Three authors, all art teacher educators, explore the essential qualities of pedagogy that make teaching an art form in its own right. Pedagogy is first looked at from a social perspective, as a special kind of relationship between teacher and learner. Continuing the belief that understanding be embodied in praxis, teaching is then considered as…

Writings around a/r/tography have frequently focused on research, methodology, and artistic purposes. This article foregrounds the pedagogical lens of a/r/tography and outlines six features of a/r/tography as pedagogy in theatre teacher education. The paper reports findings from an investigation into the experiences of a university instructor of a…

Memories of our schooling and teaching experiences shape our curriculum and pedagogical decision-making process in art education when we become teachers and teacher educators. In this paper, using Hannah Arendt's Actor-Spectator Theory, I engage in retrospective critical introspection of my practices as an art teacher and curriculum developer in…

This is a poetic and visual arts-informed inquiry into the male professoriate: Situated in social theory on the body and clothing, artworks, and poetry, visual identity and male scholarship are revealed and presented. Dress is a self-reflexive personal, social and political statement that challenges and/or confirms gendered and social roles.…

Currently, many museums and galleries are attempting to create more welcoming and meaningful experiences for individuals who tend to be reluctant to enter and participate in these institutions. Art galleries and museums are examining and experimenting with ways to connect diverse publics through socially inclusive community outreach programs. This…

At the tertiary level today, courses on design thinking can be found in diverse programs in and beyond the realm of traditional design disciplines. Across Canada, design thinking courses feature in communication, culture and information technology, and business and engineering. This paper reports findings from a study that investigated the…

The title of this article has been taken directly from Florence M. Hart's 1957 book "What Shall We Do in Art?" It echoes a question that has been faced by legions of Ontario teachers since the creation of grammar schools in the mid-nineteenth century. While it is true that, by their very definition, provincial subject guidelines have always been…

Artists are constantly in a state of selecting. Selecting--to shape, to clarify, to discover, to make visible. A continuous flow of decisions must be made about inclusion and exclusion rendered simply as what to introduce, what to keep, and what to omit. Descriptively capturing what one wants to say requires an attentive and refined focus. The…

This article begins with a synopsis of the film "Edward Burtynsky: Manufactured Landscapes", directed by Jennifer Baichwal. While the author can relate to the statements made in this synopsis, her experience and understanding of this 90-minute journey is much more intense and complex. In this essay, she attempts to dissect and examine her…

The debate over copying in the art classroom is a longstanding and contentious one. In the past, the discussion has been erroneously characterized as a two-sided argument between those who view copying as the vilest of crimes to be perpetrated in an art classroom and those who see in it a useful and even essential tool for learning. In the last…

The term "arts-based research" has been debated for some time now. In an article strongly in favor of this approach Bean (2007) identifies three species: "Research on the arts (italics in the original) (art history, visual and cultural studies, media studies etc.)...Research for the arts, refers to research into applied techniques, materials and…

Education is never a passive, autonomous, or static activity. It manipulates, as much as it is manipulated, and reflects specific contexts. Education histories document continuities and changes over time, and are able to throw light on and inform contemporary practice. Prompted by perspectives on curriculum as a social and cultural construction,…

An art and design university is a particular kind of "semiotic landscape," comprised of teachers and students heavily invested in the difference that non-linguistic modes of expression make to meaning and human experience. Here both experienced and emerging creative practitioners experiment with the signifying possibilities of, for example, wood,…

This paper explores how Canadian identity remains a white identity through an examination of the ways in which cultural diversity in Canada has been promoted and controlled in law and in practice through Jakeet Singh's (2004) notion of "culture-blind multiculturalism." It then turns to one instance of this kind of myopic cultural reproduction…

Student-organized exhibitions hold the potential to greatly enhance the visual arts school curriculum. Student art exhibition events can address socio-economic issues, function as part of integrated or interdisciplinary projects, and even unite students from different continents using today's high-speed Internet connectivity. Although there is…