Picturing a Past in School: Situating Culture(s), Histories, Language(s) and Power in Fine Arts Teacher Training

Abstract

In this paper, I ask provocatively what it is that we do when we teach about art to students in schools and in university teacher training programs. I attempt to think through the necessary relations that exist in secondary fine arts teacher training. Within a hermeneutic unfolding I consider the difficulty of seeing, speaking, and listening for myself and my students, considering not what one is to teach, nor even how one is to teach, but how omissions and absences inscribe partial, located, ahistorical, and dominant ideological narratives about what and who counts, what constitutes the good, and what knowledge is of most worth. The implications of understanding the past, and its place in our present dealings gives us important insights into imagining our futures and considering how we and our students might live well in teacher education in a changing world.