Troubling the “WE” in art education: Slam poetry as subversive duoethnography

Scholarly dialogues are filled with discussions of teacher’s personal perspectives, experiences, and challenges - but rarely do these dialogues include the narratives that lie beneath the surface. The subversive tales confronting stories of microagressions, alternate histories, and institutionalized norms that shape the educational landscape we navigate daily. This paper is focused on bringing to the surface a call and response lament of two social justice-oriented art educators--one Black, the other White. Using the dialogic methodology of duoethnography and the performative aspects of slam poetry, we share our racialized-teaching accounts as a multisensory experience, where text and performative orality share a chimeric relationship. The slam poem format, along with a critical arts-based perspective, allows us to speak/perform with urgency alongside one another to share tales of an educational landscape rife with racialized inequities. Using the metaphor of eyesight, and its subsequent limitations, our poem references the challenges of human interaction within the rubric of racial categorization. We see slam poetry as a democratic means of performing identity and as a way to subvert the limitations of traditional hegemonic forms and norms and frame our poetic call and response as verses from below. This form of poetic lament frames our socio-political interaction around the concepts of Whiteness and Blackness in and through teaching and learning in art education. We close with brief considerations for how this approach might be generative in critically framing personal and educational interactions between/among/across difference

Securing a business loan : how important is gender

This report examines the role of gender in business and evalates whether there is a evidence of gender bias when it comes to securing bank loans

Conscious Couture: Upcycling and Sustainable Style

The fashion and apparel industry has become synonymously associated with wastefulness and pollution due to the high levels of production, consumption and disposal of the billions of garments produced globally each year. Throughout the industry, brands have continued to set sustainability goals for both efforts to reduce their environmental impacts as well as appeal to the ‘green’ consumer. The power that a consumer holds can be leveraged for driving sustainability related initiatives through an apparel market that is virtually available everywhere. Since the 1990s, the secondhand market has developed from simply an economically friendly place to purchase necessities, to its current state of annual growth where luxury resale and fashion motivations lead the charge (Ferraro, Sands & Brace-Govan, 2016). One way for consumers to participate in a collaborative approach to solving sustainability issues and diverting discarded apparel products from the waste stream is to shop secondhand. In addition, the secondhand market may serve as a source of ‘raw’ materials in the circular economic model. This study identified 25 locations in the Northwest Arkansas region as market centers for secondhand shopping opportunities, then categorized based on their key characteristics of price, accessibility and merchandise acquisition. The creative portion of this research also explored the potential for upcycling post-consumer products acquired through the secondhand market to serve as a viable way for an individual to participate more sustainably in fashion apparel. A garment acquired from the secondhand market was upcycled and given new life to inspire others to recognize the merit of upcycling and secondhand as integral to the circular economic model and the future of sustainability in fashion

The Space Between: Intersubjective Possibilities of Transparency and Vulnerability in Art Education

This paper argues for the pedagogical value of the pursuit of transparency and vulnerability in art education. The author defines transparency and vulnerability in the context of art, offering subsequent pedagogical examples of both. Possibilities are born through intersubjectivity and answerability, the Bakhtinian notion that considers how shall I say [do] anything when the other can answer? (Bakhtin, 1990; Nielsen, 2002). The author asserts that art educators should pursue an idea of transparency and encourage an open attitude toward vulnerability in their pedagogy to emphasize intersubjective relationships and social possibilities through art. The author discusses artwork by Kelli Connell and Ann Hamilton, museum exhibitions including John Cage\u27s Rolywholyover A Circus for Museum and Spirited Journeys: Self-Taught Texas Artists of the 20th century, and the Museum of Jurassic Technology as supporting examples

“People Should Come to Work”: Un-becoming Cartesian Subjects and Objects in Art Education

When asked about how he wants viewers to engage with his often confrontational and difficult work, performance artist William Pope. L responded, people should come to work (personal communication, February 3, 2003). Preparedness to engage, to work, is at the core of considering the connection of art education and democracy. All too often that connection is reduced to the idea of beauty being in the eye of the beholder and you can do whatever you want-flit\u27s a free country! Re-imagining the work of art education, I want to talk of rhizomes and cyborgs, perhaps at the risk of alienating readers with raised eyebrows and being accused of hiding behind nouveau metaphors d\u27jour. But I want to argue for these metaphors because as Nietzsche (1979) suggested, metaphors have life spans: once a metaphor dies, it is time for a new metaphor. The rhizome and the cyborg do what metaphors help us do; think creatively and imaginatively about a previously known idea-in this case the Cartesian seeing subject and seen object. Too frequently art education and democracy get linked at the most superficial level. I argue for new complex metaphors, which require work, to help us understand the relationship of these ideas on a more profound level

Pediatric Obesity Class: Teaching Kids How to Live Healthy Lifestyle

Childhood obesity has reached epidemic proportions in the United States. At The Longstreet Clinic, PC, Diabetes Education and Medical Nutritional Therapy Department, and Pediatric Department have joined together to create the Pediatric Obesity Class to address the epidemic of pediatric obesity in the local community. In the class, the child and parent are taught about calories, how to develop healthy eating habits and become physically active as a family. Visual aids as well as hands on activities for both nutritional and physical activity components of class are utilized. Thus far, approximately 120 children along with their parent(s) have participated in the class. Pediatric department tracks post-class height and weight measurements. Currently, additional outcomes are being considered to measure the effectiveness of the class.https://digitalcommons.pcom.edu/posters/1013/thumbnail.jp

Effect of the degenerative state of the intervertebral disk on the impact characteristics of human spine segments

Models of the dynamic response of the lumbar spine have been used to examine vertebral fractures (VFx) during falls and whole body vibration transmission in the occupational setting. Although understanding the viscoelastic stiffness or damping characteristics of the lumbar spine are necessary for modeling the dynamics of the spine, little is known about the effect of intervertebral disk degeneration on these characteristics at high loading rates. We hypothesize that disk degeneration significantly affects the viscoelastic response of spinal segments to high loading rate. We additionally hypothesize the lumbar spine stiffness and damping characteristics are a function of the degree of preload. A custom, pendulum impact tester was used to impact 19 L1–L3 human spine segments with an end mass of 20.9 kg under increasing preloads with the resulting force response measured. A Kelvin–Voigt model, fitted to the frequency and decay response of the post-impact oscillations was used to compute stiffness and damping constants. The spine segments exhibited a second-order, under-damped response with stiffness and damping values of 17.9–754.5 kN/m and 133.6–905.3 Ns/m respectively. Regression models demonstrated that stiffness, but not damping, significantly correlated with preload (p < 0.001). Degenerative disk disease, reflected as reduction in magnetic resonance T2 relaxation time, was weakly correlated with change in stiffness at low preloads. This study highlights the need to incorporate the observed non-linear increase in stiffness of the spine under high loading rates in dynamic models of spine investigating the effects of a fall on VFx and those investigating the response of the spine to vibration

Physical activity lapses and parental social control

Although physical activity has been identified as important for children and adolescents’ health, a majority are not active enough to receive health benefits. Given that physical activity lapses have been identified in adolescents, and social influences have been related to physical activity, the overall purpose of this dissertation was to explore the social influences that occur following a lapse by using a social control framework. Three studies were conducted to examine whether physical activity lapses would be associated with parental use of social control (Study 1 and 2) as well as whether this use of different social control types would be associated with changes in behaviour (Study 2 and 3) and affect (Study 3). Results from Study 1 revealed that parents reported the use of three types of social control (i.e., positive, collaborative, and negative) following a hypothetical physical activity lapse. Results from Study 2 revealed that adolescents who experienced a lapse reported greater increases in the use of positive and collaborative social control if they had an active family. Changes in social control also were associated adolescent’s recovery from a lapse, with collaborative social control emerging as the strongest social control type. Results from the third study revealed that each of the three types of social control were associated with behaviour change, but in a different way. Behaviour change was associated with the use of collaborative social control, the need for congruence between preferences and use for positive social control, and the perceptions of negative social control as supportive. Perceived supportiveness for all tactics was related to affect. These results provide preliminary support for the suggestion that social control may be one framework to help explain the use of parental social influences following a lapse. Future directions and complementary theories are discussed