Abstract
Keywords
Introduction
Teaching artists are actively practicing artists (in any art form) who teach, working with a wide range of populations in or beyond schools (Booth, 2003; Parkes, 2023). With many working with learners who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color in marginalized communities, teaching artists have been urged to cultivate culturally relevant and sustaining teaching practices (Parkes, 2023). However, opportunities to do so vary widely among teaching artists, whose professional development pathways range from trial and error to university-based degree programs (Parkes, 2023; Rabkin et al., 2012; Saraniero, 2009). Pathways into teaching artistry do not necessarily require a teaching credential because teaching artists might teach in after-school programs, museums, hospitals, correctional facilities, and many other contexts (Booth, 2003). Regardless of the setting, teaching artists bring their artistic experience into dialogue with learning communities’ cultural assets, and a culturally sustaining approach requires reflexivity and practice.
Cultivating culturally sustaining practices (i.e., “moves”) and beliefs (i.e., “stances”; Ladson-Billings, 1995, 2014 in Maddamsetti, 2020) is a complex process. In building such capacities, “mistakes” can jeopardize culturally sustaining aims (Evans-Santiago, 2020). Superficial adoption of multicultural content risks misrepresenting and essentializing cultural products and practices yet is common among burgeoning culturally sustaining pedagogues (Buffington & Bryant, 2019; Puzio et al., 2017). Considering these complexities, intentional reflection on onto-epistemic beliefs can set emerging practitioners on a path toward culturally sustaining teaching artistry.
The preparation of culturally relevant and sustaining teaching artists remains understudied despite a growing body of literature on teaching artists’ general preparation and professional development (Hamlin & Hetland, 2018; Rabkin et al., 2012; Saraniero, 2009; Simpson Steele, 2018; Waldorf, 2003) and culturally sustaining teacher education in non-arts subjects (Maddamsetti, 2020; Nash et al., 2021; Pauly et al., 2019). While these studies offer valuable insight into the general development of culturally sustaining teachers, there remains a gap in the literature examining arts-specific cultural, aesthetic, and relational sensibilities. Integrating art forms and cultural practices into a learning space requires conscious navigation of epistemic hegemonies and teacher–learner interpersonal relations. For early-career teaching artists, this warrants exploration and raises onto-epistemic questions about knowledge, art, and identity in the communities where they teach.
Given this context, the purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore early-career teaching artists’ culturally sustaining onto-epistemic beliefs and other aspects of their teaching identities. The study was guided by the following research question: How did early-career teaching experiences in a culturally sustaining setting prompt teaching artists’ onto-epistemic explorations around (a) teaching and learning and (b) community engagement?
Teaching Artists and Culturally Sustaining Role Identities
Our conceptual framework connects culturally sustaining pedagogy (Alim et al., 2020) to the dynamic systems model of role identity (Kaplan & Garner, 2018), with a focus on teaching artists.
Overview of Teaching Artistry
Teaching artists bring their arts practices to learners in a variety of settings (Booth, 2009; Jaffe et al., 2013). Pedagogic practices of teaching artistry vary widely, and so do pathways into this work. Although often highly qualified in their art forms, teaching artists have reported varying degrees of preparation to teach. In a landmark study of teaching artistry in the United States, Rabkin et al. (2012) found that two thirds of teaching artists had earned postsecondary degrees in their art forms, but only one in eight had earned degrees in education. In lieu of credentialing or certification programs, many teaching artists learn to teach on the job or through professional development provided by employers, mentorships, informal peer networks, and professional organizations (Booth, 2015; Erickson, 2003; Larson, 2004; Lichtenstein, 2009; Reeder, 2009; Saraniero, 2009). However, this fragmented nature of teaching artist professional development leaves potential for missteps, particularly if teaching artists are unprepared to confront the effects of systemic racism and other forms of marginalization in the communities where they teach (Parkes, 2023). Further, teaching artist professional development for culturally responsive and sustaining practice remains understudied. In the literature and in practice, this calls for further exploration of opportunities for teaching artists to cultivate the cultural competence and pedagogic skills to responsibly teach in—and learn from—these communities.
Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy
This study built on the asset-based perspectives of culturally sustaining pedagogy in the arts (Alim et al., 2020; Paris, 2012; Wong & Peña, 2017), specifically emphasizing its interrelated concepts of cultural and linguistic pluralism, honoring and extending cultural assets, and reciprocal learning. As with other asset-based practices, culturally sustaining pedagogy disrupts deficit narratives of marginalized communities, instead building on learners’ cultural and linguistic assets (Alim et al., 2020). One distinction between culturally sustaining pedagogy and its predecessors (i.e., culturally relevant and culturally responsive pedagogies) is its emphasis on cultural pluralism, where multiple ways of knowing, being, and expressing are actively sustained through teaching and learning (Paris, 2012). Culturally sustaining pedagogy honors and extends cultural assets, understanding them as complex rather than monolithic and evolving rather than static (Paris & Alim, 2014). In practice, this often entails reciprocal learning and both tacit and explicit negotiation of roles (Alim et al., 2020; Kane et al., 2021; Wong & Peña, 2017).
These processes require onto-epistemic reckoning. Educators might, for example, confront epistemic misalignment between their own stances and those of learners. They may need to reconstruct linguistic norms to promote more varied means of communicating. All this might call for reimagining teacher–learner dynamics to reframe expertise and its role in the learning space. This reckoning can be challenging, and it demonstrates the dynamic interplay between teacher, learner, and context, where each is mutually shaped by the others.
These onto-epistemic reckonings are essential to culturally sustaining pedagogy and other asset-based practices in arts education. Others have noted how teaching artists working at the intersection of asset-based and critical pedagogies have intentionally co-constructed learning environments to foster learners’ critical consciousness (Dewhurst, 2013; Freire, 1970; Hanley, 2011; Wong & Peña, 2017). These approaches contrast with multiculturalist appropriation misrepresenting art forms and cultural practices as unchanging monoliths (Buffington & Bryant, 2019; Gaztambide-Fernández, 2011). Understanding relationships, cultural assets, and sociocultural context is fundamental to culturally sustaining teaching artistry, but there are few studies investigating how it is cultivated, particularly among early-career teaching artists. To address this gap in the literature, this study examined how teaching artists explore and enact their culturally sustaining beliefs.
Dynamic Systems Model of Role Identity
This study also drew from the dynamic systems model of role identity (DSMRI; Kaplan & Garner, 2017, 2018). Situated in the paradigm of complex dynamic systems, the DSMRI frames teacher role identities as comprising interdependent parts, sensitive to initial conditions, and dynamically responsive to the sociocultural context (Kaplan & Garner, 2017, 2018).
In DSMRI, role identities encompass four interdependent elements: (a) ontological and epistemological beliefs, (b) purpose and goals, (c) self-perceptions and definitions, and (d) perceived action possibilities (Kaplan & Garner, 2017, 2018). Ontological and epistemological beliefs are conceptions about the nature of definitive characteristics, knowledge, and truth. Purposes and goals reflect motives and aims in the context of the role. Self-perceptions and self-definitions are how a person understands themselves in the context of the role. Perceived action possibilities are what the person believes they can do in that role. The DSMRI also posits that adaptive changes in role identities are evidenced in content (i.e., what they believe about the four elements described previously), structure (i.e., relationships among their beliefs and integration with other aspects of their identities), and process (i.e., changes over time in these beliefs; Kaplan & Garner, 2017, 2018, 2022).
This study primarily explored teaching artists’ onto-epistemic beliefs and their interplay with the other three elements of the DSMRI. For this study’s purposes, teaching artists’ onto-epistemic beliefs include their views on artistic and cultural knowledge, teacher–learner relations, and participation in a community. Goals and purposes are the aims of their teaching, whether in specific lessons or in their general teaching practice. Self-perceptions and self-definitions are their self-concepts as artists, educators, and community members, including multiple intersectional axes of their identities. Perceived action possibilities are the pedagogic or relational practices they consider to be viable options as they navigate their roles.
Another defining trait of the DSMRI is the multilevel situatedness of complex dynamic systems, where intrapersonal identity systems are nested within interpersonal social systems of practice, which are nested within the broadest levels of social and cultural systems in society. In line with sociocultural perspectives on identity, the DSMRI argues that role identities are negotiated within these nested systems; role identities formed intrapersonally (i.e., at the innermost level) dynamically integrate systems of meaning in broader sociocultural contexts (Kaplan & Garner, 2017; Kaplan et al., 2020).
The DSMRI builds on extensive literature documenting the dynamic interplay between teachers, learners, and their sociocultural context in teacher preparation (Akkerman & Meijer, 2011; Beauchamp & Thomas, 2009; Levin, 2015) and the growing literature integrating complexity-informed perspectives in such inquiry (Strom et al., 2021). Early teaching experiences profoundly shape teachers’ professional role identities, which evolve continuously throughout their careers (Kaplan & Garner, 2017, 2018; Strom & Viesca, 2021). Teachers’ beliefs and practices are informed by their own social identities and lived experiences (Borrero et al., 2016; Kraehe, 2012) and adapt as tensions emerge and are resolved (Akkerman & Meijer, 2011; Hong et al., 2017; Kaplan & Garner, 2017; Strom & Viesca, 2021). Teachers’ learning mutually influences their respective sociocultural contexts in a dialogic exchange (Akkerman & Meijer, 2011; Beauchamp & Thomas, 2009; Korthagen, 2010). Early-career teachers’ beliefs shape how they teach and what they learn from their early teaching experiences; they also reflect what kind of teacher they aspire to become (Levin, 2015; Levin et al., 2013). By investigating the content and dynamic interplay of teaching artists’ onto-epistemic beliefs with other aspects of their role identities, this study explored exchanges between these teaching artists’ onto-epistemologies, other aspects of their role identities, and the culturally sustaining context for their work. Figure 1 shows this study’s conceptual framework, which integrates these perspectives with our research question’s foci.
Conceptual diagram of teaching artists’ dynamic systems of culturally sustaining role identities.
Methodology
This is a qualitative case study of the Culturally Sustaining Multigenerational Afterschool Arts program (CSMAA program, a pseudonym) at a community school in Los Angeles. Specifically, we highlight the experiences of the early-career teaching artists who taught in the CSMAA program. In this section we provide a contextual overview of the CSMAA program and its teaching artists. We then detail our methodologic processes for engaging with study participants, collecting and analyzing data, and reflecting on our own positionalities.
Context: CSMAA Program Overview
The CSMAA program was held at a Title I community school in Los Angeles from 2015 until 2021. The community school was established through a partnership between the school district and the university; the CSMAA program was one of many initiatives to grow from the partners’ mutual commitment to whole-child (and whole-family) supports for learning in and beyond the classroom. Five years after the school’s founding, the CSMAA program was established through a collaboration between the community school administrators and the director of the university’s undergraduate arts education program. Several local factors informed its creation. The after-school culture on the community school campus was notably vibrant and multigenerational. Many parents convened outside the classrooms, waiting for their children to finish various after-school programs, and eventually expressed an interest in participating themselves. In response to this interest, the school and university-affiliated partners founded the CSMAA program with the shared mission of extending the asset-based and equity-driven school culture into this multigenerational arts program. In the CSMAA program, entire families were invited to engage in arts projects that built on their cultural and creative strengths, and undergraduate teaching artists were invited to apply their learnings about social justice arts education in this multigenerational learning community.
The CSMAA program served families from low-income, immigrant backgrounds, reflecting the demographics of the community school where it was held. In 2-hour weekly sessions held throughout the school year, this bilingual (Spanish/English) after-school program brought families together around co-constructed art projects that honored home cultures, explored new artistic skills and identities, and promoted creative agency among lifelong learners. The program was designed to be inclusive and accessible: free of charge (all program costs were covered by grants and donor gifts) and welcoming of regular attendees and walk-ins of all ages (including students of the community school and their siblings, parents, grandparents, and guardians), prior artistic experience not required. The attending families brought with them diverse creative interests, skills, and personalities. A few families attended regularly and engaged deeply as core community members; others attended less frequently or for a shorter period (a single academic year, for instance). Some sat with their own families or friend groups and mingled less frequently with others. Others became leaders within the group, binding all the families and friends together.
Between 2015 and 2021, the social dynamics and curriculum evolved in response to the interests of the families, skill sets of the teaching artists, and needs and schedule of the community school. Although the lessons were designed and implemented primarily by the university undergraduate teaching artists (supervised by the university arts faculty), several participating parents with specific skills or interests were invited to lead the whole CSMAA community in their own art projects. Parent-led projects often were creative cultural practices that had been passed down through generations. For example, the annual
When instruction transitioned online during the COVID-19 pandemic, these social bonds were tested. Some families struggled to fit remote art lessons in their family schedules and understandably stressful circumstances; others continued prioritizing their participation despite the challenges. Again, the community school, families, teaching artists, and the university’s undergraduate arts education program partnered to navigate this pivot. The school helped families manage the technical requirements of learning remotely, providing laptops, tablets, and Wi-Fi access as needed. The university’s undergraduate arts education program provided free grab-and-go art kits each week, along with synchronous and asynchronous remote art-making lessons, ensuring that the CSMAA program would continue during this time. CSMAA families also created a private Facebook group, where families and teaching artists stayed connected, shared their artwork created in CSMAA program remote lessons, and made sure that other community members were staying safe and healthy.
Despite the challenges of the pandemic, the throughline of the CSMAA program—both in person and remotely—was the teaching artists’ care for this community. Although several teams of teaching artists had come and gone during the program’s early years, they shared a common goal of adapting to meet the needs of the CSMAA families. Meanwhile, they continued to grow as teachers, cultivating their teaching practices while committed to the CSMAA program’s inclusive values and aims.
The CSMAA program was funded initially by a university grant supporting innovative and equity-driven teaching and learning programs throughout Los Angeles. The grant covered hourly wages for university teaching artists, arts materials, and healthy snacks. Due to continued community interest in the program, subsequent iterations of the CSMAA program were funded through fundraising campaigns and private donors.
Participants in the Study
This study foregrounds the experiences of CSMAA program teaching artists. All teaching artists who participated in this study (n = 8) taught in the CSMAA program either as undergraduate students or as recent alumni/ae of the undergraduate arts education program that cofounded the CSMAA program in partnership with the community school.
Situated in a public research university’s school of the arts, the undergraduate arts education program strives to prepare culturally equitable teaching artists. As a noncredentialing teaching artist preparation program, it offers an undergraduate minor in arts education, supporting undergraduate students through experiential learning opportunities in courses and community engagement as they begin their teaching careers.
Before teaching in the CSMAA program, all study participants had completed the undergraduate arts education minor’s core requirement: a sequence of three experiential learning courses. The sequence began with an introductory course on arts education theory and history. In the second course, undergraduate students observed and then designed a series of lessons for their assigned K–12 classrooms in nearby schools. In the sequence’s third and final course, undergraduate students taught their K–12 arts lessons during regular school days, all under the supervision of a credentialed teacher and with guidance from a university lecturer. In addition to this sequence, the arts education program offered elective courses emphasizing equity, inclusion, and social justice in the arts and education (e.g., arts-based activism, race and ethnicity in education, arts for students with disabilities, and others), although the program had not yet adopted an explicit focus on culturally sustaining pedagogies at the time of the study. Additionally, all study participants were arts majors and/or had a considerable background in one or more art forms, but most were just beginning to integrate their arts experience into a teaching practice.
Although the undergraduate arts education program equipped study participants with some experience in arts curriculum design and K–12 teaching, there were notable differences between their student teaching assignments and teaching in the CSMAA program. For example, whereas undergraduate student teaching occurred in K–12 classrooms during the regular school day, the CSMAA program was held after school with multigenerational families. As student teaching artists, study participants taught children or adolescents in assigned K–12 classrooms; in the CSMAA program, teaching artists worked with family members who were sometimes decades older than them. As student teaching artists, they chose the scope and sequence of their lessons based on their own personal interests. In the CSMAA program, teaching artists were expected to do so in response to the interests of CSMAA families. Student teaching artists taught monolingually in English, but the CSMAA program called for bilingual (English and Spanish) teaching and engagement with families. Considering these distinctions, teaching in the CSMAA program was an opportunity to apply and extend their knowledge and skills beyond their undergraduate coursework. Most study participants had limited or no prior teaching experience beyond their student teaching; CSMAA program teaching roles were, in most cases, formative early experiences for these burgeoning teaching artists.
Having completed all or most of their courses for the arts education minor—and having demonstrated their interest in gaining professional experience in teaching artistry—all study participants were hired by the undergraduate arts education program and were paid for their work as teaching artists in the CSMAA program. Each teaching artist was hired to coteach alongside one other teaching artist under the supervision of university arts education faculty and the university arts education program’s community engagement coordinator, with administrative support from the academic program coordinator. The duration of each teaching artist’s tenure in the CSMAA program varied based on the teaching artist’s interest and availability, as shown in Table 1. This paid teaching role therefore was a chance for these early-career teaching artists to apply their own artistic knowledge and concepts and skills they had learned in their student teaching with multigenerational families in this after-school setting. Details about the participants and their involvement in the CSMAA program are shown in Table 1. Further details about their backgrounds are shown in Table 2.
Timeline of Study Participants’ Involvement in the CSMAA Program
Participants’ Self-reported Race, Ethnicity, a Spanish Language Proficiency, b Major
Races and ethnicities reported here were self-identified by participants.
Language proficiency levels are interpreted from participants’ responses and reported here based on the American Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages Proficiency Guidelines (ACTFL, 2012).
Case Study Methodology
We used embedded case study methodology (Stake, 1995; Yin, 2014) to study teaching artists’ onto-epistemic explorations in the CSMAA program. We investigated how the context of the CSMAA program related to, interacted with, and in some cases extended teaching artists’ onto-epistemic beliefs and other aspects of their role identities. Although study participants had previously taught in other settings as student teaching artists (and have worked in other roles and settings since their CSMAA program participation), this case study focused primarily on teaching artists’ CSMAA program experiences to understand how they reflected and interacted with onto-epistemic beliefs cultivated during their time as CSMAA program teaching artists. In doing so, we examined teaching artists’ onto-epistemic beliefs both about and beyond the program, anchoring our analyses in teaching artists’ roles in the context of the CSMAA program. This situated, context-bound approach guided our investigation of how these teaching artists integrated their undergraduate experiential learning, onto-epistemic beliefs, and new teaching experiences in the CSMAA program.
Data Collection
This study triangulated data collected in interviews with early-career teaching artists and program staff, along with other program artifacts collected between 2015 and 2021. Semistructured interviews (30–45 minutes each) were conducted in the fall of 2021 via Zoom with teaching artists and staff who taught and/or worked in the program between 2015 and 2021. During the interviews, study participants were asked to reflect on their time as teaching artists in the CSMAA program and/or coordinating the program. The semistructured interviews focused on their experiences working with CSMAA families and other teaching artists, exploring complex identities in the CSMAA program (including their own) and intersections with other beliefs about teaching, learning, artmaking, or community engagement in the CSMAA program (see Appendix A for the semistructured interview protocol). These interviews were transcribed and member checked. Additional program artifacts included artwork created during lessons led by CSMAA program teaching artists, written reflections authored by CSMAA program teaching artists while teaching in the CSMAA program, video recordings of teaching artists while they were teaching, and administrative records documenting program attendance and personnel changes over the years. For additional details about these artifacts, see Table 3. Artifacts were purposively selected for analysis based on exemplifying teaching artists’ involvement and role identities around teaching, learning, and community engagement.
Data Sources and Program Artifacts
Data Analysis
The interviews and other artifacts were analyzed deductively and inductively. Most deductive codes were created in alignment with the DSMRI
We also used inductive techniques to identify codes, categories, and themes around the two foci of this study: (a) teaching and learning and (b) community engagement. We began our inductive analytic process by identifying in vivo keywords and phrases from the data, grouping together similar excerpts under inductive codes, forming categories of codes, and ultimately constructing themes to summarize those categories (Naeem et al., 2023). For this study’s onto-epistemic purposes, we used a modified values coding scheme (Saldaña, 2016) to represent participants’ values (i.e., enduring onto-epistemic convictions about the nature and importance of various forms of knowledge, creative practices, or cultural systems), attitudes (i.e., orientations toward various ways of being, knowing, or creating), and beliefs (i.e., sentiments about ways of being, knowing, or creating that integrate participants’ personal morals, situated observations, or lived experiences; Saldaña, 2016). We then grouped codes into categories by domain (i.e., either teaching and learning or community engagement) and setting (i.e., either within or beyond the CSMAA program). Finally, we constructed themes to summarize the collective meanings derived from the data, keywords, codes, and categories. These themes constituted the central claims made in our findings. Our analytic process is shown in the selected exemplar data, codes, categories, and themes shown in Figure 2a–d. Throughout this process, we engaged in ongoing dialogue to iteratively interpret the data and develop our codes, categories, and themes, documenting our process in analytic memos.
Thematic analysis with exemplars, inductive codes, definitions, and categories.
Positionality
Lindsey T. Kunisaki
My engagement with this study has been shaped by my personal and professional identities and my own epistemic stance. As an alumna and current employee of the undergraduate program where these teaching artists studied, I have taken similar academic courses and taught at the same school site under study, albeit in a different bilingual program that had neither multigenerational nor culturally sustaining aims. As a result of this enduring affiliation, prior to the study, I was already familiar with some of the participants and vice versa to varying degrees. I built on this rapport where it was helpful in the interview process, but to prevent our familiarity from leading me toward any undue assumptions, I made intentional efforts to bracket my preconceptions about participants’ beliefs and experiences (Van Manen, 1990).
Aside from this professional role, I also cofounded a multigenerational, culturally sustaining mentorship program devoted to the reclamation of Japanese diasporic musical heritage, an issue of personal significance to me as a fourth-generation Japanese American. I acknowledge that these identities and experiences drew both common threads and key distinctions between the participants and myself.
My approach to this study also was informed by my onto-epistemic beliefs and their proximity to the epistemology of complex dynamic systems (Allen & Varga, 2007; Strom & Viesca, 2021). In particular, the conceptual framing of this study and its analyses reflected my interest in the interconnectedness of axio-onto-epistemological beliefs and their mutual influence on actions and experiences (Allen & Varga, 2007). I brought these perspectives to this study with an acknowledgment of the important ways that they orient my understanding of these teaching artists’ beliefs and experiences.
Kevin M. Kane
As the director of the undergraduate arts program that trained the teaching artists and sponsored the arts program under study, I codesigned and oversaw the afterschool program. As such, I supervised the curriculum and instruction, regularly attended the program, often made art alongside the participants, and was known by most or all in attendance. As a university arts faculty member, I also directed the undergraduate curriculum and taught courses in the undergraduate arts education program that trained the teaching artists in this study.
I identify as a White male and a native English speaker with many years of experience teaching in public schools and community settings and coordinating arts programs. My formal training as an artist was in the performing arts: primarily theater arts and dance. I understand that my racial identity and leadership role (both at the university and at community school) conferred power and privilege, situating me outside the core school community of parents and families. Mediating this outsider status, I also identify as being a member of a low-income immigrant family and a first-generation college student. I acknowledge my close empathetic relationship to the program and its participating families, the teaching artists, and the school under study.
Findings and Discussion
The CSMAA program functioned as a space for teaching artists to dynamically explore their onto-epistemic beliefs about teaching, learning, and community engagement. Teaching artists mutually influenced the CSMAA program’s sociocultural environment; the pedagogy, multigenerational relationships, arts lessons, and other community projects were imbued with their beliefs, and their experiences in this environment prompted exploration of their role identities. Teaching artists deepened their understandings of their onto-epistemic beliefs and other elements of their role identities in teaching, learning, and community engagement.
Building on this study’s conceptual framework, findings are presented at two levels: (a) within the CSMAA program and (b) beyond the CSMAA program, with the former nested within the latter. In these contexts, findings highlight the interplay between teaching artists’ onto-epistemic beliefs and other components of the DSMRI: purposes and goals, self-perceptions and self-definitions, and perceived action possibilities (Kaplan & Garner, 2017).
Teaching and Learning
The culturally sustaining environment in the CSMAA program affirmed teaching artists’ critical and constructivist onto-epistemic beliefs interpersonally within the CSMAA program and sociopolitically beyond the CSMAA program. Onto-epistemic beliefs around teaching and learning interacted with teaching artists’ purposes and goals, leading them toward perceived action possibilities of reciprocal learning within the CSMAA program and honoring and extending cultural assets beyond the CSMAA program.
Critical Constructivist Onto-epistemologies and Goals within the CSMAA Program
Within the CSMAA program, teaching artists’ onto-epistemic beliefs that their lessons could build on the CSMAA community’s artistic and cultural knowledge converged with their goals of making these lessons relevant and engaging for CSMAA families. Teaching artists’ asset-based onto-epistemic beliefs, purposes, and goals facilitated the emergence of the perceived action possibility (and real practice) of reciprocal learning in the CSMAA program.
Many teaching artists expressed critical and constructivist onto-epistemic beliefs about nonhierarchical teacher–learner relations and critical constructivist teaching and learning. Because most had limited prior teaching experience, their roles as CSMAA teaching artists offered formative opportunities to explore and enact those onto-epistemic beliefs. In some cases, those beliefs had been cultivated in their undergraduate studies. One teaching artist, Amber, explicitly mentioned Freire’s (1970) critique of the transactional banking method of teaching, later stating her onto-epistemic stance: “I don’t really believe in the hierarchy of teaching artist and student. We’re all learning together; we’re all creating together and sharing skills and . . . creative ideas and things.” Here Amber expressed a rejection of the imbalanced power dynamics between teacher and student, favoring a more egalitarian climate for teaching, learning, and artmaking. Her notion that all have skills worth sharing suggests both a constructivist stance and an epistemological belief that learners’ prior artistic abilities were assets in the learning environment. Other teaching artists shared such beliefs, resulting in norms that Victoria described as “atypical” of a “traditional” classroom. She explained: It’s not as didactic as, like, there’s one leader. . . . it’s not even leadership. It’s just communal. And it . . . became . . . a democratized classroom space where you could really share knowledge and language and materials beyond, like, traditional structures. . . . I loved it! It was like, “Yes! This is exactly why we do what we do!”
Victoria’s ontological belief in the CSMAA program becoming a “democratized” space is an example of the dynamic exchange between teaching artists’ onto-epistemic beliefs and the sociocultural environments they fostered. Victoria was one of the founding teaching artists of the CSMAA program; what the program eventually became largely reflects the values and beliefs that she—along with other teaching artists and program staff—established as the early norms of the CSMAA program.
Although photos, videos, and lesson plans collected during and after Victoria’s and Amber’s time evidenced some moments of direct instruction akin to the didactic classrooms Victoria described, CSMAA teaching artists’ beliefs in the value of families’ prior knowledge and skills also were evident in the purposes and goals they articulated in interviews and in their lesson plans. Teaching artists’ goals included centering relevant content and using materials that were widely available and appropriate for all ages. In interviews, Brenda, Brandon, Marisol, and Victoria expressed goals to make lessons “relevant” (Brenda and Brandon) or “accessible” (Marisol and Victoria), bridging their own artistic backgrounds to the CSMAA context in ways that reflected—rather than directed—the interests of the CSMAA families. In retrospective interviews, these teaching artists explained how they integrated these goals with their onto-epistemic valuing of CSMAA families’ cultural assets. For example, as Victoria codesigned early CSMAA lessons with her coteaching artist (Cristina), Victoria dismissed the idea of imposing content from her university art training, instead favoring ceramics as a medium that is “tied culturally to so many people,” as she stated in an interview: We had to think about what types of materials we’re bringing, what type of artmaking we’re bringing. . . . It was very much like, “Hey, we have to really think about what [will] be engaging . . . [if] this is gonna become a conversation.” The artmaking is part of the conversation. Making the art is a way of dialoguing, especially because there were some language barriers.
The selective choice of materials, Victoria reasoned, was an action possibility that could allow the aforementioned “democratized classroom space” to emerge. By making lessons relevant (i.e., resonant with families’ interests) and accessible (i.e., using affordable materials and incorporating relatable concepts), Victoria and other teaching artists put their familiarity with artistic processes into dialogue with CSMAA families’ interests and assets. These perceived (and practiced) action possibilities integrated teaching artists’ constructivist onto-epistemic beliefs and goals of relevance and accessibility.
The critical content of their onto-epistemic beliefs intersected with those purposes and goals in the actions of reciprocal learning. This was seen in formal and informal practices in the CSMAA program. Although formalized in the program’s annual parent-led lessons, impromptu exchanges between parents and teaching artists occurred often in and through artmaking (Kane et al., 2021). Critical constructivist onto-epistemic beliefs were seen among teaching artists such as Cristina, Marisol, and Brandon, who expressed their admiration of families (particularly mothers) whose creativity and skills extended far beyond the teaching artists’ learning objectives for the planned lessons. These teaching artists’ goals were to create opportunities for parents to impart this knowledge to their children, other families, and in some cases teaching artists. For example, a 2019 project designed by coteaching artists Marisol and Brenda invited families to create piñatas. In Marisol’s written reflection and Brenda’s retrospective interview, both recalled having difficulties in managing arts materials and giving initial instructions, which created space (even if inadvertently) for some parents to spontaneously assume leadership roles. Parents shared their artistic expertise with the whole group, recounting techniques they had learned over years of experience making piñatas (and in one case techniques specific to their hometown). Through moments like these, as well as in more formal parent-led lessons, families and teaching artists practiced reciprocal learning both spontaneously and by design. Reciprocal learning emerged in dynamic exchange with teaching artists’ onto-epistemic critical constructivist beliefs in nonhierarchical social relations and their goals of foregrounding relevant content. Interspersing parent- and teaching artist–led learning experiences affirmed the content of teaching artists’ asset-based epistemic beliefs and deepened their ontological beliefs in teaching artistry as an exchange rather than unidirectional instruction, all while promoting their goals and actualizing them in practice.
In the CSMAA program, teaching artists enacted their critical constructivist beliefs in their relationships, lesson designs, and pedagogy. Their onto-epistemic beliefs and goals in nonhierarchical teacher–learner relations translated into curriculum design for accessibility and relevance along with pedagogic practices of reciprocal learning, where instructional responsibilities were not relinquished but shared. Together these practices strengthened the culturally sustaining sociocultural environment by honoring and extending cultural assets (Paris, 2012). In turn, this environment dynamically affirmed teaching artists’ onto-epistemic beliefs and goals by providing a context to actualize them in relational and pedagogic practice.
Sociopolitical Criticality and Purposes Beyond the CSMAA Program
Teaching artists also were conscious of institutional and political power extending into the classroom; their onto-epistemic beliefs that a community’s strengths could inform teaching practices were interrelated with their goals to disrupt broader deficit narratives beyond the CSMAA program. Teaching in the CSMAA program provided an opportunity for them to reflexively interrogate these institutional and political power dynamics and explore action possibilities to reframe them.
Critical sociopolitical onto-epistemic beliefs about teaching artistry beyond the CSMAA program were anchored in their recognition of the epistemic power dynamics between universities and communities; study participants considered these dynamics in and beyond the CSMAA program. Particularly cognizant of these dynamics was Ricardo, the undergraduate arts education program’s community engagement coordinator (and former CSMAA program teaching artist). Ricardo supervised the teaching artists, attended all sessions, and often participated in or cofacilitated lessons. During an interview, Ricardo reflected on his experience supervising CSMAA program teaching artists over the years (many of whom did not participate in this study), concerned about “unbalanced” power dynamics. Ricardo noted the risk of conflating artistic skill with readiness for teaching artistry by evaluating undergraduates based on “artistic perspectives, artistic vision, artistic talents . . . but not focusing on the teaching.” He continued: “The teaching is the element that really needs to be strengthened because . . . they’re literally being accepted into [the university] because of artistic portfolio, rather than what [the undergraduate arts education program] is, which is . . . directly impacting people that are underserved.” Ricardo expressed an ontological belief that teaching artists in and beyond the CSMAA program have a responsibility to “get to know some of the challenges, some of the perspectives, some of the history . . . that really will inform [the teaching artists] . . . once they go into the classroom.” Ricardo encouraged CSMAA program teaching artists to build relationships with entire families. Remembering his own time as a teaching artist in the CSMAA program, Ricardo recalled during an interview, “the relationship has been one of friendship to begin with and then teacher.” As a supervisor of all CSMAA program teaching artists, Ricardo integrated this ontological belief with his goal to model these relational practices and promote reflection on these dynamics in and beyond the CSMAA program.
Some teaching artists were especially reflexive, engaging with the sociopolitical and onto-epistemic dimensions of their positionalities as university art students. As Guillermo noted, “We are an embodiment . . . of [the university] wherever we go. . . . I think that it’s important . . . to be mindful of where we’re stepping into and not come in . . . as a colonizer . . . saying, ‘This is how it is. This is what it is.’” To counter these colonial power dynamics, Guillermo underscored his goals to get to know CSMAA families, having learned from prior teaching experience the importance of “not being shy or afraid to open up and speak up and connect with the community,” as noted in an interview. Guillermo’s prior experience afforded relational action possibilities that were well aligned with his own relational goals and Ricardo’s. When Guillermo entered the CSMAA program as a new teaching artist, he followed Ricardo’s example, seeking to build relationships of his own by engaging bilingually in “open conversation,” stated in an interview. In that same interview, Guillermo noted that these efforts also were strengthened by his ontological belief that “being from the community, from Los Angeles, . . . I felt like that’s something that I also brought to the table, because you understand your people. Like you understand the culture.” This self-perception and ontological belief in his place-based and cultural connections—coupled with his ontological belief about university-affiliated teaching artists and relational goals and actions—oriented his valuing of the culturally sustaining lessons in the CSMAA program. He recalled supporting a lesson led by his coteaching artist: “He had one where he was drawing
Guillermo’s comments and experiences show how he situated his own university-affiliated positionality within broader systemic histories of colonization. Here he negotiated tensions between the colonial politics of university-initiated community engagement, his own onto-epistemic beliefs, and goals of relational resistance to those power dynamics. First, he acknowledged his ontological ties to the university (as an undergraduate art student at the time) and, by extension, the colonial history represented by others like it. He also positioned two intentional action possibilities in resistance to that history: (a) cultivating familiarity with the specific community context and (b) promoting distributive agency in teaching and learning. Guillermo’s intentional approach and consciousness of the political implications resonate with what Hicks Peterson (2018) has described as critical, contemplative community engagement. Here, reflecting on and confronting such power dynamics is an ethical responsibility of university-affiliated individuals (e.g., college students like Guillermo) as they enter historically marginalized community spaces. Of particular interest is his resistance to what Dotson (2014) described as epistemic oppression, where the epistemologies (and in this case aesthetic values) of university art programs are inequitably valued over others. Guillermo’s recognition of such hegemonies and his purposeful goal to dismantle them in his teaching practice reflect his decolonial onto-epistemology (Boveda & Bhattacharya, 2019). For him, a critical, contemplative (Hicks Peterson, 2018) practice of teaching artistry is his way of understanding and enacting anticoloniality as a university student in and beyond the CSMAA program.
Although only Guillermo explicitly mentioned anti-/decoloniality, others held similarly critical onto-epistemic beliefs, as seen in shared goals and purposes of disrupting deficit-based narratives about communities who, like many in the CSMAA program, were predominantly Latino/a and from low-income, immigrant backgrounds. Holding many of those identities herself, Marisol reflected: A lot of my work is really highlighting the strengths that already exist in our community that are usually deemed as things that aren’t strengths. . . . it’s important for us to tell those stories and for other people to see that our work can be beautiful, too.
Marisol’s comments suggest a conception of both inward- and outward-facing purposes as a teaching artist. Within the CSMAA program, her critical-constructivist epistemology moved her toward asset-based action possibilities and relationships. She also viewed that purpose as a responsibility extending beyond the learning space, with a goal of confronting broader public perceptions of communities like the CSMAA program and, as she noted, like her own.
Marisol put these beliefs and goals into action in her 2018 lesson plan (and 2021 remote artmaking video tutorial) for a CSMAA art project taking a critical approach to
Marisol brought this critical approach to the CSMAA version of
Although the families’ artwork did not explicitly confront the “racist and sexist stereotypes” Marisol sought to critique, the design of the lesson demonstrates Marisol’s intent to link her critical purposes and goals to perceived action possibilities. Reflecting on the project during an interview, Marisol later explained her goal: “The focus was really on highlighting individuals and their strengths . . . because I think it’s something we don’t really think about.” For Marisol, centering CSMAA families’ identities was itself an act of resistance to the deficit-based erasure of their strengths. Further, she viewed this action possibility as a way to fortify a collective appreciation of these strengths, where “everyone has their own contributions and [they’re] seeing your work in like this piece that everyone co-created.” As Appendix B shows, the families chose to reimagine
Within the CSMAA program, Marisol’s critical-constructivist conception of her role conferred a sense of responsibility to honor and deepen existing assets within the CSMAA program, whereas her broader purpose beyond the CSMAA program was to harness the arts to disrupt deficit narratives about communities like this. In this case, she sought to do so in the CSMAA program by reimagining racism and misogyny in
Within and beyond the CSMAA program, teaching artists’ constructivist and critical onto-epistemic beliefs intersected with their goals, purposes, and actions in teaching and learning. To mitigate the role of power in the CSMAA program, teaching artists reimagined teacher–learner hierarchies within CSMAA- and university-community hierarchies beyond the CSMAA program. They enacted their critical constructivist beliefs through reciprocal learning within the CSMAA program and by uplifting cultural and linguistic assets to disrupt deficit narratives beyond the CSMAA program. Their beliefs and actions also were grounded in goals of relevance within the CSMAA program and asset-based purposes beyond the CSMAA program. These elements dynamically interacted with each other and with the sociocultural environment of the CSMAA program. The process of cultivating these beliefs bears some similarity to Strom and Viesca’s (2021) framework of teacher learning practice, particularly in its blurred boundaries between teacher–learner roles, emphasis on politics and situatedness of learning, and collective agency in teaching and learning. This model’s titular concept of learning practice is how teachers both enact the initial conditions of their teaching (e.g., asset-based and critical onto-epistemologies) and shape those beliefs to inform further practice (Strom & Viesca, 2021). For these early-career teaching artists, doing so in the CSMAA program was hopefully a springboard toward a future of culturally sustaining teaching artistry.
Community Engagement
Onto-epistemic beliefs about community engagement were interrelated with teaching artists’ self-perceptions and self-definitions. Teaching artists’ ontological beliefs about belonging within communities where they teach were informed by self-perceptions of their cultural and linguistic identities. Their onto-epistemic beliefs around reciprocity also were shaped by their self-definitions in relation to communities like and beyond the CSMAA program; teaching artists enacted these beliefs in their culturally sustaining relational practices and reflections.
Onto-epistemologies of Belongingness and Self-perceptions Within the CSMAA Program
As teaching artists engaged with the CSMAA community, they grappled with difference and discovered connections in language and culture. Teaching artists’ initial self-perceptions and onto-epistemic beliefs about belongingness shaped their expectations about community engagement in the CSMAA program. Dualist ontological beliefs about belongingness contrasted with holist ontologies of belongingness; whereas dualists believed belongingness to be a duality of insiders and outsiders divided by difference, holists believed belongingness to arise from the coexistence of similarities and differences because all community members’ intersectional identities comprised intersectional parts and complex wholes. Among the teaching artists, dualist and holist ontological beliefs often corresponded with self-perceptions. Some entered the CSMAA program as self-perceived outsiders concerned about overcoming linguistic and cultural differences; these teaching artists often held dualist ontological beliefs about belongingness. Others were eager to build on perceived linguistic and cultural commonalities while still acknowledging differences between CSMAA families’ identities and their own; these teaching artists held more holist ontological beliefs about belongingness. Teaching artists who held dualist self-perceptions recalled a shift in their beliefs. Their comments suggest that self-perceptions shifted toward a more holist ontology of belongingness, integrating multiple aspects of their intersectional identities. These recalled changes often were accompanied by an expanded set of action possibilities to cultivate belongingness through community engagement.
Dualist ontological beliefs framed belongingness in terms of insiders and outsiders, largely based on perceived cultural and linguistic “barriers,” as multiple teaching artists described it in interviews. Dualist ontological beliefs and outsider self-perceptions were expressed by teaching artists who spoke little to no Spanish and/or did not identify as Latino/a; they worried about cultural and linguistic difference as an obstacle to their belongingness in the CSMAA program. In interviews, multiple teaching artists noted early “anxiety” about entering the CSMAA program from this self-perceived outsider position.
As teaching artists recalled, despite initial concerns prior to their arrival in the CSMAA program, dualist ontological beliefs and outsider self-perceptions shifted as teaching artists engaged more deeply with the CSMAA program’s sociocultural environment. For example, early in his tenure with the CSMAA program, Brandon mentioned in a written reflection that he “feared [he] would be an outsider” (Amber and Brenda shared similar sentiments during their interviews). In an interview, Brandon described feeling that he would “have to prove in a different way that [he] could be someone that they could find in their community, even if [he didn’t] . . . have some of the initial cultural or language relationships.” Brandon’s concerns about belonging were linguistic, cultural, social, and curricular, which he articulated in an interview. Not speaking Spanish, he expressed unease about a “language barrier” and his “lack of cultural understanding,” wondering whether and how he would build relationships with the families. All this was compounded by his uncertainty about the adequacy and “relevance” of the lessons he had planned. For Brandon and others, finding belongingness in the CSMAA program would require confronting these multifaceted concerns—and, relatedly, their outsider self-perceptions and dualist beliefs about the ontology of belonging.
The sociocultural environment of the CSMAA program was a formative context for exploring these concerns, perceptions, and beliefs. Recalling his introduction to the CSMAA program during an interview, Brandon recounted his relief at discovering that CSMAA families “were, from the onset, so incredibly welcoming . . . to such a great degree that I never felt like I was like alienated in any way.” Encouraged by families’ “warm and receptive” feedback on his early lessons, he initially worked most closely with CSMAA children while his coteaching artist (a Spanish speaker) engaged with their parents. Over time, Brandon related to some parents by reflecting on his own experiences as an immigrant, despite his Taiwanese origins and theirs from Mexico or parts of Central America. Further, curriculum and pedagogy emerged as action possibilities toward understanding the CSMAA community’s artistic interests. Perceiving himself to be “an artist that really likes to think about the nitty-gritty processes of artmaking” (as stated in an interview), Brandon realized that his technical abilities were well aligned with CSMAA families’ interest in specific artmaking skills. Brandon’s recollections suggest that with this realization emerged the action possibility of connecting with community members first through their artwork and eventually about life beyond the CSMAA program.
This action possibility was brought to fruition in Brandon’s reported online interactions with community members following the pivot to emergency remote teaching at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Brandon recalled being guided by the advice of program staff (i.e., Ricardo) and his own observations as he came to recognize CSMAA community members’ interest in building technical artistic skills, as well as the CSMAA program’s culturally sustaining history. He designed projects that introduced new artistic techniques while prompting reflection on their identities and everyday lives (e.g., a stop-motion animated mural that expressed individual and collective identities, as shown in his lesson plans). As families shared their work through the CSMAA Facebook group (created to supplement remote artmaking lessons via Zoom and YouTube), Brandon gradually bonded with them, even while teaching and learning occurred at a necessary distance. Although interviews, photos, and videos from pre-COVID times show teaching artists such as Cristina, Victoria, Marisol, and Brenda initiating impromptu conversations with families in person, Brandon used the social media group to engage with them. During an interview, Brandon described his social media engagement as a “passive means” to stay connected with CSMAA families. He explained: “I ‘liked’ their image, I put a comment in, it was very passive—but that was my attempt to try and still keep them in my mind.” These efforts, along with his instruction via Zoom, laid the groundwork for relationships with families that extended beyond their CSMAA program artmaking. Brandon recounted his surprised satisfaction over an unexpected moment of reconnection with one of the CSMAA families: One time I stayed after one of the classes because a parent had a question about the lesson, and they ended up talking to me about their kid’s college acceptance. That was a kid I met two years ago. . . . And I was like, “Oh, I’m so glad you told me about this! You didn’t have to!”
For Brandon, this parent’s willingness to share this news reflected at least two important indicators of his relationship with the family. First, his prior encounter with the student had made a memorable impression on the parent, too. Additionally, the news of this student’s college acceptance, while certainly worthy of celebration, landed as a pleasant surprise beyond Brandon’s expected scope of interaction with the family. Although this instance demonstrates a bond with only one of many families in the CSMAA program, burgeoning social ties like these eased Brandon’s worries about his self-perceived outsider status and supported an emerging sense of belongingness in the CSMAA community.
As Brandon recalled, this shift in self-perception as a community member came together with his identities as an immigrant, artist, and teacher, suggesting a more dialectical critical realist understanding of his identity. In these dialectical critical realist self-perceptions, intersectional aspects of their identities were both deeply interconnected and separable (Crenshaw, 1991; Gunnarsson, 2017). In this view, the interconnected-yet-separable parts and whole self were mutually constitutive; with a more nuanced conception of identity came more ample opportunities to find belongingness within the community. While Brandon and others acknowledged these aspects of their identities as interdependent parts of their whole selves, viewing them separately revealed common ground with community members. Recognizing the coexistence of commonalities and distinctions signaled a shift in their ontological beliefs about belongingness from dualism toward holism. Rather than the dualist conception of belongingness as insiders versus outsiders, a holist ontology of belongingness casts the whole and interdependent parts of identity as mutually defining each other (Kaplan & Garner, 2017; Witherington, 2015), affording more possibilities to cultivate belongingness across difference.
In contrast, among teaching artists who identified as Latino/a and/or spoke Spanish, dualist ontological conceptions of belongingness were less common; they did not, from the outset, view themselves as insiders per se. While acknowledging some linguistic and cultural commonalities between themselves and the CSMAA families, many teaching artists expressed a need to gain acceptance into the existing CSMAA program sociocultural environment. For example, despite using first-person pronouns when speaking about the CSMAA program in a retrospective interview, Marisol described her first few weeks of teaching there as “intimidating,” noting a sense that she “had [big] shoes to fill.” Here she alluded to the fact that she and her coteaching artist (Brenda) were newcomers to a social space that their predecessors (i.e., Cristina and Victoria) had co-constructed with CSMAA families. Neither of the newcomers assumed that they would be accepted simply based on shared cultural or linguistic heritage. Similarly, other teaching artists were conscious of distinctions that set them apart from CSMAA families. For example, Cristina had much in common with many CSMAA parents—being a mother and native Spanish speaker and having immigrated from Mexico—but acknowledged her positionality as a university art student. Brenda, while identifying as Mexican American, felt only distantly connected culturally and linguistically, being fourth generation and not speaking much Spanish. Guillermo, also a parent, native Spanish speaker, and of Mexican descent, recognized himself to be a newcomer to the rich relational context of the CSMAA program. These teaching artists approached the CSMAA program with ontological beliefs about belongingness that accounted for intersectional identities, similarities, and differences. These teaching artists acknowledged and sought to connect across differences, as has been found among other classroom teachers of color working with Black, Indigenous, and People of Color students (Achinstein & Aguirre, 2008; Borrero et al., 2016; Kraehe, 2012; Maddamsetti, 2020).
While shared cultural and linguistic characteristics did not confer insider status by default, they did highlight differences in some teaching artists’ emotional orientation toward belongingness in the CSMAA program. In contrast with self-perceived “outsiders,” for whom cultural and linguistic differences brought a sense of “anxiety,” teaching artists who shared some cultural or linguistic characteristics with CSMAA families were, as Cristina put it in an interview, “really excited.” Reflecting on her early days in the CSMAA program, she explained her eagerness: I really like the idea of it being multigenerational, . . . and I think it had to do with a personal thing with my family. . . . I know that my grandma, my mom, and my auntie . . . really enjoyed making things. However, I feel like they didn’t really have the time or the space to do those things, . . . so to me, thinking of offering a program for the children and their parents . . . I always thought like . . . if [a program like this] had been offered to my school, my mom would have definitely taken advantage of it.
Cristina’s personal connection suggests a self-perceived similarity to CSMAA families. Her experiences of immigration, parenthood, and family artmaking were central to her self-definition; she stated in an interview that it “marked the way that I view the world that I work in, the way that I raise my child, . . . [and it] informs my teaching all the time and influences my life.” These elements of her self-definition meant that she had much in common with CSMAA families (especially mothers) despite the university affiliation that set her apart from them. While acknowledging her university-affiliated positionality, other aspects of Cristina’s self-definition were more salient to her sense of belongingness in the CSMAA program: “I felt like I was part of the community. . . . I didn’t feel like I’m this art student coming here,” she stated in an interview. For Cristina and others, differences (e.g., university affiliations) were not barriers to belongingness altogether. A holist ontology of belongingness, coupled with a dialectical critical realist self-definition, rendered identities intersectional, composed of interconnected-yet-separable parts from which relationships could grow (Crenshaw, 1991; Gunnarsson, 2017).
Shared language and culture also offered relational action possibilities for other teaching artists, revealing variations in their ontological beliefs about belongingness. Guillermo expressed an ontological belief that “language is key” to establishing rapport in the CSMAA learning community: Showing them that you are familiar with the language, that you can communicate in their native tongue, really helped. They opened up more. So when I spoke in Spanish, they really were . . . more receptive to what I had to say and more attentive.
Guillermo activated shared language to find belongingness among CSMAA families, as was also mentioned by Cristina, Ricardo, and Marisol. For Guillermo, shared language created additional action possibilities to promote families’ engagement with the lesson, which he believed to be essential to his belongingness as a teaching artist.
Some teaching artists also activated shared culture to cultivate CSMAA program relationships, particularly with parents. When asked about this, Ricardo responded: Perhaps it was the way I was raised . . . and also being an immigrant from a predominantly Latinx upbringing. . . . My connection to community has always involved family, . . . I always wanted to ensure that I made a connection with the parents so they knew my story.
In Ricardo’s view, parental connections were ontologically essential to belongingness in the CSMAA program. While recognizing that some aspects of his “story” might differ from theirs, Ricardo built on his shared familial and cultural upbringing to connect with the CSMAA families and advised the teaching artists that he supervised to do the same.
Teaching artists of all backgrounds recognized the complexity of CSMAA families’ identities and their own. As study participants recalled, dualist ontological beliefs, outsider self-perceptions, and anxious emotional states shifted toward holist ontologies of belongingness and more integrative self-perceptions. In contrast, shared language and culture were associated with more holist ontologies of belongingness from the outset, which became grounds for exploring intersectional self-definitions. Commonalities became assets activated through relational action possibilities toward belongingness, and differences added to the cultural and linguistic pluralism of the culturally sustaining environment.
Onto-epistemologies of Reciprocity and Self-Definitions Beyond the CSMAA Program
In reckoning with their self-definitions as university-affiliated teaching artists, study participants described reframing service as reciprocity and explored action possibilities to resist saviorist power dynamics in their community-engagement practices beyond the CSMAA program. As this section shows, onto-epistemic reflections on the broader power dynamics between universities and communities raised questions about the roles of community-engaged teaching artistry—particularly university-affiliated teaching artistry—in settings like and beyond the CSMAA program. For other teaching artists, community engagement in the CSMAA program also prompted reckoning with their artistic self-definitions as their CSMAA program experiences shaped other undergraduate experiences outside of the CSMAA program. In onto-epistemic reflection toward critical action possibilities, teaching artists explored the intersections of their university-affiliated positionalities, undergraduate experiences, and broader responsibilities to the communities where they teach, including and beyond the CSMAA program.
Teaching artists’ onto-epistemic beliefs about community-engaged teaching artistry showed awareness of and criticality toward saviorist dynamics to varying degrees. Saviorist rhetoric has been critiqued extensively in education, university-based community engagement, and the nonprofit sector (Aronson, 2017; Helmick, 2022; Hicks Peterson, 2018). Some teaching artists seemed aware of the pervasiveness of this rhetoric and insinuated similar critiques. Reflecting on the potential for “democratic” programs like the CSMAA program to disrupt this dynamic, Victoria wondered, “How can community members find more agency in the programs designed to ‘serve’ them?” In this written reflection, Victoria’s use of quotation marks around “serve” connotes skepticism about the legitimacy of these purported services.
Other teaching artists—namely Ricardo, Marisol, and Guillermo—were more explicit in mentioning university-community power dynamics. As noted earlier, Guillermo acknowledged the potential impact of colonial power dynamics as he reckoned with his self-definition as a university art student entering the CSMAA community. Marisol described her asset-based perspective as fundamental to her teaching philosophy. Ricardo challenged saviorist beliefs and practices among the teaching artists he supervised over the years in the CSMAA program. The vernacular of giving back and serving the underserved seems unfit for the anticolonial, asset-based, and critical stances they seem to have espoused, yet similar terms were woven into some of their remarks. For example, when explaining his aims for his role in the CSMAA program, Guillermo stated: We’re here to serve, which means we’re here to help. Because to serve is also a two-sided part, it means that services are really not being offered there, and we’re there to fill the void. . . . I wanna make sure . . . that we’re filling the void and not just creating a bigger void for the community.
Guillermo’s comments distinguish between saviorist and critical orientations toward the notion of service. His earlier reference to a void evokes what Kraehe and Acuff (2013) might describe as the material conditions of underservedness, referencing the unjust distribution of goods and services (in this case time, space, and materials to engage with arts education). Guillermo—like Cristina, Marisol, and other teaching artists—was mindful of barriers to arts access for, as Cristina put it in an interview, “working families,” whose multiple jobs might create both stress and logistical barriers unless programs were specifically designed with those factors in mind. In that context, the CSMAA program fills a void of responsively designed learning experiences, not a void of cultural or artistic knowledge.
These teaching artists’ allusions to service seem less reflective of their own beliefs and more indicative of these terms’ pervasiveness in arts education and related fields (Aronson, 2017; Kraehe & Acuff, 2013; Rodriguez, 2017). The disjuncture between the teaching artists’ words and their onto-epistemic beliefs expressed elsewhere highlights the dynamic interplay between the arts education field and their own self-definitions (some of which were described as commonalities between them and CSMAA families). In another comment from that interview, Guillermo stated: “We’re from places like the community we’re serving, and we’re here giving it back.” Similarly, Marisol considered her own formative experiences participating in an arts-based neighborhood youth group, noting: “I’ve seen that space in my community. I’ve seen what it’s done for me. So how do I go ahead and do that for other people, because I know the impact that it had on me?” Marisol’s question, Guillermo’s interest in “giving back,” and Victoria’s wondering about “agency” in “democratic” community engagement suggest that their reflections on power dynamics in community engagement were extending toward action possibilities for future practice beyond the CSMAA program.
Even while adopting some aspects of the field’s problematic rhetoric, these self-definitions and self-defined ontological proximity to communities like the CSMAA community reframe notions of “service” as reciprocity. Although a testament to these teaching artists’ principles and burgeoning practices, incongruence between terms and beliefs calls teaching artist preparation programs to more directly confront saviorism in both the articulation and enactment of beliefs about community engagement.
Meanwhile, other teaching artists’ onto-epistemic reflections extended to their self-definitions as university undergraduate students beyond the CSMAA program. These teaching artists confronted epistemic and aesthetic hegemonies as they made sense of their undergraduate education and experiences in the CSMAA program. Reckoning with her self-definition as a university art student whose cultural and linguistic origins differed from those of most CSMAA families, Victoria resisted the saviorist narrative of liberating communities (Aronson, 2017; Helmick, 2022), instead stating that the CSMAA community had “liberated” her. In an interview, Victoria explained: We’re not gonna have these families recreate works of art in museums. . . . I wasn’t bringing what I was getting from a very expensive college education to [CSMAA]; . . . it was the opposite.
Rather than assuming that her knowledge as a university art student would benefit CSMAA families, Victoria recognized how teaching in the CSMAA program benefited her understanding of art and her self-definition as a community-engaged teaching artist. In that same interview, Victoria elaborated: Going to [the university] where you learn art from professors . . . and think about art in a more traditional way . . . art in the structure of the academy . . . that was my cultural context in that moment as an undergrad, . . . and honestly, teaching [in the CSMAA program] liberated me from that! [laughs] It was like, “Oh shit, classrooms don’t have to look like this, and it doesn’t have to be joyless!”
For Victoria, teaching in the CSMAA program reshaped how she learned as an undergraduate art student, raising new action possibilities for her future teaching and artmaking practice beyond the CSMAA program.
Similarly, Brenda differentiated between her experiences in the CSMAA program and at the university, finding the CSMAA program to be more resonant with her own artistic self-definition. Born and raised in East Los Angeles, her artistic pursuits were inspired by the abundance of vibrant murals in her neighborhood. During an interview, she described the jarring aesthetic and social tensions she faced at the university: I think going to [the university’s] art school has messed me up in the head. . . . When I got to [the art department], . . . I felt like everyone was speaking a language that I didn’t really understand. . . . I’m thinking about all the things that happened in critique—stuff that my professors have said to me about artwork, and how everyone tried to tell me that painting was dead when I was there.
Later in the interview, she contrasted this with the “supportive” sociocultural environment in the CSMAA program, which she described as ontologically defined by its purpose: “to build community and to be in a shared space, and to express yourself through art. . . . The fact that we were making art, like our goals have been met, you know?” Brenda’s comments illustrate how community engagement in the CSMAA program offered relief from the exclusion she faced in the university’s art department (unlike the “tight-knit community” in the arts education courses and their “lift-as-you-climb” ethos). Community engagement in the CSMAA program revealed alternative action possibilities for artmaking and self-definition beyond it.
Although, as Brenda and other teaching artists noted in their interviews and written reflections, the realities of teaching in the CSMAA program were far from perfect enactments of their beliefs, their influence extended beyond the CSMAA program. Just as teaching artists’ roles in the CSMAA program influenced the sociocultural conditions of that space, engagement with the CSMAA community reciprocally influenced the teaching artists’ broader onto-epistemic beliefs about community and power, self-definitions as artists and educators, and perceived action possibilities for future practice.
Content, Structure, and Process: Onto-epistemologies Within and Beyond the CSMAA Program
The content of teaching artists’ onto-epistemic beliefs situated CSMAA relationships within broader systems of power extending beyond the CSMAA program (e.g., teacher/learner, expert/novice, colonizer/colonized, and insider/outsider). As teaching artists encountered these dynamics, their onto-epistemic beliefs intertwined with their goals, purposes, self-perceptions, and self-definitions as they explored and practiced action possibilities. Honoring and extending cultural assets fostered reciprocal learning and disrupted deficit narratives. Reflexively engaging with the interdependent-yet-separable parts of their intersectional identities opened gateways to relationships for some and highlighted important distinctions for others. Finding proximity reframed teaching artistry as reciprocity rather than saviorism. Negotiating self-perceptions, self-definitions, purposes, and goals catalyzed the integration of these beliefs in their broader role identities as teaching artists.
Teaching in the CSMAA program gave teaching artists a chance to reach beyond basic cultural competence toward deeper onto-epistemic interrogations around teaching, learning, and community engagement. These findings demonstrate the potential for early-career teaching experiences in a culturally sustaining setting such as the CSMAA program to ignite continued onto-epistemic explorations.
Limitations
Although onto-epistemic beliefs about teaching, learning, and community engagement were examined separately in this study, we acknowledge that they may be experienced in overlapping ways. It also should be noted that while our research question centered teaching artists’ onto-epistemic beliefs, the degree to which those beliefs aligned consistently with their practices was beyond the scope of this study. Our aim was not to judge the fidelity of their practices; we selectively highlighted a few examples of their beliefs in action, with the hope that alignment between beliefs and practices will evolve and improve over time. Another limitation is this study’s reliance on retrospective interviews; analyses relied on self-reported recollections rather than observed longitudinal changes. Triangulation was adopted to mitigate this limitation, but it still warrants acknowledgment. Still, the study offers insights for research and practice of cultivating culturally sustaining teaching artistry.
Implications and Conclusion
This study investigated the dynamic system of culturally sustaining teaching artists’ role identities, foregrounding their onto-epistemic beliefs about teaching, learning, and community engagement. Culturally sustaining onto-epistemic beliefs were not universally defined (and perhaps should not be), but this study demonstrates their interplay with goals, purposes, self-perceptions, self-definitions, and action possibilities. This section highlights the study’s contributions to research and practice.
Complexity and Culturally Sustaining Onto-Epistemologies: Implications for Research
This study’s main conceptual contribution is its juncture of complexity theory and culturally sustaining pedagogy. Findings extend the DSMRI (Kaplan & Garner, 2018) to culturally sustaining role-identity development within complex dynamic systems of practice and power. Teaching artists’ onto-epistemic beliefs dynamically interacted with other elements of their role identities in the immediate context of this culturally sustaining learning space and broader social, political, and historical systems. This multilevel situatedness positions culturally sustaining asset-based beliefs as onto-epistemic resistance to deficit narratives about historically marginalized communities.
Further research might explore how early-career teaching artists transfer and actualize culturally sustaining onto-epistemic beliefs in other contexts. Future studies might use, for example, longitudinal designs to examine how culturally sustaining beliefs held in early-career experiences evolve over time. Specifically, future research might investigate changes in onto-epistemic beliefs held before and since the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic required the CSMAA program to rethink its pedagogies and relationships; further inquiry could explore how teaching artists in other settings navigated this onto-epistemically and in practice. Additionally, while this study centered teaching artists’ onto-epistemic beliefs, future studies also might deepen engagement with the other elements of DSMRI (Kaplan & Garner, 2018).
Preparing Culturally Sustaining Teaching Artists: Implications for Practice
This study also offers insights to practitioners in teaching artist preparation programs or professional development providers. Teaching artists’ responses to the culturally sustaining aspects of the CSMAA program might motivate other teaching artist preparation programs to offer similar opportunities for novice teaching artists. At this formative time for teaching artists’ onto-epistemic beliefs, this culturally sustaining teaching experience offered the chance to interrogate how systems of power manifest in teaching and community engagement. In this study, teaching artists examined institutional, aesthetic, cultural, and relational power dynamics, exploring (and in some cases actively disrupting) how they would shape their practices of teaching and community engagement in the CSMAA program. Other teaching artist preparation programs might intentionally foster reflection on onto-epistemic beliefs and other elements of their role identities.
Above all, the teaching artists in this study underscored that culturally sustaining teaching, learning, and community engagement are necessarily complex endeavors. Their onto-epistemic explorations engaged multiple facets of their intersectional identities (in and beyond their teaching practice) and systems of power in society. To oversimplify this process would be a disservice to the professional development of the teaching artists and the communities where they teach. A culturally sustaining future of teaching artistry must open itself to this onto-epistemic wrestling as the groundwork for equitable arts teaching and learning in communities.
Footnotes
Appendix A: Semistructured Interview Protocol
During the semistructured interviews, study participants were asked the following questions and subquestions. We used a semistructured approach to the interviews; the sequence and phrasing of these questions varied slightly across interviews, and some subquestions were not asked if the participant had already addressed them previously in the interview. In some cases, we also asked additional follow-up questions not listed here if initial responses called for further expansion or clarification.
Appendix B: Sample Artwork from La Lotería in the CSMAA Program (2018)
Acknowledgements
We express our deepest gratitude to the teaching artists, families, and our partners at the community school for their support of this learning community. This study reflects the care and creativity they brought to the program, and we thank them for their contributions. We are also appreciative of our colleagues in the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture, UCLA School of Education and Information Studies, and UCLA Center for Community Schooling for their encouragement in this work.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declare no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research and/or authorship of this article. Funding for the publication of this article was provided by the UC Libraries.
Authors
LINDSEY T. KUNISAKI is the research and evaluation specialist for the visual and performing arts education (VAPAE) program in the School of the Arts and Architecture at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research focuses on cumulative inequalities, creative career pathways, and culturally sustaining arts education.
KEVIN M. KANE is the director and academic chair of the visual and performing arts education (VAPAE) program in the School of the Arts and Architecture at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research focuses on multidisciplinary performing arts education, teaching artistry, and arts educator development.