Associate Professor of Art Education
Illinois State University
After years of being a practicing studio artist, college art instructor, and community art educator I simultaneously earned a PhD in Art Education and teaching certification. I taught art for several years on the secondary level in Fairfax County Schools in Virginia before moving to Normal, Illinois, and Illinois State University (ISU), where I now train art education candidates and elementary education candidates how to both teach art and to integrate art within the K-12 curriculum. I am a member of ISU's Chicago Teacher Education Pipeline, and my courses have an urban focus. I supervise ISU's Art Education Area's Bloomington-Normal Boys and Girls Club Friday Arts Experience through which art education and elementary education teacher candidates teach seven standards-based, open-ended arts lessons to Boys and Girls Club members seven times a university semester. My research interests include urban education,social justice and the preparation of teacher candidates to become culturally responsive educators.
My dissertation research, a case study conducted in 2000, examined how two Year 9 New South Wales (NSW) visual arts educators used the 1997 Years 7-10 Visual Arts Syllabus and its conceptual Frames within their secondary curriculum. The Frames, Subjective, Structural, Cultural, and Postmodern, are lenses through which visual arts educators and their students examine and create works of art. NSW visual arts educators found the Frames to be invaluable constructs for curriculum creation and class dialogue that focused on deep content for both the discussion and the creation of artwork. I found the Frames to enable me, as a high school art teacher, to lead my students in insightful examination of images that included personal, cultural, formal, and critical review. In summer 2013, I returned to NSW, this time with my ISU Art Education colleague, Dr. Colleen Brennan, to reexamine the effects of the NSW Visual Arts Syllabi, Years 7-10 and 11-12 and its inclusion of the Conceptual Framework, the artist, the artwork, the world, and the audience. With the support of Dr. Karen Maras, Deputy Head of Education and Senior Lecturer, Visual Arts Education, at Australian Catholic University we visited 13 secondary schools, interviewed visual art educators and students, viewed lessons, and documented work. The results of this case study and the incorporation of the Frames and the Conceptual Framework into U.S. art education curriculum comprise my current research.
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Illinois State University
- BA Honors in Literature, The American University
- Masters of Fine Arts in Painting, Edinboro University of Pennsylvania
- PhD in Art Education, The Penn State University
After years of being a practicing studio artist, college art instructor, and community art educator I simultaneously earned a PhD in Art Education and teaching certification. I taught art for several years on the secondary level in Fairfax County Schools in Virginia before moving to Normal, Illinois, and Illinois State University (ISU), where I now train art education candidates and elementary education candidates how to both teach art and to integrate art within the K-12 curriculum. I am a member of ISU's Chicago Teacher Education Pipeline, and my courses have an urban focus. I supervise ISU's Art Education Area's Bloomington-Normal Boys and Girls Club Friday Arts Experience through which art education and elementary education teacher candidates teach seven standards-based, open-ended arts lessons to Boys and Girls Club members seven times a university semester. My research interests include urban education,social justice and the preparation of teacher candidates to become culturally responsive educators.
My dissertation research, a case study conducted in 2000, examined how two Year 9 New South Wales (NSW) visual arts educators used the 1997 Years 7-10 Visual Arts Syllabus and its conceptual Frames within their secondary curriculum. The Frames, Subjective, Structural, Cultural, and Postmodern, are lenses through which visual arts educators and their students examine and create works of art. NSW visual arts educators found the Frames to be invaluable constructs for curriculum creation and class dialogue that focused on deep content for both the discussion and the creation of artwork. I found the Frames to enable me, as a high school art teacher, to lead my students in insightful examination of images that included personal, cultural, formal, and critical review. In summer 2013, I returned to NSW, this time with my ISU Art Education colleague, Dr. Colleen Brennan, to reexamine the effects of the NSW Visual Arts Syllabi, Years 7-10 and 11-12 and its inclusion of the Conceptual Framework, the artist, the artwork, the world, and the audience. With the support of Dr. Karen Maras, Deputy Head of Education and Senior Lecturer, Visual Arts Education, at Australian Catholic University we visited 13 secondary schools, interviewed visual art educators and students, viewed lessons, and documented work. The results of this case study and the incorporation of the Frames and the Conceptual Framework into U.S. art education curriculum comprise my current research.
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