Identity crystallization in the visual arts

This manuscript presents a visual arts study exploring seven art educators’ professional aspirations to transform pedagogy into culturally sustaining praxis as part of a series of studies. Study participants are art teachers engaged in online training that integrated culturally relevant teaching with prints from the Artura.org database constructed by the Brandywine Workshop and Archives. Brandywine is a Philadelphia-based, BIPOC printmaking institute and gallery devoted to the proliferation of works of art produced by culturally diverse artists. Participants practised critically analysing and raising awareness about their identities to transform instructional practices. We used Ladson-Billings framework stating that culturally relevant teaching begins with the teacher, not with the curriculum and a hermeneutical process to analyse fourteen visual arts journals.