Welcome Dr. Min Gu - Assistant Professor, Liberal Studies

My previous teaching, research, and service experience with students who have been marginalized by public educational systems motivates me to be an art educator who is dedicated to examining and reexamining current arts curricula and pedagogies for all learners. This academic goal is in alignment with the College of Education’s advocacy at CSULB, that is, equity and inclusive excellence in education. In the context of arts education, one strategic way to achieve this goal is to prepare teacher candidates for community-based arts and cultures in education. I aim to work with colleagues in the College of Education at CSULB to empower teacher candidates to work with local communities through the arts.

Education itself is everyday life and the process of living. My experience working with children with autism and artists with disabilities has made me question stereotypes and “normal” representations of learning, art, and experience. It also changed my understanding of my role as an art educator. I see myself no longer as an instructor but as a facilitator. As I continue to explore what art can be with my students, I listen to and learn from them as they challenge, shape, and better my teaching. As an educator, I aim to be a better listener and facilitator and to play a role in empowering my students’ learning and living.

Disability experiences in art classrooms have often been overlooked, dismissed, and/or stigmatized by normative understandings of art making and art learning. Challenging such disenfranchisement, my research examines the nuanced and differentiated experiences of people with disabilities that otherwise go unrecognized by ableist art curriculum and pedagogy. Informed by the ways in which disability continuously challenges and informs the field of arts education, I also explore how differentiated experiential participation plays in the lives of students, preservice teachers, in-service teachers, and in the lives of others engaged in diverse communities.

On July 28, 2016, I interviewed Tom di Maria, the director of the Creative Growth Art Center (Creative Growth) in Oakland, California. He described how Creative Growth, as an art center for people with disabilities, supported everyone’s unique voices by repeating one word: “wait, wait, wait, and wait.” He further explained, “We open the door, you walk in or you don’t, but if you stand at the threshold and wait...I’ve never seen anyone not enter that [art] world.” As a result of my own cultural background and my observations at Creative Growth, I developed a pedagogy of waiting.

A pedagogy of waiting is the core of my teaching philosophy of fostering an inclusive art learning environment for diverse student populations. I draw from the Daoist concept of wu-wei from non-western Zhuangzi philosophy in understanding this as a pedagogy of non-action. While rooted in my own Chinese culture, the pedagogy of waiting is attuned to the differentiated experiences of students because waiting encourages educators to take time in acknowledging and accommodating students’ unique learning experiences.

Equity and diversity are the cornerstones of my research, teaching, and my embodied experience of being an international scholar. I hope my students see me as a scholar who values her Chinese cultural background and life experiences, and continually opens to new ways of exploring the world. More importantly, I hope they see me as a listener who takes time to learn about their differentiated and diversified experiences, and as an educator who understands their experiential and cultural differences as strengths in their learning and future teaching. 

Instead of “teaching,” I aim to facilitate conceptual and methodological practices that could prepare my students as teacher candidates to work with and empower local communities through the arts.

I encourage my students to center their cultural background and life experiences in their learning. I aim to foster this disposition with my students as my scholar-mentors did with me by considering the role my personal experience and cultural background played in my academic career.