… A Journal of Issues and Research

In the summer of 2022, I (RWS) was invited by National Art Education Association (NAEA) Executive Director Mario Rossero to present a summary of recent accomplishments and goals to the NAEA Board of Directors; the NAEA Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (ED&I) Commission; and the NAEA Research Commission. The meeting was held in Park City, Utah, July 17–20. These meetings were an excellent opportunity to share recently published themes and topics, publication statistics, and future editorial goals. It was also a valuable chance to hear from these leadership forums, as well as to determine how Studies in Art Education might better meet community needs.

In formal and informal conversations, I was able to connect with many members of these groups, and I found the experiences to be both humbling and inspiring. The leaders of these groups were direct about their needs and how Studies in Art Education might help to meet those needs. NAEA President-Elect Wanda B. Knight spoke to the necessity of criticality when considering the language used in research published in Studies. NAEA ED&I Commission Chair Browning Neddeau asked probing questions about storytelling as research, and how Studies might better support decolonized and disparate forms of research. And NAEA Research Commission Chair Amy Pfeiler-Wunder discussed the ways that research is conducted and communicated in the field, using the model of the network to describe the interconnected potential of such research collaborations and publications.

To explore and expand on these conversations, I have asked the leaders of these three groups to coauthor this editorial. We decided that the best way to accomplish the goal of speaking to the ways that Studies might meet these individual needs would be to look at the language that is used to describe the work done in Studies, an approach that is based on the comments made in meetings by Wanda B. Knight. As such, each leader responded to the following prompt:

As stated in its title, Studies in Art Education is a Journal of Issues and Research in Art Education. What are the issues that are most relevant to your work within your commission or board? How might research in Studies best reflect a sensitivity to these issues?

The response of each leader follows, in alphabetical order.

Wanda B. Knight

An issue relevant in my role as NAEA President-Elect concerns examining norms and moving beyond the normative culture (i.e., White, middle class) to best honor and value the life experiences, social identities, and cultural perspectives of all. As the first woman of color to serve as President-Elect of NAEA, an issue that is also relevant when aspiring to be an association free of racism, prejudice, and discrimination is advocacy toward antiracism, racial equity, and racial justice. Another relevant issue concerns closing equity gaps for historically marginalized, underrepresented, and underserved populations by breaking barriers and creating pathways for access and success, so that all can have a sense of belonging and a genuine opportunity to thrive. Eurocentric paradigms pervade research in art education. To challenge epistemological bias in research, we need to interrogate our research design, data collection, analyses, and interpretation of research results based on our positionality.

My advocacy for us to delineate our positions moves beyond identity politics, self-awareness, and wokeness. Arguably, positionality is only valuable if we articulate and reflect on our position concerning its impact on our research and teaching praxis. I agree with educational scholar David Takacs (2003), who noted,

Few things are more difficult than to see outside the bounds of your own perspective—to be able to identify assumptions that you take as universal truths but which, instead, have been crafted by your own unique identity and experiences in the world. (p. 27)

If we critically reflect on how we know what we know, we are in a better place to question “the ‘correctness’ of our own position,… [learning] that our views may be constrained by the limitations of our own experiences” (Takacs, 2003, p. 29).

Studies could encourage more researchers to explicitly situate, locate, and position us within our research (i.e., marginal/center, dominant/subordinate) because we as researchers, marked by race/ethnicity, dis/ability, gender, sexuality, social class, and other entangled identity markers and socially significant dimensions, have unique life experiences that shape our perspectives and influence our research, and these viewpoints need unpacking. For example, if an individual is born and reared in a particular culture, they might have thoughts that reflect their culture as normal. Consequently, researchers from dominant cultures may judge the behaviors of others from the viewpoints of their culture rather than the viewpoints of another’s culture. Encouraging pluralistic perspectives would decenter implicit Eurocentric, universalistic, pseudo-neutral perspectives and notions by including the cultural standpoints of those who experience the consequences of unequal power relations within dominant cultures.

In sum, art education research would benefit from the cultural standpoints of the researcher and the researched. By asserting that the broadest possible set of experiences is crucial to our collective understandings, we empower all as knowledge makers.

Browning Neddeau

In Deloria’s (1969/1997) book, Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto, he wrote,

An anthropologist comes out to Indian reservations to make OBSERVATIONS. During the winter, these observations will become books by which future anthropologists will be trained, so that they can come out to reservations years from now and verify the observations they have studied. (pp. 76–77)

Deloria describes how American Indians “should not be objects of observation” (p. 90). In addition to ensuring that people are not objects, stories should be told by the people in the specific communities. Furthermore, some stories may not be for people outside of certain communities to hear. There is, rightly, a cultural guard.

I believe one of the most relevant issues to my work on the ED&I Commission (“Commission”) aligns with Deloria’s above points and my own published scholarship on storytelling. Although the Commission does not operate as a cultural overseer, one aspect of our collective work is promoting culturally sustaining and revitalizing ways in art education that steer clear of cultural (mis)appropriation. The Commission has provided resources, workshops, webcasts, and other forms of support to art educators. At the same time, the Commission acknowledges that we do not hold all the answers. Additionally, we are working to better ourselves as art educators.

Research in Studies can best reflect a sensitivity to the aforementioned issue by being more intentional about who tells research stories. It seems far too often that voices from certain communities are the majority in peer-reviewed publications and presentations about communities of which they are not members. Similarly, it seems like calls for publication perpetuate structures and styles that are either exclusive or unfamiliar to community members who are from the underrepresented voices. Writing research about a community is much different than writing research in your community. As we move forward in our Commission work and collective work in art education as a whole, I urge us to reexamine oppressive structures and styles so we can truly celebrate the diversity of thought, allowing people to tell their research stories without placing people as objects.

Amy Pfeiler-Wunder

“How and Where Does Your Research Live? Practice and Emergent Possibilities,” the 2023 Research Commission Preconvention theme, illuminates the possibilities of making more visible the myriad of ways in which research is operationalized, understood, conducted, disseminated, shared, and moved forward. In sharing my reflections on where research lives in the field, my positionality as a White, female, cisgender professor of art education at a teaching-focused institution informs my perspectives on research both epistemologically and from an ontological stance. I am also a first-generation college graduate from a working-class background—one who has felt like an imposter in calling myself a researcher. As a K–12 art educator of 13 years, my curiosities and eventual research questions were driven by my students and for my students. They still are—now I consider how to support preservice teachers, teachers in the field, and facilitators of the arts in an educational landscape that many times can feel like it is under siege, given challenges with equitable funding; teacher agency in creating curriculum; honoring students and teachers for who they are as individuals, for amplifying their voices in WHAT they need, and nurturing their desire to learn, to grow, to become (hooks, 1994). How, then, does research live in the “in the midst of” the social, political, and cultural complexities of the educational landscape (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000)? What is the role of the journal in illuminating where and how research lives?

Research might be served by living in a space of tension between knowledge, power, and self (Foucault, 1977, 1984). Guided by Foucault’s care of the self, I speak from what I know, and how I have come to understand power and knowledge: I see power as both a site of tension and a productive place of personal transformation. As a product of a farming landscape, I lived in tension. Tension between growing and producing amid the elements of weather, government subsidies, and monolithic seed production. Within this tension was the stewardship of working in power structures—to grow and harvest food, to be a good steward to the land, to care for the animals. Farm life is also a space of constant movement—planting, harvesting, mending, fixing, repairing—and as the snow fell and the surrounding landscape became still, there was pause. How might research in Studies live in tension and respond to new possibilities through PAUSE?

Pausing can become one of the most productive forms of understanding knowledge, power, and self. Pause to consider: Whose voices are included, excluded, or underrepresented? In a culture of rapidly paced knowledge and information production, questioning what and who count as expert brings considerations for the types, uses, and conditions of conducting research (Pfeiler-Wunder et al., 2020, p. 86). How might we further embrace the entanglements embodied in knowledge construction—by whom and for whom? To create new freedoms in how research is conducted and shared, individuals must recognize how their power and positionality create spaces beyond one’s circle. This is the space of liberatory research and understanding of knowledge.

As a White educator, I need to continue to ask how research has operated as White property (Gaztambide-Fernández et al., 2018), AND as a White female who is a product of the working class, I also need to ask, where might these voices be less visible? Infinito (2003), speaking on the work of Foucault, reminds us “that individual liberty results from concern for others; freedom is the outcome of acting ethically towards others and ourselves” (p. 162). How do we live in the world of research? In our own research? How does research live in the lives of others? How does the journal become a steward of new lines of inquiry? Stewardship involves care, care over time, care for others. As journals are situated in power dynamics by nature of living within institutions, pausing to consider the questions that are emerging amid the questions lying dormant due to ways in which they might disrupt what has become comfortable and known are the very questions individuals, as stewards of research, need to pose. As writer Annie Dillard (1974) reminded us,

We must somehow take a wider view, look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what’s going on here. Then we can at least wail the right question into the swaddling band of darkness, or, if it comes to that choir the proper praise. (p. 11)

Robert W. Sweeny

I would like to thank each of these collaborators for their contributions to this editorial. This collaborative approach represents one of my primary goals as senior editor of Studies. I think that the reflections and suggestions they have provided will continue to inspire my work throughout the next year of my service as senior editor of Studies. Four research articles are featured in this issue. Each article reflects an inclination toward research in the field as described by my collaborators. “Time Unbound: Framing Encounters for Embodied Connection and Ecological Imagination,” by Cala Coats, Shagun Singha, Steven Zuiker, and Amanda K. Riske, speaks to a sensitivity to embodied experiences in art educational research. As the authors state:

This study illuminates the educational potential of focusing on the present moment through sensorial attunement without predetermined curricular associations to prioritize students’ embodied knowledge. By analyzing the resulting observations and discussions, we explore how timed exercises activated intervals of possibility for embodied attunement and ecological connection, registered through expressions of curiosity and wonder, illuminating an emerging spectrum of imagination.

This focus on embodied knowledge, affect, and ecological sensibilities is explored through qualitative forms of data collection that include participant note taking and photographic documentation of a 3rd-grade science class outside of Phoenix, Arizona. These forms of data are supplemented in the research article by survey responses and direct observation by the researchers. The researchers apply these data to an assessment of science, technology, engineering, art, and math–based approaches to learning and teaching, proposing that a recalibration of the notion of time might lead to different forms of student engagement and attunement.

Although the article deals with the sensorial experiences that emerge from this specific class, the concept of time is featured and analyzed most prominently. This article speaks to the situated nature of knowledge production as described by Wanda B. Knight. The authors suggest that engaging with students in improvisational, embodied forms of reflective practice can allow for spontaneous forms of learning to emerge. These forms of learning are often akin to those found in performance art and unstructured play, and they might lead to better understandings of difference in art educational settings.

In “Asian Critical Theory and Counternarratives of Asian American Art Educators in U.S. Higher Education,” Ryan Shin, Jaehan Bae, Min Gu, Kevin Hsieh, Ahran Koo, Oksun Lee, and Maria Lim use a collaborative autoethnography research-based approach to analyze the relationship between the experiences of Asian American art educators and dominant White master narratives that predominate U.S. educational systems. In this research article, the authors develop counternarratives that seek to redress the negative influence of White supremacy. They propose an approach to art educational pedagogy called Asian Critical Pedagogy. Asian Critical Pedagogy, as the authors write, “provides a theoretical means to address and highlight the pedagogical dynamics of Asian American art educators and students. Asian Critical Pedagogy can shed light on unspoken and hidden pedagogical experiences, challenges, struggles, and accomplishments of Asian American art educators.”

This article offers art educators numerous socially relevant suggestions for addressing anti-Asian racism in art educational research and teaching. The authors confront issues that are unique to the experiences of Asian American art educators, and, in doing so, they point to opportunities for a better understanding of the cultural damage that continues to be inflicted through anti-Asian racism. In this manner, the authors are confronting the Eurocentric biases that Wanda B. Knight described earlier. Although he does not speak specifically to anti-Asian racism, Browning Neddeau also emphasizes the importance of acknowledging counternarratives and underrepresented voices in journals such as Studies. Art educators who are invested in issues of social justice will find helpful the specific recommendations that are argued by the authors: coalition building with other minoritized groups, collecting counterstories from Asian American art educators, and developing inclusive art educational curricula.

In “Plastic and Visual Education in 2021: State of the Art Through the Web of Science,” Sofía Marín-Cepeda presents a mixed-methods bibliometric analysis of art educational research. The author analyzes related articles that appear in the Web of Science (WoS) database from 2010 to 2020, with the goal of providing the reader with an international perspective on recent research trends in art education. As the author states,

A diagnosis of the current situation of research in the international scene is necessary: one aimed at defining and analyzing the state of the arts to detect the current thematic lines, approaches, methods, and models being developed. Likewise, knowledge about specialized scientific production in recent years and its progression, approaches, main countries involved, and coauthorship networks can help to define the current map on which to ground future research and help it evolve as a result of such findings, models, and approaches.

This type of large-scale data analysis is very common in the sciences and has been used for 3 decades (Askun & Cizel, 2020). These methods aim to provide researchers with a sense of research trends that might help to inform future approaches to research. These quantitative approaches are less common in art educational research, as well as in the humanities in general. However, with the emergence of data visualization, researchers in art education are starting to become more familiar with the possibilities for the use of and implications for so-called big data.

The results of this research study provide the reader with some important conclusions. Prominent themes and research approaches are identified from the WoS database. Within these, the author finds very few references to art educational research methodologies, such as art-based research or a/r/tography. In addition, the top countries represented are all in the Global North, except for Brazil. This would seem to support what Browning Neddeau describes in his narrative as underrepresented voices. The necessity for large-scale bibliometric studies can help to identify areas of inequality; unfortunately, they cannot suggest what the potential remedies for these situations might be.

In “Mapping Research With a Systematic Review: The Example of Social and Emotional Learning in Art Education,” Kerry Freedman, Jeffrey Cornwall, Christopher M. Schulte, B. Stephen Carpenter II, and Juan Carlos Castro present a systematic review of literature related to social–emotional learning in published art educational research. As they write:

The original purpose of our systematic review was to collect and analyze previously published studies with empirical data related to the topic of social and emotional learning (SEL) in art education. We chose the topic of SEL as it has become a primary concern of art educators at all levels.

In this article, the authors were motivated by the lack of empirical research they see in the field of art education. The findings they present tend to support this hypothesis. In this manner, the article serves two important functions. First, it serves as a call for further research in SEL, a theme that has also been identified by Ami Kantawala (2022). Second, it provides researchers interested in empirical research with a model for such research. This is a model that closely resembles the notion of stewardship that Amy Pfeiler-Wunder describes. This group of experienced art educational researchers have certainly provided such stewardship in numerous situations throughout their careers, and their contributions to this issue of Studies are much appreciated.

In closing, I would like to thank Wanda B. Knight, Browning Neddeau, and Amy Pfeiler-Wunder for their meaningful contributions to this editorial, and for their service to the field through leadership positions in NAEA. Their reflections on the theme of issues and research in the field of art education are certainly appreciated. I will do my best to respect the probing and provocative nature of their suggestions as I enter my 2nd year as senior editor of Studies in Art Education: A Journal of Issues and Research.

Correction Statement

This editorial has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the editorial.