Through this written and illustrated journey, I examine my role as an art teacher, researcher, artist, and immigrant in Norway acknowledging the school where I work as a changing and multicultural territory.
The school where I work has a diverse and multicultural population of students aged six to fifteen. I am a middle school art and design teacher, also an immigrant. Throughout the school year, I focused on the themes of intersectional discrimination and climate change, recognizing them in the art curriculum and aiming to open spaces for dialogues. My goal is to use the art curriculum as a frame to open and keep the conversations as an ongoing dialogue.
In this research context, I posed the following questions:
How can artistic-pedagogical-hybrid practices be used in art as a subject at multicultural middle schools to address intersectional discrimination and climate change?
Why do these practices matter?
How do art teachers understand their power positions while teaching in multicultural environments?
Because the unfolding inquiry was affected by the contemporary world and the student’s life experiences, I used hybrid research arts-based methodologies to design and teach an anti-racist arts curriculum.
In research at schools, writing is a collective process. The participants in the research, my students and I, worked together to trade knowledge and build consensus. I documented the research and reflected as part of it while incorporating my students’ voices.