Call for Chapters: Urban Education with a Vision: Art, Social Justice, and the City as Possibility

Posted by on March 01, 2010

Call for submissions to an edited book on Art Education and the City:  To be published by Teachers College Press with the following working title: Urban Education with a Vision: Art, Social Justice, and the City as Possibility.

Edited by Karen Hutzel, Flavia Bastos, and Kimberly Cosier

Please consider submitting a 1-page chapter abstract by April 1, 2010 for the edited book on Urban Art Education. See guidelines below.

This edited volume promotes quality art and education in urban environments by highlighting successful models of visual art education practice, including those in school, community, and organizational and museum settings. Our intent is to offer a book that focuses on possibilities and evidence of success in learning in and through art in urban contexts. , Promoting social justice and social reconstruction, we are inspired by an asset-based approach derived from community development theory. Too often, writing on urban education comes from a deficit-based model. We place a greater value in the resources available in city spaces than on the limitations that exist and are faced on a daily basis by schools, communities, and arts organizations. Although we recognize, question, and challenge the inequalities that impact students and teachers in urban settings, we wish to promote a pedagogical discourse that focuses on possibility, fomenting an educational imagination aimed at hope.

Draft Outline:

The book’s three primary sections disclose fundamental dimensions of our school renewal project:

·      Section One, “City as an Asset: Unveiling Possibilities for Urban Visual Art Education” will lay out the theoretical underpinnings of our approach to urban education, drawing from community development methodologies and participatory action research. This first section presents a framework that confronts the issues of urban settings head-on, without dismissing the unique needs and challenges of urban educators. It will provide a discourse of hope and possibility, in which problems are met with creativity and the end goal of student learning and advancement is not sacrificed by oppressive understandings of urban students’ potential. A broad understanding of visual art and visual culture that embraces the built environment of the city and schools is at the center of our vision of transformative visual art education practices in urban settings.

·      Section Two, “Preparing for Success: Teacher Training and Professional Development for Urban Educators” will outline theoretical, philosophical, and practical implications for urban teacher education in art and visual culture. The section promotes the importance of an activist stance in urban art education, which has been shown to be key to success in schools. The chapters in this section will recognize the essential nature of urban teacher education in working for democracy and social justice and the power of learning through visual studies for urban students. Contributors will showcase successful programs in teacher education and professional development programs and share knowledge gained through their important work in city schools and community and cultural organizations

·      Section Three, “Engaging in Stimulating Pedagogy: Curriculum and Methodologies in Urban Spaces,” will offer pedagogies of possibility through application of teaching through an asset-based foundation of art education. Building on the previous two sections, this final section offers practical approaches and meaningful success stories of school reform through curriculum development and education practices rooted in constructivist learning and cultural relevance, and considerate of local issues and concerns. Chapters will highlight successful art and visual culture curricula and programs in schools and community settings that utilize students’ and communities’ assets and resources while building on local cultural dynamics manifested through art and visual culture.

·      Conclusion, “Reflecting on the Stories: Issues and Possibilities for the Future,” provides an analysis of the book’s chapters in considering our call toward the possibility of urban contexts through visual learning. This chapter wraps up the book’s efforts toward re-envisioning urban spaces for the possibility inherent as opposed to the problems we often highlight. Within this, we reassert a rationale for the inclusion of art programs in urban schools, highlight common themes among the exemplary programs discussed in the book, and summarize issues raised within the chapters.

Timeline:
April 1, 2010
Author Submissions of Potential Chapter Abstracts

May 1, 2010
Author Notification and Invitation to submit chapters for review

July 30, 2010
Chapter Submissions Due

August 30, 2010
Editors respond to chapter submissions

September 30, 2010
Revised (accepted) chapters Due

Fall, 2011
Projected Publication Date

Please follow the guidelines below for submitting a 1-page chapter abstract. Please keep in mind the following information concerning your chapter abstract:

The book will serve a wide audience of art educators and urban educators, teachers, administrators, and future educators. It is our goal that the book be useful for college courses that prepare art teachers, graduate courses for existing art teachers, or courses in urban education programs preparing classroom teachers and school administrators toward school reform and social justice. The book can also serve urban school districts, organizations such as museums and community art centers,  and professional development programs.

Beginning Introduction to the Book
To suggest that education has something to be learned from the arts is to turn topsy-turvy the more typical view that the arts are basically sources of relief, ornamental activities intended to play second fiddle to the core educational subjects. Yet those interested in enhancing the process of education, both in and out of schools, have much to learn from the arts. Put simply, the arts can serve as a model for teaching the subjects we usually think of as academic. (Eisner, 2002, p. 196)

This book provides an antidote to faulty and reductionist assumptions plaguing popular discourse and informing policy regarding public education, both of which affect disproportionally and negatively urban schools.  This book encompasses our effort to articulate an alternate vision that celebrates and capitalizes on the educational, cultural, community, and artistic possibilities of the city. Further, it articulates the integral and extensive role art can play in creating meaningful learning experiences across the disciplines. The contributing authors’ art education practice and research will provide a wealth of evidence on the affects quality art education experiences can have in the lives of diverse students in urban environments. We believe that art can provide access to meaningful ways of knowing the complex world occupied by children and youth in cities. We are committed to turn upside down the usual talk of urban education as underprivileged. In contrast, we will show that the educational promise the city holds to students extends beyond schools to include the rich and varied resources to be mined in cultural, communal, and artistic individual, families, institutions, and organizations.

In this book we examine and stretch Eisner’s argument that education should be modeled after the arts. We propose that quality urban education can be achieved by prioritizing art, and by building upon it as a means to engage students in meaningful, relevant and effective learning. Furthermore, we examine theory and methods that support the role of visual art and visual culture education in a transformative educational process that sees urban students as critical cultural actors rather than passive and needy recipients of schooling. While we recognize the complementary and interdependent relationship among the various arts disciplines, in this book we will focus primarily on visual art. Here the term art education will be used as shorthand for a definition of an approach that is embedded in critical pedagogy, visual culture studies, and contemporary artistic practice.

Guidelines:
The 1-page abstract should contain the following elements:

Your name
Your discipline and institutional role (title)
Contact information (address, email, phone)
References: Please provide a brief bibliography

The following critical prompts may help you focus your abstracts:

Section:  Which section from the draft outline of the text do you see your manuscript contributing most to? Why?

Theoretical Orientation:  How will you address the asset-based approach that is the book’s foundation?

Approach/Topic: How will you support the theoretical approach in your topic? What format will your chapter take? What might readers learn from your contribution?

Future directions: What are questions to ponder, resources to explore, or activities to pursue? What are suggestions for those who teach in urban settings?

Chapter Abstract due by April 1, 2010.

Please e-mail a Word (.doc) version of your abstract to the following address: [email protected]