Discussant Bios

Doug Blandy is currently the Senior Vice Provost for Academic Affairs at the University of Oregon and former Associate Dean of Academic Affairs for the School of Architecture and Allied Arts, former Program Director in the Arts and Administration Program, and former Director of the Center for Community Arts and Cultural Policy at the University of Oregon. As director of the Center, Blandy inaugurated the on-line advisory CultureWork, and teaches and advises students at both the graduate and undergraduate level. His research attends to community arts, civil society, program accessibility, and art education, and he provides service to professional organizations internationally, nationally, regionally, and locally. Blandy earned his Ph.D. in 1983 in Art Education from Ohio State University, and his M. A. and B.S. from OSU in Art Education in 1979 and 1974, respectively. Blandy’s research has been published in many journals and books. His most recent book is Happy Clouds, Happy Trees: The Bob Ross Phenomenon, co-authored with Kristin Congdon and Danny Coeyman and published by the University Press of Mississippi in 2014.

Dr. Paul E. Bolin‌ received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Art Education from Seattle Pacific University in 1976, and afterward taught high school and middle school art in Oregon. He graduated from the University of Oregon with a M.S. in Art Education (1980) and a Ph.D. in Art Education (1986). Bolin has taught at the University of Oregon, The Pennsylvania State University, and The University of Texas at Austin, where he is now a Professor and serves as both Assistant Chair and Graduate Advisor for Art Education. Much of Bolin's research centers on the investigation of historical issues within the field of art education. He has authored and co-authored numerous publications, and presented his research at various conferences throughout North America. Bolin has served on the Editorial Review Board of Studies in Art Education and as editor of the NAEA journal Art Education.

Dr. Doug Boughton’s research interests include assessment of student learning in art, portfolio assessment, and art curriculum policy. He has served in significant international leadership roles as World President of InSEA (International Society for Education through Art), Chief Examiner Visual Arts for the International Baccalaureate Organization, Foundation Director of the National Art Education Research Council of the Australian Institute of Art Education, and Consulting Professor in Art Education to the Institute of Education in Hong Kong. He is a member of the Council for Policy Studies in Art Education (USA), is a Distinguished Fellow of the NAEA (National Art Education Association), an honorary life member of the Australian Institute of Art Education (now Art Education Australia) and the South Australian Visual Arts Education Association. In 1997 he won the Studies in Art Education Invited Lecture Award for consistent contributions through published literature to the direction and scope of the profession, and in 2006 won the USSEA Edwin Ziegfeld Award for his outstanding contribution to international art education.

Dr. Boughton has published in excess of ninety articles and book chapters, a monograph, and three coedited books on the topics of art education curriculum policy, assessment, and multiculturalism (including articles published in Chinese, Portuguese, Dutch, and Slovenian languages). He has given keynote addresses and invited lectures in many cities throughout the world including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Portugal, Sweden, Singapore, Taiwan, Turkey, the Netherlands, United Kingdom, and the USA. He has been the recipient of several research grants, and has worked as consultant for research projects in Australia, Canada, and the United States. He has also worked as coresearcher on an NEA grant investigating assessment of student learning in art partnership contexts.

Dr. Boughton has wide art teaching experience at elementary, secondary, college, and university levels in Australia, Canada, and the United States. He has served many years as an art department chair and head of the school of art and design education at Salisbury College of Advanced Education, the University of South Australia, and more recently as Director of the School of Art and Design at Northern Illinois University

Dr. Judith M. Burton is Professor and Director of Art & Art Education at Columbia  University Teachers College.  Before that she was Chair of Art Education at Boston University and taught at the Massachusetts College of Art.  Burton received her Ed. D. from Harvard University in 1980. Her research focuses on the artistic-aesthetic development of children, adolescents and young adults and the implications this has for teaching and learning and the culture in general.  In 1995 she co-founded the Center for Research in Arts Education at Teachers College, and in 1996 founded the Heritage School – a comprehensive high school featuring the arts – located in Harlem, NYC. Her book Conversations in Art: The Dialectics of Teaching and Learning co-edited with Dr. Mary Hafeli was published in 2012. She is author of numerous articles and chapters and currently has two books in process of publication: She received the Manuel Barkan Award for excellence in research writing, the Lowenfeld Award for lifetime achievement in art education from NAEA and the Ziegfeld Award for services to international art education from INSEA. Dr, Burton is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts in Great Britain, a Distinguished Fellow of the NAEA, and serves as Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts Beijing, and the South China Normal University, Guangzhou.  She was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Beaconhouse University, Lahore, Pakistan. She is a trustee of the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, MD, USA and a former trustee of the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Maine, USA. She is the NAEA Eisner Lifetime Achievement  honoree for 2015, in recognition of her services to the profession both nationally and globally. Her chapter Crossings and Displacements: The Artist and the Teacher, Reweaving the Future is included in the upcoming AERA Handbook on Research and Teaching.

Ansley T. Erickson is a historian who focuses on educational inequality and urban and metropolitan history. She earned her Ph.D. in U.S. History from Columbia University. Her dissertation was awarded Columbia's Bancroft Dissertation Prize for 2010 and the History of Education Society's Claude A. Eggertsen Dissertation Prize for 2011. Erickson's forthcoming book, Making the Unequal Metropolis: School Desegregation and Its Limits (Chicago, 2016) examines the case of Nashville, Tennessee to reveal how schooling interacted with the political economy of the metropolitan landscape to make segregation and inequality and later to remake educational inequality in the desegregation years. With Professor Ernest Morrell of TC's Institute for Urban and Minority Education, Erickson leads the Educating Harlem project, a collaborative investigation into the history of education, broadly defined, in 20th century Harlem. Educating Harlem includes an edited volume, speaker series, scholarly conference, digital history project, and youth participatory history program.

Erickson was a National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellow in 2011-2013, and has been awarded dissertation and research fellowships from the Spencer Foundation, the Eisenhower Institute, and the Mrs. Giles A. Whiting Foundation. She currently serves on the editorial board of the History of Education Quarterly and Theory and Research in Education, and as a member of the History of Education Society Outstanding Book Prize committee. Earlier in her career, Erickson taught history and conducted ethnographic research in New York City schools and was a project manager at two national school reform organizations. She also has experience in historical documentary film and public history consulting.

Kerry Freedman is Professor of Art and Education at Northern Illinois University and Coordinator of Doctoral Programs in Art Education.  She is past Head of the Art + Design Education Division.  Professor Freedman’s research focuses on questions concerning the relationship of curriculum to art, culture, and technology.  Recently, she has particularly focused on inquiries into student engagement with visual culture, creativity, and community. Dr. Freedman is author of the book Teaching Visual Culture. She co-authored the books Postmodern Art Education: An Approach to Curriculum and Transforming Computer Technology.  She edited the book Looking Back and co-edited the book Curriculum, Culture, and Art Education, which is made up of cultural histories of art education from different countries.  She has published over 100 articles and book chapters and her work has been translated into multiple languages.  She has done over 200 national and international presentations and has been a Visiting Professor and Fulbright Scholar at several overseas universities. Professor Freedman has provided significant leadership through various service roles.  She is a past Senior Editor ofStudies in Art Education, the research journal of the US National Art Education Association and a World Councilor of the International Society for Education through Art, a UNESCO affiliate.  Dr. Freedman has won numerous grants and awards.  She is a past National Higher Art Educator of the Year and won the Australian Leon Jackman Award for distinguished research in art education.  Dr. Freedman is also honored to be a Distinguished Fellow of the National Art Education Association, and in 2012, won the Manual Barkan Memorial Award for excellence in publication.  In 2014, she was named Higher Educator of the Year by the Illinois Art Education Association.

Mary Hafeli is Professor of Art and Art Education at Teachers College Columbia University. Her research examines the ideas, ways of thinking, and judgments that characterize the practices of visual and performing artists, both adults and children, as they produce creative work. Her research also investigates the teaching environments in which art works are created. Current projects include a study of youth and adult perspectives on “good” teaching, studio and literary forms and practices as methodologies for qualitative research, and an exploration of the qualities and communicative potential of art materials and processes, with implications for teaching. She received the National Art Education Association’s Mary Rouse Award, Manuel Barkan Award, and Marilyn Zurmuehlen Award for scholarly contributions to the field. Currently serving as associate chair of the NAEA Research Commission, she is also a member of the Council for Policy Studies in Art Education.

Dr. Grace Hampton is Professor Emeritus of Art, Art Education and Integrative Arts at The Pennsylvania State University. Hampton received her undergraduate degree from the School of the Art Institute, in Chicago, a Masters degree from Illinois State University and the Doctorate degree , from Arizona State University. She has taught undergraduate and graduate art and art education courses at Northern Illinois University, California State University at Sacramento and The University of Oregon in Eugene, and The Pennsylvania State University, and has held positions at Jackson State University in Mississippi and the National Endowment for the Arts as well. She has presented papers and lectures at regional, national and international conferences, and her published work appears in Studies in Art Education, the Journal of Negro History, Dimensions and Directions: Black Artists of the South; published by the Mississippi Museum of Art, International Society for Education Through Art, The Penn State University Schreyer Institute. Washington, D. C.  Her research interests center around African American Arts and Culture.

Dr. John Howell White is Chair of the Department of Art Education and Crafts at Kutztown University. Dr. White currently serves as Past-Chair of the NAEA Research Commission. In 2012, Dr. White was named National Higher Education Art Educator of the Year. In 2009 he was named the Pennsylvania Higher Education Art Educator of the Year. Professor White has served as Director of NAEA’s Higher Education Division, Chair of the Council for Policy Studies in Art Education, member of NAEA’s Research Commission Task Force, and member of the editorial board for Studies in Art Education. His research has been published in Studies in Art Education, The Journal of Art Education, The Journal of Visual Inquiry, The Handbook of Research and Policy in Art Education, Visual Arts Research, International Journal of Education and the Arts, Translations, and School Arts Magazine. He maintains a consistent painting practice that informs his teaching, research and most recently has resulted in a Davis publication, Experience Painting.

Judith Kafka uses a historical lens to examine the social, political, and institutional forces that shape American schooling. Her research focuses on urban education from the postwar era through today, and she is particularly interested in the ways in which educational policies serve to both interrupt and reinforce social and economic inequalities. Her book,The History of ‘Zero Tolerance’ in American Public Schooling(Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), explores the intersection of race, politics, and bureaucracy in the context of school discipline, using the case of the Los Angeles City School District. Her work has appeared inHistory of Education Quarterly,American Journal of Education,Peabody Journal of Education, andTeachers College Record. Dr. Kafka’s current projects include: a review of scholarship on the history of teaching, to be published in the American Education Research Association’s upcoming Handbook of Research on Teaching, a comparative history of inequality in education, and an exploration of the relevance of institutional theory to school reform. She is a member of the editorial board of the History of Education Quarterly and Secretary of Division F (History and Historiography) of the American Educational Research Association. Dr. Kafka received her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.

Dr. Ami Kantawala‌ serves as an adjunct faculty member in the Art and Art Education Program at Teachers College, Columbia University since 2007. She also served as a full-time Lecturer and Program Manager in the Arts Administration Program at Teachers College from 2011-13. She completed her BFA in Painting and Metal craft at Sir J. J. School of Applied Art in Bombay, India, and went on to complete her Ed.M. and Ed.D. in Art Education at Teachers College in 2007. Her dissertation research on art education in colonial India was funded by the Dean's Grant for student research and Spenser Foundation Research Training Grant at Teachers College. She completed an extensive training program in Leadership in Higher Education from HERS Wellesley Institute in 2012-13. At Teachers College, she has pioneered coursework on the History of Art Education through a unique visual studies lens.Her research intersects historical methods, cultural studies, postcolonial theory, higher education leadership, and mentoring. Dr. Kantawala has presented papers at various national conferences held by the  National Art Education Association, College Art Association, American Education Research Association and History of Education Society.  She has published articles in research journals such as Visual Arts Research , Studies in Art Education , and the International Journal of Art and Design Education. She recently guest edited two special issues titled, “Critical re-framing of art education histories” and  “Insightful and Creative Leadership within Arts Education: History, Challenges, Opportunities, and Practices” for the Journal of Visual Inquiry (Intellect Publishers). Her current research project includes documenting the learning and teaching experiences of artist-teacher Mabel D’Amico (1909-1999) and this research is funded by the National Art Education Association Foundation (NAEF). Dr. Kantawala also serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Visual Inquiry: Learning and Teaching Art, Studies in Art Education, Journal of Social Theory in Art Education and serves as a reviewer for Canadian Review of Research.

Dr. Dónal O’Donoghue is Associate Professor (Art Education) in the Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy and a Faculty Member of Green College. His research and scholarship focuses on contemporary art, specifically its pedagogical nature and its capacity to function as a distinct mode of scholarly inquiry and research. Informed by contemporary art theory, continental philosophy and the study of art making and art interpretation, his work contributes most significantly to two fields: art-research and art education. His major contributions to both fields are in four areas: (a) studying how art-research operates in gender research and, in particular, what it reveals about life in boys’ schools, and the gendering practices that occur there; (b) exploring how art practices and forms (and the interpretation of them) suggest alternative inquiry and representational approaches for research conducted in fields such as history education, sociology, visual sociology, visual research, gender research and gender studies; (c) studying contemporary art and curatorial practices and genres (most especially ‘the turn to experience’ and ‘the turn to education’) for their implications for K-12 Art Education theory and practice; (d) preparing artists to become art-researchers and educators, and studying how artists are educated at the tertiary level. Dr. O’Donoghue has published widely in the areas of art, education, art-led research, and masculinities and has received a number of awards for his scholarship including the 2010 Manuel Barkan Memorial Award from the National Art Education Association (United States) and the 2014 Canadian Art Educator of the Year (Research Impact) from the Canadian Society for Education through Art. Dr. O’Donoghue is a founding Chair (with Dr. Freedman) of The Art Education Research Institute (AERI) and currently serves as Chair of The Council for Policy Studies Art Education (CPSAE). Previously, he served as Editor of The Canadian Review of Art Education, Honorary Secretary of the Educational Studies Association of Ireland, Secretary of the Arts-Based Educational Research SIG of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), and member of The International Visual Sociology Association (IVSA) Executive Board, The Canadian Society for Education Through Art (CSEA) Executive Committee, and Studies in Art Education Editorial Board.

Mary Ann Stankiewicz, Professor of Art Education at the Pennsylvania State University, is currently Senior Editor of Studies in Art Education. Her research on art education history and policy has been presented at local, state, national, and international conferences, and published in major professional journals. She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Spencer Foundation, and the Oregon Center for the Humanities, among others. Roots of Art Education Practice, a history of art education for K-12 art teachers, was published in 2001. A former president of the National Art Education Association and of NAEA’s Women's Caucus, she edited Art Education, the NAEA journal (1995-1998). She is a member of the Council for Policy Studies in Art Education, an NAEA Distinguished Fellow, recipient of the June King McFee award from the NAEA Women’s Caucus, and NAEA’s 2014 National Art Educator. Developing Visual Arts Education in the United States: Massachusetts Normal Art School and the Normalization of Creativity, her most recent book, has been accepted for publication by Palgrave Macmillan. Her website is: www.maryannstankiewicz.com/wordpress.

Graeme Sullivan has been messing with art for quite a while and depending on the role, be it teacher, artist, researcher, artwriter, or administrator, will use combinations of creativity, information, persuasion and streetsmarts to achieve personal and collective ends. To ‘excite others about art’ is a useful personal goal that shapes all of the positions Graeme has served in over the years. Prior to taking up the role as Director of the School of Visual Arts, Pennsylvania State University in 2010 he served as Professor of Art Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, 1999­2010, which included a period as Chair of the Department of Arts and Humanities. Since the early 1990s Graeme’s research has investigated studio­based research practices. These ideas are described in his 2005 book, Art Practice as Research: Inquiry in Visual Arts, with a revised and expanded edition published in 2010. Graeme continues to author book chapters and articles on practice­based research and these have been published in the USA, UK, Europe, Asia and Australasia. He has taken on many professional roles he is currently Associate Commissioner of the NAEA Research Commission. Graeme maintains an active art practice and his Streetworks have been installed in several international cities over the years. He uses materials retrieved from the streets to create artworks that are exhibited and later installed at local sites. Graeme explains, “I’m not sure what happens to most of my Streetworks. But even if the life of the artwork is short, or the encounter brief, one never really knows the outcome, nor where the experience of art happens. I like that.”