Professors and students during the 2017 Eyes on Teaching Event
Art Education Lecturer Dr. Rina Little’s course, AED 383K Museum Education: Practice and Application, will be featured for the 2018 Eyes on Teaching Event on Thursday, February 8, 2018 from 1-4 pm. Eyes on Teaching is an initiative of the Provost’s Office with the purpose of helping strengthen the culture of teaching at UT Austin by providing an opportunity for faculty to visit other classrooms and observe different teaching styles and learning environments, which will facilitate meaningful conversation around teaching and learning across the university.
Dr. Little's session will feature how museum education helps to narrate spaces using place-based strategies of learning in relation to art, environments, cultures, and communities. She explores the idea that space should not be understood as a static fixture in isolation from those who inhabit it, but one in which mind, body, objects, and terrain shape each other, offering alternative thoughts on the use and meaning of spaces. The session will feature a lecture, with active teaching techniques to be used by participants to enable the interpretation of objects in relation to the narration of spaces.
Dr. Little also has a partnership with the Lynden Sculpture Garden in Milwaukee, Wisconsin where she will be conducting an Innovative Educators Institute workshop, Reclaiming Spaces, on Saturday, December 2, 2017. The program is structured around cross-disciplinary based teams whose members share an interest in the intersections between art and nature, and are willing to work collaboratively across the 2017-2018 school year to design and implement an art-integrated curriculum. The workshop unpacks the concept of narrating spaces using such methods of inquiry as wandering, encountering, dwelling, and resonating in relation to the visual arts and storytelling.