Ethical Dialogue in Art Education: Immanence, Aesthetics, and Appearances in the Middle Ground
Main Article Content
Abstract
This article examines how art education can cultivate relational forms of dialogue at a time when educational policy increasingly privileges individualising, outcomes-driven approaches. Using Dora García’s Exhausted Books as an example, the article explores how art objects create an aesthetic domain where resistance, plurality, and relational meaning-making emerge. I conclude that recognising these aesthetic conditions is an essential quality of art education and essential for sustaining practices that support ethical sociability and dialogic engagement with the world. The article outlines a framework for educators seeking to cultivate openness, dissensus, and ethically grounded dialogue in contemporary learning environments.
Downloads
Article Details

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
The copyright notice is CC BY SA.
This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. All new works based on yours will carry the same license. Thus any derivatives will also allow commercial use. For example, if someone translates your article into French, the French version of the article will also have to be shared under a CC BY SA license.
References
Adorno, T. W. (1997). Aesthetic theory (R. Hullot-Kentor, Trans.). University of Minnesota Press.
Arendt, H. (1958). The human condition. University of Chicago Press.
Arendt, H. (2006). Between past and future. Penguin.
Atkinson, D. (2007). Pedagogy against the state: Some remarks upon events of learning.
Access: Critical Perspectives on Education Policy, 26(2), 47–57.
Atkinson, D. (2018). Art, disobedience and ethics: The adventure of pedagogy. Palgrave Macmillan.
Atkinson, D. (2022). Pedagogies of taking care: Art, pedagogy and the gift of otherness. Bloomsbury Academic. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350288355
Ball, S. J. (2016). Neoliberal education? Confronting the slouching beast. Policy Futures in Education, 14(8), 1046–1059. https://doi.org/10.1177/1478210316664259
Ball, S. J. (2018). The education debate (3rd ed.). Policy Press.
Bennett, J. (2012). Practical aesthetics : events, affects and art after 9/11. I.B. Tauris. https://doi.org/10.5040/9780755693702
Biesta, G. (2017). Letting art teach: Art education after Joseph Beuys. ArtEZ Press.
Biswas, G. (1995). Art as dialogue: Essays in phenomenology of aesthetic experience. Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts.
Burton, J. M., Horowitz, R., & Abeles, H. (2000). Learning in and through the arts: The question of transfer. Studies in Art Education, 41(3), 228–257. https://doi.org/10.2307/1320379
Cinquemani, S., & Kraehe, A. (2020). Thinking alongside children: Explorations of artistic practice and research in early childhood. Art Education, 73(6), 4–7. https://doi.org/10.1080/00043125.2020.1813527
Chappell, K. (2008). Towards humanising creativity. UNESCO Observatory E-Journal, 1(3). http://www.abp.unimelb.edu.au/unesco/ejournal/vol-one-issue-three.html
Chappell, K., & Craft, A. (2011). Creative learning conversations: Producing living dialogic spaces. Educational Research, 53(3), 363–385. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131881.2011.598663
Chappell, K., Turner, C., & Wren, H. (Eds.). (2024). Creative ruptions for emergent educational futures. Springer Nature. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-52973-3
Cultural Learning Alliance. (2025). Cultural Learning Alliance report card 2025. https://www.culturallearningalliance.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/CLA-2025-Report-Card_AW.pdf
Desai, D., & Duncombe, S. (2025). The activism of art: A decentered anthology. OR Books.
Dewey, J. (1934). Art as experience. Penguin.
Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education. Macmillan.
Gale, C. (2020). Art school as a transformative locus for risk in an age of uncertainty. Art, Design & Communication in Higher Education, 19(1), 107–118. https://doi.org/10.1386/adch_00016_1
García, D. (2013). The Joycean Society [Single-channel video]. Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA).
García, D. (2016–present). Exhausted books [Installation]. Various locations.
García, D. (2023). Fons #07: Dora García | “Joycean society” & “Exhausted books” [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tYKkV68g1k
Glăveanu, V. P., Sierra, Z., & Tanggaard, L. (2015). Widening our understanding of creative pedagogy: A North–South dialogue. Education 3–13, 43(4), 360–370. https://doi.org/10.1080/03004279.2015.1020634
Greene, M. (1978). Landscapes of learning. Teachers College Press.
Greene, M. (1995). Releasing the imagination: Essays on education, the arts, and social change. Jossey-Bass.
Greene, M. (2001). Variations on a blue guitar: The Lincoln Center Institute lectures on aesthetic education. Teachers College Press.
Greene, M. (2005). Teaching in a Moment of Crisis: the Spaces of Imagination. The New Educator, 1(2), 77–80. https://doi.org/10.1080/15476880590934326
The Guardian. (2023, February 7). The Guardian view on arts education: A creativity crisis. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/07/the-guardian-view-on-arts-education-a-creativity-crisis
Heidegger, M. (2001). Poetry, language, thought. Perennial Classics.
hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. Routledge.
Jahoda, S., & Woolard, C. (2019). Making and being: Embodiment, collaboration, and circulation in the visual arts. http://media.carolinewoolard.com/texts/Making_and_Being_Jahoda_Woolard_2019.pdf
Leddy, S. (2014). Using art to open postcolonial dialogues with pre-service teachers. SFU Educational Review, 7. https://doi.org/10.21810/sfuer.v7i.381
Leonard, N. (2020). The arts and new materialism: A call to stewardship through mercy, grace, and hope. Humanities, 9(3), Article 84. https://doi.org/10.3390/h9030084
MacIntyre-Latta, M., & Baer, S. (2010). Aesthetic inquiry. In T. Costantino & B. White (Eds.), Essays on aesthetic education for the 21st century (pp. 93–107). Sense Publishers.
Massumi, B. (2015). The power at the end of the economy. Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822375814
Oxfam. (2018). Teaching controversial issues: A guide for teachers [Global citizenship guide]. https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/620473/gd-teaching-controversial-issues-290418-en.pdf
Rallis, N., Leddy, S., & Irwin, R. L. (2024). Relational ethics through the flesh: Considerations for an anti-colonial future in art education. Qualitative Inquiry, 30(2), 212–219. https://doi.org/10.1177/10778004231176091
Säfström, C. A. (2021). A pedagogy of equality in a time of unrest: Strategies for an ambiguous future. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351169400
Skregelid, L. (2024). Dissens and sensibility: Art education, democracy and affect. Cappelen Damm Akademisk.
Shin, M. (2025). Against the clock: Slow pedagogy, care, and relational time in the early years under neoliberalism. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood. https://doi.org/10.1177/14639491251363260
Spivak, G. C. (1990). The post-colonial critic: Interviews, strategies, dialogues. Routledge.
Spivak, G. C. (2004). Righting wrongs. The South Atlantic Quarterly, 103(2–3), 523–581. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-103-2-3-523
UNESCO. (2025). Dialogue for social cohesion: Intercultural dialogue for conflict transformation briefs series. https://doi.org/10.54678/ESDS9308
Wegerif, R., Doney, J., Richards, A., Mansour, N., Larkin, S., & Jamison, I. (2017). Exploring the ontological dimension of dialogic education. Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, 12, 74–85. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lcsi.2016.09.002
Wenger-Trayner, E., & Wenger-Trayner, B. (2015, April 15). Introduction to communities of practice: A brief overview of the concept and its uses. https://wenger-trayner.com/introduction-to-communities-of-practice/
Yoon-Ramirez, I. (2023). Rethinking feelings in antiracist art pedagogy. In C. Stewart, E. Burke, L. Hochtritt, & T. Northington (Eds.), Cultivating critical conversations in art