Finding empathy in visual art studio classrooms: artful and empathic making and learning

There exists an empathy deficit in the world today. Modern technologies provide visual and visceral accounts of global disasters and injustices, yet people focus on their individual circumstances and do not engage empathically with the plights of others. Lack of empathy is seen to be reflected in a lack of care for the environment and the increasing extinction of world habitat and biodiversity. There is however current widespread youth activism speaking out to these global dilemmas. Regrettably the marginalisation of the Arts and a reduction in access to learning environments that may further encourage empathy in young people has resulted from political educational agendas that position the sciences and rational thought before expressive or subjective feelings. A multiple site case study method was used to identify and describe what empathy looks like and where it occurs in visual art studio learning. The presence of empathy was found in the natural and reflective conversations between students and teachers, and students and students, their actions, movement and interactions, in Visual Arts artmaking classes. An artfully empathic methodology consolidated the investigation of empathy within the visual art studio learning ecology. Utilising arts-based inquiry methods, the research is positioned from an interactive aesthetic locus and responds to an increasing dialogue in research about the importance of arts-based methods to accommodate pedagogical sensibilities and renewed understanding of the notions of difference, subjectivity and empathy. This study finds empathy during artmaking is at the core of the visual art studio learning ecology and the result of pedagogical practices and curriculum content. Pedagogical and curriculum insights gained from the inquiry, model authentic teaching and learning practices to develop empathic learning which could be applied in any classroom. Empathy is a powerful force for change that connects young people to themselves, others and the world.