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Browsing by Author "Kulinski, Alexa R."
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Item Finding My Way: Using Visual Journals to Forge a Path of Resilience and Resistance(Penn State Libraries Open Publishing, 2023-09-06) Kulinski, Alexa R.; Herron School of Art and DesignOver the last four years of my K-12 visual arts teaching career, I faithfully kept visual journals, filling them with stories of my experiences in the classroom. What initially began as an experiment as I searched for a tool to help me navigate new challenges within a public school system, eventually led me to realize that my visual journals were a valuable resource to better understand myself as a teacher, my place within the system, and a resource for resilience. In this article, I use narrative and arts-based approaches to explore the ways I leveraged visual journals as a tool for resilience by integrating humor, fostering a sense of accomplishment and self-efficacy, as well as retaking ownership of my journey to fight back. Through sharing this narrative I hope to illustrate some of the ways visual journals can help arts educators find resilience and strength to resist during challenging times.Item Moments of becoming artist-teachers(Seminar for Research in Art Education, 2023-12-18) Kulinski, Alexa R.; Herron School of Art and DesignIn this article, I re-present the findings from my arts-based dissertation that examined the ways five preservice art teachers (two graduate and three undergraduate students) perceived and used matter in their responses to studio prompts, reflective visual journals, and PK-12 art curriculum they created within the context of an art education curriculum course. After providing a brief overview of the study and arts-based methods, I re-present each of my findings by means of excerpts from original found poems, brief narrative summaries, and mini visual essays comprised of images of participants’ artwork and visual journals. This article, therefore, provides a glimpse into both the process and product of my dissertation as well as my attempts to continually make sense of it as I search for ways to share portions of it with the world. Ultimately, this study, including the results, presentation, and now re-presentation, reveals the nuances of a brief moment along preservice art teachers’ journeys of becoming artist-teachers. These findings and re-presentation carry implications for PK-12 art education, art teacher preparation, as well as arts-based research as a methodology.Item Stories We Live By: Exploring Graphic Novels With High Schoolers(Taylor & Francis, 2023) Kulinski, Alexa R.; Herron School of Art and DesignThis article explores the graphic novels that emerged within the context of a pre-college course for high school students. After providing an overview of comics and graphic novels within education, I highlight pedagogical strategies and approaches for making comics and graphic novels. I then examine student work from the course with a particular focus on the final graphic stories they told, why they chose to tell those particular stories, and how they went about doing it. Examination of student work revealed that the self was a starting point for their narratives, students continually explored and pushed conventions of the artform, and students remixed dominant narrative arcs. The stories and artmaking strategies that emerged as a result of the course highlights how comics and graphic novels provide students the space to explore and voice what matters most to them, making them a valuable component of K-16 art education.Item The Stories Objects Carry(University of Arizona Libraries, 2024-10-16) Kulinski, Alexa R.In this article, I describe an exploratory visual narrative inquiry in which I examined the stories held by three objects that were given to me during my time as a PK-12 public school art teacher. Using a methodology of following the trail, I use a combination of comics-making and narrative writing to story and re-story these three objects. This exploration revealed that how we go about storying objects matters, as it can either limit or expand how we view the active roles objects have in our lives. Ultimately, this work sketches the contours for how we can use storying and re-storying to further inquire into the vitality of objects and unlock the stories they carry.