Associate Professor of Art Education Christina Bain has been elected to the Council of Policy Studies in Art Education. The council serves as a space in which its members consider, discuss, and analyze concepts directly or indirectly influencing and affecting art education.
Established in its earliest iteration in 1965, the council grew out of a need for in depth discussion during the annual meetings of the National Art Education Association. Noted professor of Art and Education at the Stanford Graduate School of Education wrote:
From the beginning it was conceived of that the Seminar for Research in Art Education would be a small but selective group of people who had strong intellects and an appetite for discussion and analysis. The group was formed and, in fact, met for several years on its own, independent of the national meetings of the NAEA. Initially, the group met for two days at some location that was as convenient as it could be for an unfunded group. Papers were presented, critiques were provided, and discussion ensued.
Presently, 50 art education professionals constitute the internationally-known Council of Policy Studies in Art Education and gather together a day prior to the NAEA Conference.
Bain's research interests, which she will bring to the council, focus on the intersection of theory with practice in art education. More specifically, her research examines the preparation and development of art teachers, both at the preservice and inservice levels, with topics including the development of teacher identity, curricular development, technology integration, arts integration, and material culture. She has numerous publications which have appeared in Studies in Art Education, The Journal of Art Education, Visual Arts Research, School Arts, Texas Trends, the NAEA Advisory, and the GAEA Journal. She is the author of Pixels are Not Paint: A Qualitative Study of the Effectiveness of the Digitalfolio as a Learning Strategy in a College Digital Art Classroom and has contributed chapters to Matter Matters: Art Education and Material Culture Studies and Remembering Others: Making Invisible Histories of Art Education Visible.
In the past decade she has conducted more than 50 presentations at the National Art Education Association, Texas Art Education Association, Georgia Art Education Association, Curriculum and Pedagogy Conference, Hawaii International Conference on Education, and the Hawaii International Conference on Arts and Humanities.