Latino English learners (ELs), among the largest student population in the United States K-12 school system, continue to lag behind their English-proficient peers. They also tend to attend segregated schools, have less-qualified teachers, and lack access to rigorous curriculum, including the arts. Museum education departments have increasingly sought to fill the gap in arts education for underserved populations. This mixed methods study explored the degree to which teaching artists (TAs) from a large metropolitan museum are effectively addressing the art education needs of Latino ELs. The dissertation study occurred in two phases. Phase 1 included quantitative analysis of observations of the TAs using the numeric components and ancedotal evidence of the Observation Protocol for Academic Literacies. Phase 2 consisted of semistructured interviews with the participants. Findings of the study indicate that while TAs can improve instruction in terms of providing materials of students’ native language and providing opportunities to transfer skills between their primary and the target language, they nevertheless use numerous strategies for effective English language instruction. This can inform museum education departments on effective teaching practices of ELs, an area of study that has almost no scholarship.

This study presents a new perspective on work practice in conceptual art. Using ethnographic evidence from five visual artists, the study used a combined visual arts and practice orientated perspective to explore the materiality of their everyday work and the sociomaterial practices shaping it. Close scrutiny is given to the forms of expertise embedded in this through concepts of knowing-in-practice and epistemic objects. Emerging from the findings is clearer understanding of how an arts-based methodology might enhance knowledge about artists’ knowing-in-practice. Popular representations of contemporary artists often ignore the realities of precarious work. This is reflected in the professional education of artists with its concentration on studio-based activities and emphasis on the production and products of artmaking. This study reconfigures and reconceptualises the work of artists as assemblages of sociomaterial practices that include, but are not limited to artmaking – so providing a different representation of the work of artists as a continuous collaboration of mundane materials. The study identified seven sociomaterial practices, defined as movement-driven; studio-making; looking; pedagogic; self-promotion; peer support; and pause. As these practices are subject to ever-changing materialities, they are constantly reassembled. Analysis revealed hidden interiors of underemployment and income generation to be significant factors embedded in the mundane materialities of everyday work, revealing resilience and adaptability as key forms of expertise necessary for the assembling of practices. Further, the arts-based methodology of ‘integrated imagework’ created ways of visually analysing the materially-mediated, socially situated nature of knowing in practice, and demonstrated how relational concepts relating to knowing-in-practice might be better analysed. Findings indicate how the professional education of artists – particularly the way the workplace of the studio is understood – could be re-envisioned to support the fluidity of contemporary artistic practices. The studio itself is a form of knowledge – ever changing – forming and being formed by the practices of artists. Adopting this view of studio-based education would be a radical departure from current studio-based pedagogies in contemporary art education. Further, resilience – the capacity to sustain practices that are emergent and constantly unfolding – becomes a form of expertise central to the professional education of artists.

Teaching Artists are an important component of the Utah Shakespearean Festival's Education Department's outreach touring program that visits K-12 schools throughout Utah each year. However, the Education Department could be using Teaching Artists in different and better ways to help K-12 teachers infuse theatre into their curriculum. This work looks carefully at the outreach offered by the Utah Shakespearean Festival's Education Department and then compares it to the outreach work being done by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and Shakespeare Santa Cruz. Based on the analysis of the three festivals, assessment benchmarks are identified to aid the Education Department in evaluating their use of Teaching Artists and suggestions are made to help them strengthen their outreach programs through the creation of a Teaching Artist training program that would allow more Teaching Artists to work in Utah K-12 schools. The work concludes with ideas for lesson and unit plans for Teaching Artists of various levels to use in the K-12 classroom that align with the State Common Core Standards for Language Arts that were adopted by Utah in August, 2010.