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29 SES 01 A: Cross-country Collaborations to Keep Thinking in Arts Education
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29. Research on Arts Education
Paper Democracy in the Making: Arts-Based Tools for Critical and Imaginative Thinking in Education University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy Presenting Author:The present contribution discusses reflections and findings from a doctoral research by focusing on how qualitative and arts-based tools can foster critical thinking and reflexive awareness among educational professionals and young people involved in educational projects. The study is situated within an action research framework, understood as a cyclical and transformative process in which knowledge emerges through practice, reflection, and collective inquiry (McNiff, 2013, 2017). Within this perspective, arts-based methodologies are examined both as research tools and as pedagogical practices capable of supporting processes of agency, meaning-making, and critical engagement in educational contexts. Specifically, the contribution addresses the following research question: How do qualitative and arts-based tools contribute to the development of critical thinking among educational professionals and young people within action research processes? At a formative level, the study aims to support educational professionals in developing critically reflective practices and to create participatory spaces in which young people can articulate their perspectives using multimodal languages. At an epistemic level, the research seeks to generate situated knowledge on how critical thinking is enacted, negotiated, and transformed through reflective and aesthetic practices (Burbules, 2023). The theoretical framework integrates three strands. First, action research conceptualizes research as an ethical and political practice oriented toward change (McNiff & Whitehead, 2011). Second, reflective practice positions the educational professional as a subject who learns through critical engagement with experience, emotions, and uncertainty (Schön, 1986; Brookfield, 1995). Third, arts-based research recognize artistic languages as epistemic resources that enable meaning-making beyond purely verbal forms (Eisner, 2008; Leavy, 2018). Within this framework, critical thinking is then understood as a situated, relational, and embodied process, emerging through dialogue, reflexivity, and aesthetic exploration (Dewey, 1938; Biesta, 2015). Concerning the research field, this process was carried out within a participatory research laboratory, the B-YOUth Forum at the University of Milano-Bicocca (Italy), composed each year of approximately fifteen young people. The laboratory was structured through regularly scheduled weekly meetings held between February and October 2024, with the exception of the summer period (June–August). Through their participation, young people gradually approached scientific research by engaging with different university laboratories and research environments. These experiences were consistently mediated by the presence of a pedagogical facilitator, whose role was to bridge different forms of knowledge, stimulate critical questioning, and connect research practices to participants’ personal and everyday life experiences. Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources Used Two main qualitative and reflexive tools were employed: moodboards as arts-based tools (Velasquez-Posada, 2019; Munk et al., 2020) and a reflexive research diary (Pastori, 2017). While moodboards were used regularly by both participants and the pedagogical facilitator, the research diary was used exclusively by the pedagogical facilitator as a reflexive and analytical tool. For the participants, moodboards were introduced as facilitative, arts-based tools to support reflective processes and the development of critical thinking. At regular intervals, participants created and revisited their moodboards, which were repeatedly modified, reworked, re-narrated, and re-shared over time. This temporal openness enabled participants to reflect on changes in their perspectives, experiences, and relational positioning, supporting non-linear and processual forms of meaning-making (Ratotti et al., 2025). Such longitudinal engagement strengthened the democratic and transformative potential of the method, allowing young people to engage critically with dominant norms while exercising agency within a shared space of inquiry, dialogue, and participation. For the pedagogical facilitator, a professional research diary was used longitudinally to document educational actions, critical incidents, emotional responses, and emerging questions. Analysis of diary entries revealed progressive shifts in professional positioning, particularly regarding power relations and assumptions about youth participation. This reflexive process supported a move from more directive to dialogical educational practices, illustrating how critical thinking developed through sustained self-interrogation (Brookfield, 2017). Moodboards also functioned as mediating artifacts within group discussions, facilitating critical expression around themes such as identity, recognition, and belonging. As one participant noted, “With the images I can say things I don’t know how to explain with words”, (Audio record, 30/05/2024) while another observed, “Looking at everyone’s moodboards made me realize that we experience the same space very differently” (Audio record, 08/10/2024). These excerpts illustrate how moodboards enabled critical comparison, self-reflection, and collective sense-making (Barone & Eisner, 2012). Data analysis followed a thematic-reflexive approach, focusing on moments of disruption, re-framing, and emerging critical awareness across action research cycles (Van Manen, 1990). Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or Findings This doctoral research highlights that qualitative and arts-based methodologies can function as powerful democratic devices, activating critical and imaginative forms of thinking that operate across both professional practice and youth participation. In contrast to neoliberal performative logics that reduce education to measurable outcomes, efficiency, and individual optimization, the study reconceptualizes democracy as a lived educational practice grounded in plurality, uncertainty, and collective meaning-making (Del Rey, 2018). At the professional level, the research diary emerged as a critical-democratic tool that enabled educators to slow down practice, resist instrumental rationalities, and reclaim spaces for judgement, doubt, and ethical responsibility (Hewitt, 2017). Through sustained action–reflection cycles (McNiff, 2012), as foreseen by the methodology, critical thinking took the form of professional subjectivation: a process through which educators repositioned themselves as democratic agents. For young people, moodboards functioned as aesthetic, epistemic, and political artifacts that disrupted dominant narratives of success, normality, and self-optimization. Crucially, the transformative power of moodboards resided in their temporal openness: being revisited, reworked, and re-narrated over time, they sustained provisional, relational, and potential unfinished meanings. More broadly, the action research framework itself operated as a democratic counter-space to neoliberal performativity by valuing process over outcomes and participation over performance. By sustaining collective inquiry, disagreement, and re-orientation, the research affirmed democracy as an ongoing, experimental practice of education (Säfström & Biesta, 2023; Apple et al., 2022). Ultimately, this study advances the view that critical thinking is not a transferable skill but a political and ethical practice of being and becoming. When education makes space for uncertainty, imagination, and relational responsibility, it does more than resist neoliberal logics: it reclaims democracy as something that is not taught or measured, but continuously lived, negotiated, and reinvented within educational relationships (Biesta, 2011; Brown, 2015; Laval & Vergne, 2021). References Apple, M. W., Biesta, G., Bright, D., Giroux, H. A., McKay, A., McLaren, P., ... & Yeatman, A. (2022). Reflections on contemporary challenges and possibilities for democracy and education. Journal of Educational Administration and History, 54(3), 245-262. Barone, T., & Eisner, E. (2012). Arts-based educational research. In Handbook of complementary methods in education research (pp. 95-109). Routledge. Biesta, G. J. (2011). Learning democracy in school and society: Education, lifelong learning, and the politics of citizenship. Springer Science & Business Media. Biesta, G. J. (2015). Beautiful risk of education. Routledge. Brookfield, S. (1995). The getting of wisdom: What critically reflective teaching is and why it’s important. Becoming a critically reflective teacher, 1-28. Brookfield, S. D. (2017). Becoming a critically reflective teacher. John Wiley & Sons. Brown, W. (2015). Undoing the demos: Neoliberalism’s stealth revolution. Burbules, N. C. (2023). Critical thinking and the conditions of democracy. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 31. Eisner, E. (2008). Art and knowledge. Handbook of the arts in qualitative research: Perspectives, methodologies, examples, and issues, 4. Hewitt, E. (2017). Building bridges: the use of reflective oral diaries as a qualitative research tool. International journal of research & method in education, 40(4), 345-359. Laval, C., & Vergne, F. (2021). Education démocratique: La révolution scolaire à venir. La Découverte. Leavy, P. (2018). Introduction to arts-based research. Handbook of arts-based research, 3. McNiff, J. (2013). Action research: Principles and practice. Routledge. McNiff, J. (2017). Action research: All you need to know. McNiff, J., & Whitehead, J. (2011). All you need to know about action research. Sage publications. Munk, J. E., Sørensen, J. S., & Laursen, L. N. (2020). Visual boards: Mood board, style board or concept board?. In DS 104: Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Engineering and Product Design Education (E&PDE 2020), VIA Design, VIA University in Herning, Denmark. 10th-11th September 2020. Pastori, G. (2017). In ricerca. Prospettive e strumenti di ricerca per educatori e insegnanti. Spaggiari-Junior. Ratotti, M., Biffi, E., & Carriera, L. (2025). Visual Pathways: Using Visual Board for Supporting Youth Participation in Research. Säfström, C. A., & Biesta, G. (Eds.). (2023). The new publicness of education: Democratic possibilities after the critique of neo-liberalism. Taylor & Francis. Schon, D. A., & DeSanctis, V. (1986). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. Velasquez-Posada, A. M. (2019). How to be Systematic with Mood Boards?. In 2019 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE) (pp. 1-4). IEEE. 29. Research on Arts Education
Paper Tracing International Research Collaborations between Nordic and Baltic Art Educators Aalto University, Finland Presenting Author:This paper stems from an ongoing Nordplus Higher Education funded development project “Internationalizing Nordic and Baltic Teacher Training in Visual Arts and Craft Education” organized under EDDA Norden network (http://eddanorden.com). The goal of the project has been to establish a sustainable model for Nordic and Baltic collaboration for visual art and craft teacher training programs to integrate international collaboration into the yearly cycle of their study programs. The project was launched in June 2024 and is currently on its second funding period (third funding period has just been applied). The project partners are Aalto University (project coordinator); University of Agder; HDK-Valand Academy of Art and Design at University of Gothenburg; Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design; Umeå University; University College Copenhagen; Vilnius University Siauliai Academy; and Iceland University of the Arts. The purpose of this paper is to offer a historical context for Nordic and Baltic collaboration in the field of visual art education and to map future collaborative research trajectories that the current project has unfolded. Drawing from a lineage of previous collaborative projects within the past few decades (Göthlund, Illeris & Thrane, 2015; Lindström, 1998; Lindström, 2009), this paper maps themes, topics, and pedagogical practices that art education researchers working in teacher training programs have explored and discussed as part of their international collaboration in the past as well as in the present. Reflecting on how these different collaborative projects have resonated and responded to their historical, social, and political conditions both nationally and internationally, this paper aims to better understand the means and aims of internationalization in art teacher training programs and art education research in the Nordic and Baltic region. Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources Used This paper combines a careful literature review of the main key sources from past collaborative projects (Göthlund, Illeris & Thrane, 2015; Lindström, 1998; Lindström, 2009) with observations and documentation from the current development project. In the current phase of the research, it does not involve interviews from past or present project participants. However, such material will be gathered later. Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or Findings The paper contributes to the decades-long efforts to strengthen the international research collaboration between Nordic and Baltic art educators. By outlining the means and aims of past and present professional collaborations, the paper aims to offer a productive ground from which to develop future international research projects between visual art teacher training programs in the region. References Göthlund, A., Illeris, H., Thrane, K. W. (Eds.) (2015). Edge: 20 essays on contemporary art education. Multivers. Lindström, L. (Ed.) (1998). Nordic visual arts research. A theoretical and methodological review. Stockholm Institute of Education Press. Lindström, L. (Ed.) (2009). Nordic visual art education in transition. A research review. Swedish Research Council. | ||