Artistic pedagogies in an emergency: Perspectives from nine visual arts teachers in the north, centre and south of Chile

Abstract

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020–21, schools in Chile suspended face-to-face activities. This led to an ‘educational emergency’, generating proposals for what some authors have called Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT). This article describes the teaching experiences of nine visual arts teachers from northern, central and southern Chile, who implemented their pedagogical proposals by dispensing with the workshops and materials commonly used in visual arts classes. The study examined the processes of uncertainty experienced by the teachers by collecting and analysing ‘in situ’ accounts and arguments using a qualitative approach. The main results indicate that the teachers showed agency and a great capacity to be flexible in response to changing scenarios. It can also be observed that ERT emphasizes the ambivalent position of visual arts as a subject in schools and demonstrates the difficulty that some students experience accessing and using certain technologies, questioning the belief that they are ‘digital natives’.