International Journal of Education & the Arts

Citation: Morawski, C. & Dunnington, C. (2021). Biophilia and visual art education: Two teachers narrate their own connections. International Journal of Education & the Arts, 22(9). Retrieved from http://doi.org/10.26209/ijea22n9

From the remembered moments of observing goldfish glide through water warmed by the afternoon sun, to finding inspiration from a rolling countryside dotted with sheep and lakes, both of us, two teacher educators, have come to reconfirm the integral role that nature plays in the life of our visual art teaching and practices. In this paper, we draw from selected stories of our everyday life to narrate the role that biophilia, affection for plants and other living things, plays in the connections between nature and our own visual art practice to prepare ourselves to facilitate these same connections in teacher candidates. More specifically, we address such considerations as the connections between earlier experiences and our commitment to conserving nature, the integration of the study of biophilia into our visual art teacher education instruction, and the opportunities we present for teacher candidates to explore their own nature narratives in relation to their visual art teaching practices.