The research questions brought up during my masters degree on visual arts education are focused on art history teaching and curriculum. These are seen as discursive constructions, under an Eurocentric perspective that are not questioned within the educational arena. The school curriculum does not instigate critical thinking and does not promote an environment in which other approaches to art history are plausible, privileging the possibility of constructing a new knowledge over the task of reproductive learning, as stressed by Dennis Atkinson.

By analyzing the curriculum, the assessment practices and by observing art history classes, it becomes clear that there is a narrow space for students to think about, reflect, understand or ask questions. Their role is to respond in a predetermined way and to rely on several synthesis of the “crucial knowledge” about art history. 

How to be aware of the limitations of these practices, include critical thinking, promote students participation? How to let emerge other histories of art and make it possible for students to understand that what they are taught is only a small fragment of the art experiences that occurred and are occurring in the world and that this history represents one hegemonic perspective?

The main objective is to contribute to the development of students as reflective thinkers, able to investigate, discover and formulate their own questions, as well as communicating their concerns and choices, the meaning that art history has to them and to understand that the construction of the world as a single and master narrative can be reviewed. 

Several researchers have been drawing new art history hypothesis and trying to reframe the way we analyze and think about art and its histories.

Departing from Aby Warburg studies on art history and taking into account Didi-Huberman perspective on an atlas as a potential way of finding new meanings and connections between images (in a broad sense), my understanding of the possibilities in art history classes is enriched, allowing me to plan the inclusion of open discussions with participating students during which new knowledge can be produced by crossing different interpretations based on personal experiences and sensibilities.

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