This is a qualitative study, to examine how Indigenous ways of knowing could inform Western standardized learning by taking part in a series of learning experiences related to Hula and building connections to the local environment. I enacted a series of site-specific visitations that focused on Indigenous artistic practices related to Hawaii's highest art form, Hula, as well as local sites dedicated to Indigenous environmental preservation. These visits examined dance, chant, talk-story, and environmental practices taught from an Indigenous way of knowing. The purpose of these enactments was to know how embodied learning approaches, informed by Indigenous methodologies, impact learners’ connections to pedagogical content and the learning environment, and how that subject matter was conveyed and received through the embodied act of site-specific visitations. I will address the ways in which understanding through site visits emerged in these Indigenous ways of knowing. I will explain how the Indigenous practices and ways of knowing offer a different understanding of standardized learning, and argue what could be gained by adding these methodologies to art curriculum in site-specific locations.

This is a qualitative case study, using a feminist lens as a theoretical frame, that examines institutional problems that Mexican women encountered since the Bracero Program. At that time, women were not allowed to work certain jobs and were left at home separated from their husbands or fathers while the men migrated to The United States for seasonal agricultural labor as Braceros. Braceros were Mexican male farmworkers that were recruited through a federal guest program to legally work and migrate to the United States seasonally after World War II, from 1942-1964. As a result, women were left alienated and exploited on their own, and it was up to them to take charge of the family and hold everything and everyone together. There is little known research that discusses these women’s experiences and stories. And to uncover these stories, I address the ways photography and traditional Mexican storytelling, and arts-based storytelling reveal hidden stories of family, longing, sacrifice, and women’s unrecognized labors. Through an autoethnographic methodology, I explain my place as a Mexican American woman and as a researcher during the study. This study uncovers the history of migrating Bracero families, acknowledges the women’s experiences, and discusses the importance of passing down stories of an often-overlooked moment and experiences of migration and immigration in both United States and Mexican history.

This sensory ethnographic research study used a walking methodology to explore the potential of an asset-based approach to arts development. Inspired by socially engaged artists who incorporate walking as their practice, this study explored a rural arts community by walking with research participants to gain a sense of their history, consider past and future artistic developments, as well as map/learn about the physical environment through stories, conversations, and sensory-based experiences. Many arts administrators utilize a needs-based approach to identify community deficits and assets through surveys, formal interviews and focus groups, thus this research aimed to devise a different approach. This research theorized walking as an ecological inquiry and explored the embodied and entangled experiences that emerged, with the goal of co-creating knowledge from the perspective of community members, to inform and expand arts administration approaches to community arts initiatives and development. Using an ecological and mapping analytical framework, the findings describe and trace the emergence of boundary objects that were entangled with the community members stories and memories that highlighted the relational aspects of the town, community, and art. The ecological and mapping analysis directly related to my walking method because all are multilayered, multisensory, and embodied ways of learning and relaying information about a place. To conclude this research, I outline an arts administration toolbox with five distinct steps and processes to follow when utilizing this walking method within the fields of arts administration and art education.

This study will explore the role and impact of socially engaged art (SEA) on participants when presented through an interactive and nomadic mobile context. Using an action research methodology, I will use a pop-up camper to serve as research and art making hub. I will travel with the hub to various locations throughout Arizona working with participants to create an artistic response to prompts that encourage them to think about their own communities and participants’ roles within them. Some of these pieces will travel with the hub to future locations, serving as a point of response and/or engagement for participants from other locations or even from future visits to the same location. SEA invites participatory and dialogical interaction through art-making. Using SEA as a pedagogical approach could present alternative teaching and learning methods and locations possible to art educators. Because socially engaged art is heavily focused on agency (Helguera, 2011), responsibility of the arts to impact social change and influence (Bae & Shin, 2019), embraces tools and processes not exclusive to the art studio (Helguera, 2011), and leans heavily on collaboration and dialogue (Chalmers & Desai, 2007), it is an ideal method for creating and examining potential bonds between communities and their educators. This study will also explore how the nomadic state of the research hub impacts the researcher (artist/teacher) and the participants. The pop-up camper exemplifies temporality and limited access, using mobility to evaluate spaces, borders, and communities as a state of fluctuation and fluid movement. Potential impact on the researcher and participants could occur through the experience of a common item, such as the camper, repurposed for something totally different. Moreover, as an artist and educator, engaging with communities through either of these perspectives could cause a considerable impact on the artist/educator pedagogical and artistic practices.

Art museums are institutions with a mission to not only preserve art and culture for the public, but to provide visitors with an educational experience. This qualitative case study includes three art museums in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area: a university art museum, a large public museum in Downtown Phoenix, and a contemporary art museum in the city of Scottsdale. This research study sought to identify the ways in which eight art museum employees from the education and administration departments identify their institutions as educational. Data was collected and analyzed through the methods of direct observations and field notes, one-on-one interviews, and photographs of educational programming.

After examining these art museums and conducting eight interviews, a description of each observation is displayed using examples of photographs and field notes. Although findings suggest a variety of educational programs for a range of visitors in each institution, all three museums offered comparable programs, activities, and events. This research study revealed similar ideas, themes, and perspectives between art museum educators and administrators. Findings indicate the importance of collaboration between both museum departments in order to ensure the success of their museums. All eight participants in the study had a passion for art and art museums as well as visitor education. Additionally, participants had concurrent thoughts in their interviews regarding concepts of educational programming, cultural diversity approaches, art museum fundamental roles, and overall educational goals.

The role of an art educator is characteristically dualistic and paradoxical. Not only are most art educators trained as artists, but they also receive instruction on theories and practices used in art education. The purpose of the study was to examine how community college ceramic instructors identify themselves within their dual roles as teacher-artists. I studied if and how the teacher-artist places emphasis on one position over the other, or how they successfully synthesized these positions. I also investigated the phenomenon by considering the why, how and which role they accentuated, as well as it affects and influences on their creative and teaching activities. By using a feminist theory, the research uncovered information on how gender may or may not affect their careers, as well as their identities.

This qualitative research study was about art teachers’ perceptions and practices of cultural diversity and its implications for the U.S. The purpose of the study was to provide a rationale for the need for learning institutions to recognize the changing demographics and to respond to the potential educational implications of the new demographics as they prepare their art teachers to educate diverse student populations. The study involved six art teachers who teach in schools with students from diverse cultural backgrounds. To collect data, interviews with participants were transcribed and analyzed. Analysis of teacher interviews showed the importance of helping art teachers to obtain the skills, attitudes, dispositions and knowledge to work effectively with students from diverse cultural backgrounds. The richness of the descriptions obtained from the interviews provides insight into multicultural art education in schools. The results of this study might help art educators and policy makers understand the need for more awareness of multicultural education and its impact on teachers, parents, administrators and students. This study concludes with suggestions on art education, including the need to develop curriculum that are inclusive to multicultural students, especially Islamic from cultures. Art education programs in universities should produce teachers who are prepared for the cultural diversity in their classrooms. It is essential that teachers accept and implement changes in their communities, in their schools, and in their teaching in order to better serve students of culturally diverse backgrounds.

The issue this study addresses is the need to extend the topic of gifted art education into the multicultural realm. The purpose was to assess accommodations for gifted art students of culturally diverse backgrounds, to see how socio-economic class and culture influence identification and opportunities for gifted art students, and to identify similarities and differences among gifted art students. The research took place at five public high schools containing a high percentage of culturally diverse students around the Phoenix rural and suburban areas. Participants included five high school art teachers and five artistically talented students that each teacher identified. I conducted, transcribed and analyzed interviews with the participants. Analysis of the data has led to many themes. Teacher interviews indicated universities attended by teachers in the study didn’t touch on diversity or gifted art education, although all art teachers have had a lot of experience teaching diverse students, and reported student diversity was growing. Teachers define artistically talented students as students with natural abilities, many times looking at the students' product. Teachers recommend the students to community art classes, such as the local center for the arts, or summer college courses. Teachers vary in support, some saying they have more than enough resources and support, others saying they need more space in the classroom and smaller class sizes, or want to take students to artist studios. Results from student interviews reveal that all students in the study were self-motivated to do art everyday, two mentioning especially after a big life event, such as depression or a father dying. Participating students think of art as something beautiful and something to which they can relate, defining art very vaguely, saying it could be anything or everything. All students have future plans to major or minor in art in college or continuing creating art in their free time. Participants had supportive and encouraging art teachers and parents and had art materials readily available. Universities and high school art teachers may benefit from the study because of the need to prepare for growing diversity. Art teachers may benefit from this study by gaining a better understanding of artistically talented students of diverse backgrounds and by challenging them, and getting parents involved in supporting their child.

The following study is about the importance of including global art and art history in a bilingual/bicultural art classroom. The study was performed with twelve Navajo art students in a predominately Navajo high school located in a small urban town off the Navajo Reservation. Navajo students selected traditional and contemporary artworks they were curious to learn more about from four global cultures, familiar (Navajo and European) and unfamiliar (Maori and Benin). They also responded to art criticism questions and identified reasons they were curious about the artworks they selected. Students were curious about familiar (Navajo and European) artworks more than unfamiliar artworks (Maori and Benin). Of all student responses, 69% focused on the artwork selected; 16% focused on meaning and expression, and 15% focused on the artist. This study concludes by suggesting that there should be a middle ground about what to teach to Navajo children. I suggest that art education should include other cultural information within the Navajo philosophy of education.

This quantitative, quasi-experimental study examined the effectiveness of three types of online guided-practice activities designed to increase learning of visual art concepts, the color concepts of hue, tint, shade, value, and neutral colors in particular, among fifth grade students in a large school district in the southwestern United States. The study's results indicated that, when students were given a limited amount of time to engage in practice activities, there was no statistically significant difference among the three types of guided practice and the control group. What was effective, however, was the instructional component of this study's instruments.