Abstract:
This paper is contextualised within a specialist pre-service secondary art teacher education course in New Zealand. It reports on how research findings have motivated a pedagogical response to the absence of an Asian dimension in art programs in secondary schools, despite the increasing presence of students of Asian ethnicities. The findings prompted the development of a pedagogical framework of sequential steps, using five theoretically-informed strategies. The aim is to empower Asian pre-service art teachers to engage in their own culture(s) so that they can promote a stronger Asian presence, given the emphasis on bicultural approaches in art education. Their voices, and the visual examples of their work, illustrate how the cumulative effects of the five-step framework are helping to empower them to assert their presence and identities during pre-service course preparation and in the 'real world' of the classroom.
