Early Explorations
Developing Teaching Indicators for Integrating Social-emotional Learning into Junior High School Art Education
Poster Session Chi Hui Huang
For a long time, Taiwan's education has been influenced by the school entrance doctrine, with teaching primarily guided by examinations, resulting in an overemphasis on cognitive learning while neglecting non-cognitive learning. Social-emotional learning refers to an individual's acquisition of emotional intelligence, attitudes, behaviors, and values. It encompasses five key skills: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making, which collectively contribute to their interpersonal interactions and overall development in society. In recent years, Taiwan has begun to recognize the importance of social-emotional learning. Art, with its intrinsic emotional and communication functions, holds significant value in education and offers an opportunity to integrate social-emotional learning. Thus, this research adapts questionnaires and interviews to achieve the following research purposes: 1.To understand the extent to which junior high school art teachers in Taiwan prioritize social-emotional learning. 2.To research and develop teaching indicators for integrating social-emotional learning into art education in junior high schools. 3.To provide suggestions for implementing social-emotional learning in the field of junior high school art.
Featured Deconstructing the Bowler Hat: My Life as an Object Lesson in Dialogical Persona
Poster Session Kelsay Myers
In a time when everyday life has become increasingly disembodied and uncertain, questions like: Who am I? and How can I express myself? become not only necessary but essential for sustaining meaningful creative expression. I explore the question: How does art enable a living expression of a multifaceted and whole self? The inspiration for this inquiry comes from my personal experiences of healing a shattered, abstract, and dissociated identity by encountering a sacred wholeness in objects that symbolize core facets of the self, using expressive arts-based methods for integrating complex trauma. As a transnational Korean adoptee who felt rootless for much of my life, it was difficult for me to feel tethered to the messiness in myself and in the world. To find grounding, I had to restore the connection to my heart, body, and environment that had been severed at birth. In my case, a black felt bowler hat, mirrors, flowers, and wing dancing are the objects that reflect my own wholeness of self back to me. I am designing a transformative integration process for trauma healing using objects as metaphors to symbolize a multifaceted yet whole self that I am calling Dialogical Persona. As I continue to live this inquiry using the arts-based research method of a/r/tography, I playfully explore and deconstruct each facet of my process through multimodal artmaking captured in video collage essays, dance performances and self-portrait drawings to show the aliveness and sustenance in the words, images, and literal body of work.
Art in Social Work Practice: Visual Art as a Framework for Action and Intervention for Women-specific Social Work View Digital Media
Poster Session Marie Neele Ansmann
Creative-artistic approaches form frameworks for action and varying potentials for the profession-immanent field of women-specific social work in Germany. Within group settings women can share their experiences, receive support, experience community and social participation as well as self-efficacy through artistic activity. But what about the preconditions, (institutional) circumstances, accesses and actual states of such practice projects? What motivations, artistic contents and means as well as (social work) goals are pursued and, above all, what (support) potential, beyond regular, social work measures, is hidden in creative-social work practice projects for women? Answers to these questions enable on the one hand a deeper understanding of the benefits and chances of art within social work with women, on the other hand they offer suggestions for future practice projects in the German social landscape in order to (further) improve the situation of women and to address society. The presentation deals with the above-mentioned questions on the basis of first collected data from expert interviews (social workers/ socially-engaged art and culture workers - generated via research and snowball system) from the qualitative study on creative-artistic practice projects in the context of social work with the target group of women. The evaluation is done by means of Grounded Theory in MAXQDA. So far, it appears that artistic offers in the context of social work with women aim to empower them, to contribute to communication, agency and self-efficacy, but also to support them in their specific (multi-)problems or needs and to make them visible to society.
Speaking Up, Speking Out: An Ecological System Analysis of Spoken Word Poems Written by Elementary Teachers
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Jamie Simpson Steele
While many social studies teachers are shy to address social justice topics at the elementary level, teacher candidates who are enrolled in preparation programs often view the classroom as a space where they can have agency, and potentially adopt the role of change agent. This inquiry examines the spoken word poems written by elementary teacher candidates to address social justice topics: gender equality, racism, economic inequity, Earth justice, identity, America in conflict, and the impacts of colonization. Teacher candidates independently select their topics to explore truths and contradictions of a democratic society. We analyze the themes of these poems and place them within one of five categories articulated within Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory. We conclude with discussion of the growth, comfort levels, and challenges candidates faced when composing and performing spoken word poems, and propose a pedagogical shift to support candidates making connections across ecological systems.
Site, Situatedness and Chaos: Mapping Spatiopolitical Forces in Pre-Service Teacher Education and Youth Art Programs
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Lisa Novak, Christina Hanawalt
This paper confronts the spatiopolitical complexities faced by two art educators while facilitating experiential art programs for local youth at a contemporary art gallery at the edge of campus/downtown. Drawing on theories of space, the authors map the complex context of their mutual work with youth programs and discuss how location/situatedness impacted pre-service teacher education at this university-affiliated gallery space. Starting with the entrance to the building, which is located on the main street of downtown and represents a physical and visual boundary between campus and community, the first presenter examines the spatiopolitical forces at play in the implementation of an after-school art program for middle school students taught by preservice art teachers. Moving to the back of the building, the second presenter analyzes the spatiopolitical forces at work in the development of a youth-led community art garden in the gallery parking lot which abutted a fence bordering a low-income housing community. In each case, the complexities of spatial politics were fraught with material and immaterial forces that produced chaos and unpredictability, but which we argue were productive pedagogical elements that highlighted opportunities for political intervention. We suggest that by becoming responsive to the spatiopolitical aspects of teaching, we can respond to and/or make visible the complexities of working in the liminal spaces of public/private life and communal/institutional spaces. As educators affiliated with large universities, our study invites attendees to explore how spatial politics destabilize and weave through their own pedagogy, teacher preparation courses, and/or work with young people.
Restor(y)ing Intercultural Flows: Sea-centered Encounters
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session James Jack, Wei Hsiu Tung
This paper examines a sea-centered socially engaged art project led by James Jack and Wei-Hsiu Tung (2019- ) spanning marine environments and archipelagos in Japan and Taiwan. The project fosters interdisciplinary collaboration among artists, researchers, and children to nurture oceanic stories beyond conventional historical and geographical frameworks. Embracing the 黒潮 (Kuroshio/Heichao) Current as our guiding teacher, this project challenges land-centric perspectives by embracing the fluidity of cultural exchanges within Austronesian communities. Artists are aware of the potential of art for opening up imagination and going into real worlds to influence people for sensitive and controversial issues such as the hidden history and ecological justice. Working with islanders’ creative storytelling is our center for shaping expanded understanding of cultural interflow. We organize school workshops both off and online, participatory drawings, environmental degradation site visits and exhibit drifting objects our socially-engaged art. As we share materials, letters and stories with each other together with movement of tides, it is vital to see how art can go into multi-worlds to bring transformations and sustenance. Our micro actions actively resist colonial ways of thinking through intimate encounters in a slow, caring manner focused on interconnected consciousness. In conclusion, this research shares lessons in how participatory ecological art creation can facilitate the building of relationships, inter-community empathy and care for marine environments.
Digital Dynamics: Transforming Performing Arts Marketplaces at the Adelaide Fringe Festival
Poster Session You Lin Tsai
This study examines the integration of new media and technology in the context of performing arts marketplaces, focusing on the Adelaide Fringe Festival as a case study. Performing arts agents, key facilitators in the discovery and promotion of performing groups, utilize festivals, competitions, and exhibitions as primary avenues for scouting talent. The Adelaide Fringe Festival, established in 1960 and now one of the largest of its kind globally, epitomizes how traditional arts festivals are evolving into sophisticated trade platforms. These platforms treat various forms of performing arts—such as music, dance, theater, acrobatics, and magic—as commodities, facilitating their trade between buyers and sellers at designated times and venues. This paper explores how emerging technologies and new media have transformed these festivals from mere cultural gatherings into dynamic trade fairs. It analyzes the mechanisms through which these technologies support the operational needs of arts agents and the broader implications for the market dynamics of performing arts. By delving into the technological underpinnings that enhance and sometimes complicate these interactions, the study aims to provide insights into the future trajectory of arts marketplaces and their role in the global cultural economy.
