Texas Trends in Art Education, 2010 Page: 16

                                
address them, but I did not really have the skills to do so.
My undergraduate art education training did not give me the
opportunity to "come to terms with discrepancy and conflict"
as Greene (1970, p. 4) recommends. I became an art educa-
tion major because I understood the power of personal narra-
tive. In my art history classes, I learned that I could find part of
my story in the narrative of the artist. When I became a
teacher, I wanted to give this same experience to my students
by exploring art work that was relevant to them and honored
their "cultural capital," which is defined by critical theorist
Paulo Freire (1993) as a student's thoughts, feelings and ideas.
While I surely could not articulate all of that as a beginning art
teacher, that was my desire. But, I fell short of the mark. I
knew that the art classroom could be a place of transforma-
tion, where looking at, talking about, and making art could
change things. So, why wasn't this the reality in my classroom?
I think there were a host of reasons, most notably, a lack of
understanding of my own beliefs, how to translate these be-
liefs to action, and a lack of awareness of the politics inherent
in school culture.
In many ways, my current practice as an art teacher edu-
cator seeks to "make right" those things that I felt were lack-
ing in my undergraduate training and practice as an art
teacher. Feminist art critic bell hooks (1994) calls this transfor-
mative practice, when we revisit our past, re-envision how it
might have been different, and seek to change the situation in
the present for others. Personally, I have found this to be the
most enlivening part of my professional journey.
I am soberly aware that, nationally, almost half of all new
teachers leave the profession of teaching after five years
(National Education Association, 2010). My own experiences
as an art teacher and my dissertation research (Allison, 2008)
convince me that one reason for this poor retention is that
teachers do not really understand their identity and are often
overcome by the hegemony of schools. As a beginning
teacher, I did not fully understand that every school and dis-
trict has a culture that dictates what is permissible and what is
not. Someone else made decisions about what was important
to include in my curriculum. School cultures can sometimes
privilege certain points of view. This is where the messiness of
translating theory to practice begins.
This article proposes the use of contemporary art as a
means of self-reflection for preservice teachers, and also dem-
onstrates the complexity inherent in translating this theory to
practice when one is part of a school system. It is my hope that
if preservice art teachers are exposed to this process now,
they will be more efficacious in untangling these dilemmas in
the future. Having such personal agency is one means to in-
crease teacher retention and satisfaction (Avramidis & Nor-
wich, 2002). While I do not assume that such a project is a
cure-all for beginning teachers, I believe that beginning this
conversation now is an important tool in the identity develop-
ment of teachers. Curricula that focus on praxis, or the inte-
gration of beliefs and action with theories, can help preservice
teachers formulate and refine their teaching philosophies be-
fore they begin teaching, so that they can "...realize that
teaching is complicated and that it is a generative proc-

ess" (Danielewicz, 2001, p. 9).
GUIDELINES FOR THE ASSIGNMENT
Each preservice teacher enrolled in the art education
course was asked to view the exhibition, Kara Walker:
My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love,
at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in fall 2008 and to
choose one work of art to explore in depth. Kara Walker is an
African American artist whose work addresses race, sexuality,
power and discrimination through the lens of history, particu-
larly that of the Antebellum Period and Old South. Some of the
imagery in this show portrays suicide, rape and other forms of
violence and abuse. Her primary media is cut paper silhou-
ettes, which she chooses because of their anonymity and uni-
versality, as well as their historical use as a craft for the middle
class citizen. Her work has been widely recognized by the art
community and she is the recipient of several prestigious
awards2.
Once preservice teachers visited the show and chose a
work of art, they began researching the image using printed
educational materials available at the Modern Museum of Fort
Worth and online resources compiled by the Walker Art Cen-
ter, the institution that organized the exhibition3. At TCU, we
spent class time exploring various approaches for discussing
works of art. Using the same work of art, I modeled how to
explore the work of art using formal anaJysis, visual thinking
strategies, and directed questioning based upon themes.
Later, we met at the museum, where each student led their
classmates in a discussion of their chosen work of art. Back at
TCU, students began designing a secondary art lesson that
included a discussion of the work of art and an accompanying
studio activity. Once their lesson plans and studio projects
were completed, I asked the preservice teachers to present
them to the secondary art teacher they were observing for the
semester and solicit their review. Then, each preservice
teacher interviewed their mentor teacher and asked them the
following questions:
1. Could this lesson be taught in your classroom? If not,
what changes would you make?
2. What are the procedures for discussing and showing
images that are potentially controversial? How are
the following people involved in this process?
A) District art director
B) Principal of school
C) Art department head
D) Parents, students
When the interview was complete, preservice teachers
had the opportunity to revise their curriculum based on feed-
back from the secondary art teachers and me. The final part of
the assignment was a response paper, where the preservice
teachers described their gains during this activity and their
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