My approaches to teaching stem from critical pedagogy, Critical Race Praxis (CRP), decolonial and transnational feminisms. The central concerns of these theories are transformative education and knowledge production that are geared toward liberation. Based on these theories, the key values of my teaching practices include 

 

1) centering students’ lived experiences

2) learning that goes beyond classroom (bell hook’s transgressive pedagogy)[1]

3) dismantling the colonial knowledge production and grounding historically marginalized voices and experiences into curriculum 

4) building a learning community  

5) valuing emotions and conflicts as a source of learning and communal growth. 

 

To center students’ lived experiences and to build a communal learning space, I spend enough time at the beginning of the semester creating a classroom community where we share stories to learn about one another. We collectively adjust the goals and the class content according to the classroom community we are creating. I also assign readings that theoretically explicate my approach to critical pedagogy so students can understand the intention of the class structure and my teaching approaches. More importantly, I emphasize my role as more of a facilitator, not simply as a transmitter of knowledge. In so doing, I invite students to reconsider their role as community members who contribute to our collective knowledge. 
 

Furthermore, I engage students to critically examine the taken-for-granted beliefs, dominant ideologies, and pedagogical practices that guide them towards being more reflective and culturally responsive. For instance, when I taught a Curriculum Design and Teaching Practices in Art Education Course, I asked critical questions, such as, how and by whom curriculum is written in K-12 schools? Whose art is mostly represented in school curriculum? How is K-12 school art different from contemporary artists’ practices? And, in what ways are contemporary art courses in schools successful or insufficient in supporting diverse learners? I also ask the students to reflect on their own art education experience in relation to their personal backgrounds. Through these activities, I highlight seemingly “neutral” or “natural” concepts that are socially and historically constructed; therefore, art educators and artists have agency to transform curriculum and instructions in more just way. 

 

This array of critical, reflective activities is a basis to help students imagine art education otherwise. In other words, students can envision the possible ways to build art curriculum and classrooms around historically marginalized communities’ knowledge. With graduate students, I further ask them to examine the colonial notion of research and the relationship between the researcher and the researched. When teaching two graduate level courses where I had MFA in Studio Art students, I encourage students to reflect on how their art practice, as a form of research, is implicated with the long historical chain of colonialism through reading, discussion activities, artist interviews, and archival research projects.

 

[1] hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. New York: Routledge.