The 2010s saw a revival of reactionary politics on college campuses, which now appear to have paved the way for contemporary right-wing culture-war talking points regarding K-12 education. Revanchist attitudes around race, as well as gender and sexuality, can be linked to White Americans' affective attachments to ideas of historical entitlement,…

Art education history takes many forms and serves many purposes. I argue that it is useful to think of art education history as a collection of stories that we can call on, identify with, and integrate to help us know our field and ourselves as artists and educators. Utilizing the theoretical lens of new histories, I present one student narrative…

Employing the concept of a rhetoric of emotions, European Premodern fine art is revisioned as popular culture. From ancient times, the rhetoric of emotion was one of the principle concepts informing the theory and practice of all forms of European cultural production, including the visual arts, until it was gradually displaced during the 1700s and…

In this article, we explore whether or not arts-based research engages different ideas and processes--different nouns and verbs--when the art form is understood as design, craft, or "fine" art. We propose that the fine, craft, and design arts each provide opportunities for conducting research, that their identities are built upon mutual support…

Metaphorically and physically structured as a drama in seven scenes, this article characterizes the contested theories, internal tensions, and conflicts across disciplinary practices of arts-based education research (ABER). The drama contributes to the field of art education by providing an overview of ABER theories and the varied manifestations…

In this article, I suggest that aesthetics is at the heart of both artistic experience and qualitative research, and that artistic processes, in particular, the space surrounding art experiences, can illuminate significant aspects of qualitative research, including data collection, data analysis, and writing. Examining the ways in which the arts…

In this article, I shall argue for the value of conceptualizing, and practicing art education as a kind of play or game, drawing inspiration from the concepts of finite and infinite games articulated by philosopher James Carse (1986). In so doing, I seek to encourage a continuing dialogue with the assumptions that constrain the theoretical basis…

In this paper, the author describes popular visual culture as seductive, engaging the interest of children and adults because it is both complex and highly sophisticated in aesthetic terms. The author states his agreement with the proponents of a visual culture approach designed to broaden the content of art teaching beyond fine arts to include…

Beginning with an understanding of visual culture as a postmodern discourse, this article argues for more focused attention to how visual culture presents a critical rethinking of subjectivity within art education. Through an analysis of a language of bombardment, a discourse that positions the subject as bombarded by media messages, this article…

A middle ground between two rival visions of art education is explored. One side views the major purpose for education in the arts to be the aesthetic experiences they offer, while a rival position identifies the mission of art education to be the exploration and analysis of visual culture, to help students discern social contextual influences…