Culturally Sustaining Arts and Reciprocity in a Multigenerational After-School Program  (Poster 4)

• In Event: (Re)Imagining Different Educational Realities: Anti-Deficit Approaches in Informal Learning Environments Research

Abstract

Teaching artists (i.e. artists who teach) bring artistic learning experiences into both formal and informal learning environments (Booth, 2003). With much of teaching artists’ work occurring in and with communities that have been historically marginalized, many are called to disrupt deficit narratives by uplifting the community’s cultural assets in culturally sustaining artistic practices (Parkes, 2022). Such practices require thoughtful cultivation (Evans-Santiago, 2020; Puzio et al., 2017). Although others have examined the development of asset-based practices among early-career teachers of other academic subjects (Maddamsetti, 2020; Nash et al., 2021) and in more formal settings (Buffington & Bryant, 2019; Pauly et al., 2019), few have done so with teaching artists in informal arts learning environments.



Objectives & Theoretical Framework

The purpose of this study is to explore how early-career teaching artists developed culturally sustaining practices of teaching, learning, and artmaking in a multigenerational afterschool program. Our conceptual framework is grounded in three core principles of culturally sustaining pedagogy: (1) honoring and extending cultural assets, (2) reciprocal learning, and (3) cultural and linguistic pluralism (Alim et al., 2020).



Methodology

We used single case study methodology to examine the emerging culturally sustaining practices of eight early-career teaching artists who worked with families in a bilingual afterschool arts program set within a Title I community school. The program was active from 2015-2021, and many of the multigenerational families who attended were from low-income, immigrant backgrounds from Mexico or Central America.



Our study highlighted the experiences and perspectives of the teaching artists in this program. All of our study’s participants taught in the program as either undergraduate students or recent alumnx of an undergraduate arts education program situated at a public university. In triangulating our multiple qualitative data sources (i.e., semi-structured interviews, written reflections, photos, videos, artwork, lesson plans, and other program artifacts), we used inductive coding techniques in a process coding scheme (Saldaña, 2016) to analyze these teaching artists’ experiences and practices.



Findings

Our findings demonstrate how reciprocity disrupted deficit perspectives and centered the cultural assets of the families who attended the afterschool program. These families’ cultural and linguistic assets came into dialogue with those of teaching artists in an exchange of reciprocal teaching and learning, along with shared agency in the program’s shifting aims over time. These exchanges also promoted mutual artistic influence among teaching artists and families. As the teaching artists offered new artistic techniques and materials, families’ perspectives influenced the artwork teachers made in and outside the afterschool program. All this was made possible by the relationships that grew amongst teachers, families, and all members of the learning community.



Significance of the Study

This study contributes to the growing body of knowledge about how emerging teachers develop culturally sustaining practices. Our study is among the few to explore this process among teaching artists, and offers insight about the transformative potential of asset-based, deficit-disrupting teaching experiences in the pedagogical and artistic development of emerging teaching artists. More broadly, this study supports reciprocity as a deficit-disrupting practice in informal learning environments.

Authors

• Kevin M. Kane, University of California - Los Angeles

• Lindsey Kunisaki, University of California - Los Angeles