Verónica García-Lazo presented research on art education and interculturality at the UC Education Colloquium.

The academic shared findings from her Fondecyt project on how visual arts educators in different regions of the country understand and practice interculturality, highlighting the challenges and possibilities of more inclusive and relational education.

The academic of the UC Faculty of Education and adjunct researcher of the Center for Intercultural and Indigenous Studies (CIIR), Veronica Garcia-Lazo, was the speaker at the last UC Education Colloquium. Under the title "Challenges and Possibilities for an Intercultural Visual Arts Education" the academic presented some of the findings of her Fondecyt Initiation 11220756 "Challenges and possibilities for an intercultural visual arts education (2022-2025)". The presentation was commented by the UC Education academic Guillermo Marini. 

The research explored how a sample of high school visual arts teachers conceptualize and embody interculturality in public schools in regions such as Antofagasta, Metropolitana, Araucanía, and Magallanes. The presentation focused on one of the motivations for the study: the ontoepistemic challenges present in the school system. 

“By this, we refer to how we conceptualize being, knowing, and what and how we know. The study questions whether the ontoepistemic foundations of the school system allow for diverse ways of being and knowing. While interculturality is particularly relevant in arts education, little is known about what teachers understand by interculturality and the challenges they face in embodying it in the classroom,” García-Lazo states. 

Here, the Mapuche onto-episteme of 'azmapu' and posthuman theories of intertwining are articulated, sensitive ways of emphasizing interdependence. A/r/tography, an arts-based research methodology, enabled creative theorizing about the curriculum, teacher interviews, classroom observations, and photographic documentation. 

Thus, diverse pedagogical experiences of visual arts teachers were observed, reflecting the unique characteristics of each region. Teachers engaged in various activities, such as field trips, collage creation, artist books, and heritage reproductions, shaped by each teacher's personal motivations, the regions in which they work, and the contexts of their school communities.

The arts as an activator of emotions 

The results, García-Lazo explains, show a lack of formal conceptualizations of interculturality. Intuitive ideas associated with concepts of diversity and ideals of equity emerge, but these ideas are only partially realized. Curricular, infrastructure, resource, and training limitations restrict a robust and relational interculturality. "In one region, however, the notion of biocultural memory emerges as a possible way of thinking about interculturality that is more sensitive, fluid, generative, and pertinent to making interdependence visible in each territory," the academic states.

"As teachers, we have the responsibility to support students in expanding their relational worlds and in seeing beyond the realities imposed on us. Contemporary artistic practices could contribute greatly as models for students to become researchers on various topics of interest to them and related to their surroundings," says García-Lazo.

Another emerging emphasis relates to the intersection of sociocultural, gender, and sexuality aspects, which demonstrates a potential onto-epistemic shift in understanding interculturality through a sensitivity to diverse experiences of being. "In general, this emphasis materializes through the exploration of personal evidence and emotional content. Although the intention is for the student voice to emerge, it is a predominantly teacher-led process, which also runs the risk of exposing students," she emphasizes. 

García-Lazo explains that for Melinda WebberIndigenous scholar, when teachers activate emotions, they become present in the classroom, as if we were invoking them. And the space becomes sacred.

“Everything is affected. Therefore, the question is, how do we return to the time of the ordinary? Here, we need azmapu. To seek balance again between people, the environment, and the spiritual world. (…) Teachers, then, need tools because the arts can function as a trigger for highly resonant emotions,” he mentioned.