Provoking the Field: International Perspectives on Visual Arts PhDs in Education

Provoking the Field invites debate on, and provides an essential resource for, transnational arts-based scholars engaged in critical analyses of international visual arts education and its enquiry in doctoral research. Divided into three parts – doctoral processes, doctoral practices and doctoral programmes – the volume interrogates education in both formal and informal learning environments, ranging from schools to post-secondary institutions to community and adult education. This book brings together a global range of authors to examine visual arts PhDs using diverse theoretical perspectives; innovative arts and hybrid methodologies; institutional relationships and scholarly practices; and voices from the field in the form of site-specific cases. A compendium of leading voices in arts education, Provoking the Field provides a diverse range of perspectives on arts enquiry, and a comprehensive study of the state of visual arts PhDs in education.

About the Author

Anita Sinner is a Professor of Art Education at The University of British Columbia. Her interests include artwork scholarship, international art education, stories as research, and community art education. Previously co-editor of the International Journal of Education Through Art , Sinner is also author of Unfolding the Unexpectedness of Uncertainty: Creative Nonfiction and the Lives of Becoming Teachers (2013), and co-author of several titles, including A Heart of Wisdom: Life Writing as Emphatic Inquiry (2012), and C reating Together: Participatory, Community-Based and Collaborative Arts Practices and Scholarship across Canada (2015).

Rita L. Irwin is a distinguished university scholar and professor of art education in the Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. She was also principal editor for the International Journal of Education Through Art, and is the recipient of several esteemed awards, including Canadian Teacher of the Year, Elliot Eisner Lifetime Achievement Award and Ted T. Aoki Award for Distinguished Service. Irwin has co-edited well-known titles, such as Revisions: Readings in Canadian Art Teacher Education and Being with A/r/tography

Jeff Adams is professor of education at the University of Chester, and the principal editor of the International Journal of Art & Design Education, as well as programme leader of RECAP, a centre for research into creativity.