Introduction

Think Tank Panel: Renewing Education through Art Practices | REAP 2021

The pandemic has left a terrible scar on international art education through the loss of colleagues, students, and family members — as well as leaving us in mourning for lost opportunities for learning.  Students have been distracted and less engaged, they have lacked motivation, and felt trapped at home in unsafe or financially insecure environments.  Often, they have had to find their own psychological and physical resources to accomplish school assignments and missed the supportive and inspiring connections they had in face-to-face school.

However, the pandemic has taught educators a lot about students and schooling, and one thing it has taught us is that, even in the harshest conditions, children and adolescents will still explore and create.  During the pandemic, art has been used as entertainment, therapy, and comfort.  Young people still remember the benefits of art education and will want to return to art classes when they can. The arts have always been an excellent opportunity to propose new modes of interpretation, critique and coexistence in the world.

As a result of this learning, as we prepare for their return, we can create new ways of enacting art education.  We can make an art education that is more locally and globally friendly; a way that enables greater connections among students and between students and teachers; a way that takes advantage of the strengths of technology, rather than relying on its weaknesses; and, a way that relieves students of busywork and provides them with opportunities for studying and making art, which is both socially responsible and personally meaningful.

This is the charge of the panel: to point out the most urgent challenges facing arts education today, to raise questions and raise questions, to point out possible lines of work and paths to be explored, to suggest new conceptual frameworks and to enable other ways of understanding and creating the world. In other words, to conceptualize a post-pandemic way of doing art education.

Kerry Freedman
USA – kfreedman@niu.edu · Northern Illinois University

Carlos Escaño
Spain – jcescano@us.es  · Universidad de Sevilla

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This project was presented at the 75th NAEA Convention, held March 3-5, 2022 in New York, USA:

Postpandemic Art Education: How Can We Renew Teacher Education and Develepment? Presenters: Kerry Freedman & Carlos Escaño. Friday, March 4. 2022