Explore the vast range of titles available.

Cultivating culturally sustaining practices and beliefs is a complex process. For early-career teaching artists (i.e., professional artists who teach), it raises ontological and epistemological questions about knowledge, art, and identity in the communities where they teach. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to investigate how teaching in a multigenerational, culturally sustaining setting promoted early-career teaching artists’ onto-epistemic explorations about (a) teaching and learning and (b) community engagement. Drawing from conceptual perspectives of culturally sustaining pedagogy and the dynamic systems model of role identity, findings suggest that teaching artists’ onto-epistemic beliefs emerged in dynamic dialogue with the culturally sustaining setting, situated in a broader sociopolitical context. Implications for practice and research on the preparation of culturally sustaining teaching artists are offered.

In this article, Kevin M. Kane, Karen Hunter Quartz, and Lindsey T. Kunisaki describe the transformative parent engagement fostered in a multigenerational afterschool arts program at a community school. Community schools bring together families, teachers, and other neighborhood partners to help students learn, grow, and thrive and often integrate health, education, and social services. This embedded case study shows how community schools can also nurture cultural assets in the form of parents' community cultural wealth. The learning of these community school parents demonstrates the mutually reinforcing relationships between transformative parent engagement, collaborative leadership, expanded learning opportunities, and integrated student supports. This study highlights the transformative impact of culturally sustaining arts on individuals, families, and the school as a whole, offering implications for researchers and practitioners in community-based arts education and community school development.

Purpose The purpose of this study is to discuss the significance of “contextual factors” on the talent development of underserved populations. Understanding the “context” and background of an individual provides greater insight into their life experiences (Paik, 2013). Race, class and gender, in particular, play a role in one’s life, providing both barriers and opportunities. Design/methodology/approach To examine contextual and other factors, in-depth biographical case studies were systematically studied across 10 diverse notable artists and scientists. Over 85 autobiographies, biographies and other sources were carefully content-analyzed for commonalities and differences in artists’ and scientists’ lives. Findings Because of their ascribed statuses (e.g. race, class, gender), these individuals had to navigate their unique school and life circumstances. Within their sociocultural contexts, however, key relationships (e.g. parents, teachers, mentors and peers) helped mitigate the challenges. All artists and scientists had a “village” – key stakeholders who invested in them at every stage of their talent development. Practical implications Parents, teachers, mentors and peers are not only critical, but they are lifelines for talent development. Key implications discuss the role of contextual factors and support networks for aspiring diverse artists and scientists. Originality/value The theoretical framework for this study is based on the productive giftedness model (PGM) (Paik, 2013, 2015). PGM includes 10 key psychosocial and environmental factors and how they influence “productive giftedness” (e.g. achievements, accomplishments, leadership). Within the model, both “alterable” and “contextual factors” provide access to different opportunities, support and resources. The model is considered generalizable and applicable for diverse populations.

Pathways into creative careers—i.e., in the arts, culture, entertainment, and related fields—are fraught with inequalities, starting in early life. This dissertation uses restricted-use data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS:2002) to investigate cumulative inequalities in creative arts opportunities to learn (CA-OTL) and creative educational and career outcomes. Examining disparities by gender, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status (SES) from adolescence to early adulthood, this dissertation draws from interdisciplinary theoretical perspectives of cumulative inequality theory, fundamental cause theory, and opportunity-to-learn in a novel conceptual framework. In three interrelated studies, this dissertation follows a nationally representative cohort of tenth graders into early adulthood, examining cumulative inequalities in (1) longitudinal creative career aspirations and attainment, (2) high school CA-OTL and postsecondary creative studies, and (3) postsecondary CA-OTL and creative educational and career outcomes. These studies utilize a novel definition for creative career pathways, accounting for the broad range of educational and occupational pathways pursued and held by creative career seekers. Here, creative career pathways are defined as educational or occupational trajectories devoted to the creation, dissemination, or preservation of cultural products, as well as creative arts-based care. This definition contributes a comprehensive yet domain-specific conceptualization of creative careers otherwise missing from existing occupational classification systems. Throughout this dissertation, this definition was operationalized to classify postsecondary creative courses, creative majors, and creative occupations. Across the studies, analytic samples varied in each study to include high schoolers and subsamples of college-goers and creative majors. Analyses included block-entry hierarchical linear probability models, ordinary least squares regressions, and moderation analyses for subgroup variation. Results showed that inequalities in CA-OTL accumulate over time and explain some disparities in creative career pursuits. Gender, racial/ethnic, and socioeconomic gaps in creative educational and career outcomes were explained by some CA-OTL, with school-based indicators being especially strongly associated with most outcomes. In the larger samples of high schoolers and college-goers, associations between CA-OTL and some outcomes varied by demographic subgroup. Compared with boys and White students, girls and Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) respectively saw stronger positive associations between high school CA-OTL and postsecondary creative studies but weaker associations between postsecondary CA-OTL and degree completion. Socioeconomically, positive associations between CA-OTL and respective outcomes were generally stronger for the high SES group than their middle and lower SES counterparts, but a few exceptions suggest that some CA-OTL may disrupt socioeconomic inequities in creative career outcomes. For creative majors, postsecondary creative credit-earning, internships, and faculty research opportunities were all more strongly associated with creative outcomes than they were for non-creative majors. Further, among the small subsample of creative majors, creative arts credit-earning (in high school and postsecondary studies) and internships were found to be positively associated with creative educational and career outcomes. This dissertation offers novel conceptual, empirical, and methodological contributions to the literature. Results from these three studies both support and extend the theoretical framework, offering novel interdisciplinary perspectives on cumulative inequalities in creative career pathways. Extending cumulative inequality theory into this domain, empirical evidence across all three studies shows compositional changes in the cohort of creative career seekers, with White and high SES students accounting for increasingly large shares of the studies’ samples as the cohort advances from adolescence to adulthood. Methodologically, this dissertation operationalizes its novel definition for postsecondary courses, creative majors, and creative careers across three national coding frames: College Course Map (CCM), Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP), and the Occupational Information Network (O*NET). This dissertation’s limitations also suggest directions for future research, particularly in seeking larger samples, domain-specific measures, and expanded lifespan perspectives. Recommendations for policy and practice call for expansion of inclusive CA-OTL. Viewing early CA-OTL as part of the lifelong creative career pathway, policymakers might seek to close gaps in arts availability by bolstering school-level resources for creative arts education and equitably attending to the entire pathway from P-20 to the creative workforce. Recommendations for practice include reducing barriers to participation in CA-OTL by creating more inclusive classroom conditions, postsecondary admissions practices, and pedagogies to build on creative career seekers’ strengths. While CA-OTL offer promising potential to disrupt and reduce inequalities, a cautionary eye toward the emergence of new mechanisms of inequality invites further inquiry and collaboration in sustaining inclusive access and equitable support across creative career pathways.