiding students through moments of fear, anger and doubt, as well as a force for change and growth.

Art education is a critical practice of how society communicates, produces and revisits media. I will help students read the visual signs and develop their own. Drawing from contemporary art practices, I’ve come to see that art is political and created from experience. And thus, the final product of an art project can represent some form of activism. Ultimately, it is the internal change that occurs within my students that signifies learning (Biesta, 2012).

I am excited and scared to be an art educator during this time, but most of all, I feel hope. Art can teach students how to actively reflect on historical and current issues. Now is also the time for me to not exercise my authority as the expert (Britzman, 2003). I ask myself; What can I bring to arts education that technology can’t? Britzman says that education is a dialogical process involving an exchange between locations and people. As an artist and art educator I take on the role of the listener. As Desai & Chalmers (2007) suggest, I will open myself up to being honest and open to learning along with students, because these complex times necessitate collaboration and community more than ever.

References

Biesta, G. (2012). Giving Teaching Back to Education: Responding to the Disappearance of the Teacher. Phenomenology & Practice, 6(2), 35-49. [Online public access]

Britzman, D. (2003). Practice makes practice. A critical study of learning to teach. Revised edition. State University of New York Press.

Desai, D., & Chalmers, G. (2007). Notes for a dialogue in art education in critical times.
Art Education, 60(5), 6-11.

I wrote this reflection during my practicum after my first lesson on Redacted Poetry with my senior art class:

Talk back
I don’t know what to saypauseIamnotquickenoughtorespond
A shakey/ing finger (don’t – don’t
Do that)
I avoid conflict yet I bring up topics of conflict in my classroom every day?
Do I even know enough?
This belongs in the classroom
This belongs in the art classroom
Why this matters/Why I am doing
Mold space in such a little amount of time
Of opposition and brace.

I intertwined English and Social Justice into an art unit to encourage a critical art practice amongst a younger demographic. I found that art continued to be a subject of personal expression and individuality. In high schools, there is often is a lack of recognition as to how critical visual imagery can be in shaping political and societal structures. In order to address discomforting situations through the arts, I needed to be empathetic and communicative with my students.

Poetry is a blend between art and text, a bridge that invites others to collaborate and engage verbally and visually.  It exists and is realized in an in-between space where the text starts with one author and ends with two (Irwin, 2003). Redacted poetry, also known as erasure poems, allow students to create new works from existing material. The poem originates from an existing body of text. Redacting originally means to “bring together” or “unite,” but it acquired a negative connotation later in English history to mean “take away”, “reduce” and “edit.” However, this very deletion and unwriting is a process that can help students grapple with difficult subjects of violence, poverty, and racism.

I provided newspapers from decades ago to the present. Newspapers are meant to alert and inform the public. As I was deciding what current events to discuss into the classroom, I found myself researching and learning along with the students to gain understanding of the Wet’suwet’en protests.

We tried to explore all perspectives, and I found it especially difficult as the adult in the classroom in providing the most accurate answers. Through my redacted poetry unit, both students and myself “surrendered” ourselves to exploration, artistic responsiveness to social injustice, rather than defending a singular aesthetic or answer.

References

Irwin, R.L. (2003). Toward an Aesthetic of Unfolding In/Sights through Curriculum.

 

Connelly, L., & Joseph-Salisbury, R. (2019). Teaching Grenfell: The Role of Emotions in Teaching and Learning for Social Change. Sociology, 53(6), 1026–1042. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038519841826 

The article describes the experience of 24 students of Sociology classes on the Grenfell Tower fire. Contrary to the Western education system that popularizes rationality and managing ‘appropriate’ emotions, Connelly and Joseph-Salisbury describe how exploring discomforting emotions can instigate action.

Bruce, K. (n.d.). Playing with Discomfort: How GoMA promotes its human rights responsibility.

The Gallery of Moden Art (GoMA) in Glasgow, Scotland is actively enacting a policy for ‘Art and Social Inclusion Exhibitions.’ Through a diverse range of exhibitions and projects, GoMA exemplifies how they work with communities, challenge power structures and kickstart art interventions to create a more inclusive public program.

Hochtritt, L., Ahlschwede, W., Halsey‐Dutton, B., Fiesel, L., Chevalier, L., Miller, T., & Farrar, C. (2018). Public pedagogy and social justice in arts education. International Journal of Art & Design Education, 37(2), 287-299.

Public pedagogy is defined as being a space of learning outside of school. The article connects public pedagogy to social justice education, in that both depend on lived experience, necessitate a process of reflection and action, and critique power structures.

Feuvre, L. L. (2010). Failure. London: Whitechapel Gallery.

This is a fantastic compilation of articles, poems, and writings about failure in the arts. What particularly stood out for me is:
“The most extreme form of failure occurs when standards are so high, and their satisfaction so unlikely, that the likelihood of success becomes almost fictional.” -Joel Fisher, p. 118, 1987

“Failure when recognized is never so serious as when it isn’t recognized. A balance is restored. We could even say that an acknowledged failure does not exist.” -Joel Fisher, p. 121, 1987

Failure also details the work of Annika Ström, who represents failure through shaky videos and sad song lyrics. She plays with the aesthetics of failure and imperfection as being individual and shared experience.

As a teacher candidate, I encountered discomfort many times. Discomfort left me questioning my identity, my teaching expertise and the education system. As Deborah Britzman states, experience does not promise clarity or confidence (year). I wrote weekly reflections during my practicum and noticed a thread of negativity. Presently, I ask myself “How can I embrace discomfort as a part of my pedagogy?” Revisiting the topics that cause me discomfort are opportunities to recognize my growth and increase my awareness of the classroom community.

I am exploring two parts to my inquiry:

1. What causes personal discomfort for educators?
2. How do I incorporate a social justice framework to navigate discomforting topics within the arts?

Teachers face the pressures of needing to know all the answers yet not knowing what to anticipate (Tanaka et. al., 2007). As an educator, this discomfort lies within not having full control of the situation. We owe it to ourselves that we, too, are going through a process of “becoming” and deepen our understanding of how to learn, instead of how to teach (Tanaka et. al., 2007).

I have always had a will to change the world and believing that art can do exactly that. Socially-responsive contemporary art has the ability to open-up the minds of the students and extend art beyond the classroom (Garber, 2004). Students need to look for “what is absent” as well as “what is present (Garber, p. 6, 2004)

References:

Britzman, D. (2003). Practice makes practice. A critical study of learning to teach. Revised edition. State University of New York Press.

Garber, E. (2004) Social Justice and Art Education. Visual Arts Research. Vol. 30, No. 2, pp 4-22.

Tanaka, M., Williams, L., Benoit, Y.J., Duggan, R.K., Moir, L., & Scarrow, J. (2007). Transforming pedagogies: pre‐service reflections on learning and teaching in an Indigenous world. Teacher Development, 11, 109 – 99.

You are not separate from Art

Reposition and see yourself from a Google-Maps view

“Existential Orientation”

You have to be at home

Feel within the world

Art is not an instrument to increase performance

Or produce objects and evidence of self-expression

“A person who has received education is…a human being with an altered outlook, a human being who exists differently in the world”

What if… We were teaching our students to be ego-centric and racist

If we let them simply “self-express”

The middle ground is between the world destructing and self destruction

A place of dialogue: to exist in the world is how we subject ourselves to the space, and what we encounter

Grown-ups learn how to work through, meet, select and reject desires

And Art can help interrupt, suspend and sustain the dialogue

(Free Verse written in response to: Gert Biesta’s Trying to be at home in the world: New parameters for art education)

 

Why is it necessary that Art Education be a discomforting pedagogical practice?

As Desai and Chalmers quite simply state, art is a political activity (2007). Since the arts has been pushed into the corner as a decorative and self-expressive activity, Desai and Chalmers still argue that this systemic upholding of traditional belief is reflecting a social and political position (2007).

As art educators, we have to mobilize our students to be active and literate visual learners. The article cites performance artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña, who also asks students “Why do artists do what they do?” Art occurs admits war, censorship, “cultural paranoia” and despair (Desai and Chalmers, p. 7, 2007.) The artist is not just the reproducer, in fact artists are producing “new ways of knowing” (Desai and Chalmers, p. 8, 2007). Artists and our students have a huge responsibility in considering what they choose to produce and bring into the world. Teachers are not the sole influencers or facilitators of their artistic productions; society is outwardly educated at what Henry Giroux states as sites of “public pedagogy” in the form of TV, print media, photography and films (2006.)

For this reason, Art Educators have an important role to encourage a social justice art education to promote empathy and criticality to the types of media society routinely engages with. Desai and Chalmers (2007) recommend that the inclusion of contemporary art practices and social justice pedagogy can offer…

1. An understanding of political images and how they circulate and construct meanings.
2. Aesthetics need to be examined as relational/dialogic.

Grant Kester (2005) describes “dialogical aesthetics” to be the artist as open to intervention, listening to how the artwork is received, and willing to be vulnerable and dependent. This offers an opportunity for artists and artwork to be seen by the public from a different perspective. Art is a collaborative exchange and not an independent crusade to inject oneself being into the world. Artists can ask for help! Artists can make mistakes and acknowledge them (they MUST acknowledge them!)

Another helpful resource that Desai and Chalmers include is a Table of Possible Resources. The authors don’t simply categorize typically discomforting topics into simplified versions. They are expanded upon and offer artists that make work on these topics as well.

Dipti D., & Chalmers G. (2007). Notes for a Dialogue on Art Education in Critical Times, Art Education, 60:5, 6-12, DOI: 10.1080/00043125.2007.11651118.

Giroux, H. (2006). America on the edge. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Kester, G. H. (2005). Conversation pieces: The role of dialogue in socially engaged art. In Z. Kocur & S. Leung (Eds.), Theory in contemporary art since 1985 (pp. 76–88). Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing.

I seek to open up a third space in my classroom, a dimension that emerges in a place of uncertainty and perhaps resistance (Sanford et. al. 24). Uncertainty occurs in many areas of my teaching experience, especially in trying new approaches in the classroom.

In my senior studio art class, I introduced a project on redacted poetry. Students were instructed to choose texts of “difficult knowledge,” information that people often resist because they encounter “some moral conflict in their own reality” (Cohen-Evron 2005). News articles are an example of difficult knowledge, often telling stories of violence, money, race, class, and gender. I was uncertain as to how the students would engage with the texts and my confidence in the emotional endeavour of unpacking them. However, I trusted and had established a community with the class. To delve into discomforting topics, I had to prove myself as an empathetic and communicative instructor. I got to know the students previously through an identity-based project, and scaffolded the redacted poetry lesson that they understood that everyone was supported and encouraged to share their ideas.

The Lil’wat Principle, Cwélelep, describes this space of uncertainty like being caught in a dust storm. You can’t quite see anything clearly or anticipate what might be ahead. Just like art, you might go into a project with a vision or particular approach, and come out of this ‘storm’/artistic process with a different result. Or, much like the current pandemic and Black Lives Matter Movement, there is a ton of uncertainty around the reformation of social, economic and political systems. How might the future look?

I am not a teacher to tell students how to think, but to question and inquire further into predisposed facts and truths. Visual culture is art, and we are all being bombarded with messages. I intend on providing them with the tools of shared respect and bravery to remain in the third space, the location of imbalance. It is in this very space that growth happens, when students and teachers constantly challenge comfortable ways of knowing (Sanford et. al 25).

Sources:

Nurit Cohen-Evron (2005) Students Living within Violent Conflict: Should Art Educators “Play it Safe” or Face “Difficult Knowledge”?, Studies in Art Education, 46:4, 309-322, DOI: 10.1080/00393541.2005.11651793

Sanford, K., Williams, L., Hopper, T., & McGregor, C. (2012). Indigenous principles informing teacher education: What we have learned. In Education, 18(2). Retrieved from: http://ineducation.ca/article/indigenous-principles-informingteacher-education-what-we-have-learned

 

Susan Walsh participated in a collaborative project with 9 teachers in an Artography-like inquiry into the teaching experience. Walsh categorized the collected pieces of poetry, imagery, and text into:

Eyes / Blood / Ears

Eyes: Performance, expectation, stakeholders, panopticon, gaze, surveillance

Blood: Intensity of the experience

Ears: Listening, being present, discomfort with messiness and not knowing

In what ways will I represent and reflect on my teaching experience? It is embodied and expressed through the body, but after I leave the space of the classroom, I always provide an opportunity to revisit my senses. I keep a journal where I draw and write about the events of the day.

My Eyes: Gaze not with authority. Look  with wonder and curiosity, softness and sincerity.

My Blood: I am a body and living, attune and alive.

Ears: I don’t expect to be heard, I want to be listened to. Students need to be listened too. I will listen to the silence or sound.

Reflecting upon an excerpt from Deborah Britzman’s Practice Makes Practice 

Roland Barthes describes myths as being a “magically” unified commonality, a series of autonomous signs that dismiss the history that gives signs their value. In the excerpt from Britzman’s book, she describes myths surrounding the role of the teacher and knowledge. As a teacher candidate, there exists the constant tension between what is expected of me as an educator. Britzman describes the struggles as “a conflict in and with authority, imagination and flurries of autobiography.” Recently I had a friend ask me about the struggle of maintaining an artist and teacher identity, especially online. What I choose to repress, or in less dramatic terms, not reveal as an artist and aspiring professional educator is a small sacrifice for the future ahead.

Britzman tells the story of balance. How it is a mastery of playing mutliple roles as a teacher and choosing when and when not to show vulnerabilty even in the most difficult of times. Losing control of class, or of emotions, is a loss of power, and a loss of power is not the characteristics of the “expert teacher.”

An interviewer may ask, Why do you want to be a teacher? I feel that many teacher candidates believe exactly what Britzman says: they were somehow called into being or “summoned” into the position. I think that it’s important to retrace the journey of my personal experience to recall the reason that I chose a constantly transformative role.

I’ve always loved learning and being a student. I was alert to feedback on the track when the coach told me to raise my knees higher, I am attentive to my English teacher when he said I needed to write with more clarity (I still write in flowery language, continuing to learn how to get straight to the point.) I also love people. People are walking stories. My favourite work experiences were at restaurants or being a youth program leader, both involving people. I enjoy learning, and I enjoy teaching as another way of doing, thinking or being that I thought was not possible before. I can only hope that there is an exchange of knowledge where the student also shares something to me and whether I have supposedly known the fact before is irrelevant. The person is the walking story, and once they’ve told the story the knowledge is already different.

Which brings me to the last point of knowledge itself, and what it really is. Britzman says “Experience becomes meaningful only after it is thought about.” My experiences are biased and only exist when I remember. What happens to the knowledge I forget, and why do I eliminate certain experiences from my memory? Moments of discomfort and doubt enter the realm of “unmediated knowledge” and probably the most important kind. The long practicum bursted past me. I keep journals and drawings as a way to retrace my steps during one of the most challenging points in my life. Putting theory into practice doesn’t mean that I will get used to the spontaneity of the teaching profession. The practicum allowed me to embrace it, to provide the push and pull the students need to get started and continue, and to step back when they start teaching each other and teaching themselves.