My arts-based pedagogical docoral research in the field of visual arts education explores the process of assigning upper secondary school students in art education to deal with issues of social justice by creating socially engaged art (SEA) in which they engage with other people – either each other or people outside the classroom. In this study, the objective is to find out what kind of learning, critical thinking, and experience of empowerment becomes possible when proactively facing societal challenges through contemporary art.

In the era we live in, the world is literally on fire. Crises increase polarization and divisions among people, while it is widely recognized that the wicked problems of our time require cooperation for resolution. Contemporary art can provide tools for the necessary societal change. For instance, SEA directs the attention of viewer-participants to interaction, and social and ethical changes. SEA is understood in this research as art where the artist is in some kind of direct contact with other people at some stage of the artwork process.

My research question is: How can social justice issues important for young people be addressed in visual arts education using SEA as the technique, what is the learning potential of the process, and how can it strengthen students’ agency? Answering this question requires addressing three sub-questions related to the three perspectives of my research:
1) Youth-oriented perspective: How do social justice issues appear to students, and how do they confront them?
2) Art pedagogical perspective: How can SEA be introduced into the art classroom as a technique (rather than merely as a “phenomenon” of contemporary art), what skills do students need to create SEA themselves, and how can the teacher support them?
3) Ethical perspective: What ethical considerations must be taken into account when students create SEA, where artistic work happens in interaction between the student and other people rather than classroom-typical materials?

My theoretical framework consists of the previous research related to the concepts of social justice, critical (art) pedagogy and SEA. The theoretical framework will be supplemented as the research progresses, depending on the themes that emerge from the empirical material. On social justice, my starting point is the reseach by Amartya Sen (2010), who explores justice through the lens of the capability approach, emphasizing what individuals are effectively able to be and do. On critical (art) pedagogy, I rely on classics in the field such as Freire (1971) and hooks (1994), without forgetting the perspective of contemporary researchers (Giroux 2020; Hodgson, Vlieghe & Zamojski 2017) since critical pedagogy is not historical entity but changing in parallel with societal development. About SEA the central theory comes from art history (Kaitavuori 2020; Haapalainen 2018; Bishop 2012; Frieling et al. 2008) as well as research examining its connections with pedagogy (Helguera 2011).

I conduct arts-based pedagogical research (Suominen et al. 2018) in the context of visual arts education by positioning myself as a researcher-teacher. In autumn 2026, I will collect research material from upper secondary school’s contemporary art course, which I teach myself. By combining the material with my theoretical framework I will approach the process of making SEA, its conditions, and possibilities in the everyday school environment. The research will be completed in 2028 and published as a monograph.

My research is arts-based pedagogical research (Suominen et al. 2018). The research material will be collected through participatory action research (McIntyre 2008) in which participants are invited as active contributors in the knowledge building process (Galletta & Torre 2019). I collect the material at my current workplace, Helsinki Upper Secondary School of Visual Arts, during the course I teach. The course (“NYT02”) focuses on the social practices of contemporary art. With students, we will also discuss the best way to share the emerging artistic processes (or their documentation): exhibition, event, publication, or perhaps something else entirely. Sharing is essential because it expands the effects of the process to various circles of participation (cf. Salminen et al. 2021). My research material consists of notes from both myself (researcher-teacher) and the students, photos taken during teaching situations, videos, audio recordings, micro-interviews, as well as students’ artworks and their texts about them and their course journals. The goal of the material is to depict the diverse and lively situation of the art classroom, without forgetting the need for a critical perspective on such material (Venäläinen et al. 2019). This plurality supports the idea of the research process as a dialogical space where different voices and views can encounter. I will analyze the material through thematic analysis (Guest et al. 2012) and examine the found themes crosswise and parallelly with theory. Numerous ethical questions are associated with collecting, storing, and using data from teaching situations. I consider these at every stage of the research, supported by the guidelines from the Finnish National Board on Research Integrity (TENK) (Kohonen et al. 2019). Before collecting the material, I will check the legislation, particularly the requirements set by the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) on research. I apply for necessary research permits from the City of Helsinki and request consent from the students participating in the research. I also prepare a thorough material management plan for the collected material (Tietoarkisto 2023). In the analysis I will pay attention to the risk of distortion caused by preconceptions regarding the material by critically examining also potential shortcomings of SEA as a technique.

Young people today are facing a range of pressing global issues, and addressing eco-social sustainability has become a central concern in art education. Art education has significant potential in addressing the wicked problems of our era as it develops skills related to communication, collaboration, empathy, critical thinking, and problem-solving. Also this research focuses on that. This study brings together existing research of social justice art education and the reality of young people's lived experience with contemporary art practices. The research seeks to contribute to the ongoing discussion of how art education can promote social justice and sustainability taking into consideration young people’s points of view. The agency of young people is emphasized in this research, even though society limits young people’s opportunities to act in many ways. Thinking of SEA as a technique of art making offers a new perspective to students’ engagement with making of contemporary art, as the possibilities of SEA in the art classroom have not previously been studied. It challenges the paradigm of making individual-centred art based on physical materials. The research aims to explore the possibilities of visual arts education where the role of being, thinking, and acting together is more central. In a world currently facing many simultaneous problems and crises, such skills have great importance.

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