This research is a nomadic inquiry into the ethics and aesthetics of three makers’ social and material practices. Deleuze’s concept of the nomad operated in multiple ways throughout the process, which was embedded in performative engagements that produced narratives of becoming. Over four months, I built relationships with three people as I learned about the ethico-aesthetic significance of their daily practices. The process started by interviewing participants in their homes and expanded over time to formal and informal engagements in school, community, and agricultural settings. I used Guattari’s ecosophical approach to consider how subjectivity was produced through spatial assemblages by spending time with participants, discussing material structures and objects, listening to personal histories, and collaboratively developing ideas. Participants included a builder who repurposed a missile base into a private residence and community gathering space, an elementary art teacher who practiced urban homesteading, and a young artist who developed an educational farm. The research considers the affective force of normalized social values, the production of desire by designer capitalism, and the mutation of life from neoliberal policies. Our experiences illuminate the community-building potential of direct encounters and direct exchanges. The project generates ideas for becoming an inquirer in the everyday and …

As a doctoral student, I was asked to teach a course based on emerging technologies and postmodern methods of inquiry in the field of art education. The course was titled Issues and Applications of Technology in Art Education and I developed a method of inquiry called animated autoethnography for pre-service art educators while teaching this course. Through this dissertation, I describe, analyze, interrogate, value, contextualize, reflect on, and artistically react to the autoethnographic animated processes of five pre-service art educators who were enrolled in the course. I interviewed the five participants before and after the creation of their animated autoethnographies and incorporated actor-network theory within the theoretical analysis to study how the insights of my students’ autoethnographies related to my own animations and life narratives. The study also examines animated autoethnography as a method of inquiry that may develop or enhance future teaching practices and encourage empathic connections through researching the self. These selected students created animations that accessed significant life moments, personal struggles, and triumphs, and they exhibited unique representations of self. Pre-service art educators can use self-research to create narrative-based short animations and also use socio-emotional learning to encourage the development of empathy within the classroom. I show …

The problems of this investigation are the content analyses of the art vocabulary, the art-term definitions, and the art-vocabulary objectives in seven sets of visual art curricula for the elementary grades. The hypotheses are that the formulators of three or more of the sources will agree on fifty per cent or more of the art terms and their definitions and will present art-vocabulary objectives. The findings are that the formulators of three or more of the sources agree on less than fifty per cent of the art terms and their definitions. Two sources include definite art-vocabulary objectives. The conclusion is that all three hypotheses are rejected.