Areas of Interest

Culturally relevant arts education taught from a critical perspective, art teacher licensure and professional development and the role arts education plays in alternative, independent, and charter schools

Research Interests

My current inquiry in art education centers on Minnesota Native populations and is inspired by 15 years spent teaching in K-12 schools with mostly American Indian students. That practitioner experience along with recent graduate study at Stanford has contributed to my conceptualization of culturally relevant art education theory and practice. My research program at the University of Minnesota is thus multifaceted: I focus on the role art education – when culturally relevant and taught from a critical perspective – can play in improving American Indian school success and White students’ understanding of colonization’s impact on Native material culture. I also study how infusing non-Western cultural knowledge in elementary arts curriculum reinforces mathematics, science, and language arts learning, and state-level education policy relevant to art teacher licensure and academic standards for visual and media arts.

Classes taught

• CI 8133 Curriculum and Instruction Core: Research Methods in Curriculum and Instruction
• CI 8132 Curriculum and Instruction Core: Teaching Theory and Research
• CI 8150 Narrative Research in Education
• CI 8079 Research in Art Education
• CI 8075 Seminar in Art Education
• CI 5078 Application of Aesthetic Theory in Education
• CI 5075 Social and Historical Foundations of Art Education
• CI 5065 Improving Art Programs in the Schools
• CI 5050 Postmodern Visual Culture and Global Education

Selected Publications