Karen McGarry is an artist educator and works as a teacher educator, guiding preservice art teachers into professional educator roles through visual art education certification. Her work as a K12 art educator and higher education teacher educator began in 2009, working in California, New York, Ohio, and now Michigan. McGarry has contributed scholarship presentations at state and national conferences for art education and graduated from the NAEA’s School for Art Leaders in 2025. She serves as the Visual Art Section Editor for the International Journal of Education and the Arts, volunteering her service and expanding scholarship engagement. She employs Arts-Based Research practices to guide her work, continually developing her A-R-T-identity: Artist-Researcher-Teacher. Service-learning and social justice practices ground her work as a Teacher Educator, emphasizing equity, diversity, inclusion, access, and belonging while preparing and mentoring tomorrow’s art educators as they build their own informed, professional A-R-T-identities.

 

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Professional Experience

K-12 art teacher and volunteer; service-learning advocate and agent within roles in higher education within teacher preparation programs. Experience working nationally (predominantly Ohio, New York, California, Michigan) and internationally (England, Ireland) as a visual artist and artist educator. Board member and programming coordinator with The Art Experience, Pontiac, MI.

Significant Publications, Presentations and Exhibitions

McGarry, K. (2024). Summoning inclusion through embodied reflection. Journal for Research and Practice in College Teaching, 8(2), 1-8.

McGarry, K. (2024). Educating the Whiteness out. In S. Willis, R. Shin, and A. Richards (Eds.), The intersectionality of critical identities in art education (pp. 12-22). InSEA: International Society for Education through Art.

McGarry, K. (2024). Place as identity/Identity in place. In G. Pataky, M. Sato, and J. Silverman (Eds.), Building sustainable, inclusive environments that cultivate the creative process (pp. 27-33), 16. IMAG: InSEA, International Visual Journal for Art Education. [Contributions by Kelly Gagliardo and Katelyn Wilks, OU PSTs]

McGarry, K. (2022). Elliot Eisner: Proponent of surprise (1933–2014). In B. A. Geier (Ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Educational Thinkers (pp. 1-17). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. 

McGarry, K. (2021). A white palette gathering: A literature synthesis in one act. Art/Research International: A Transdisciplinary Journal, 6(1), 103-131.

McGarry, K. (2021). Making reflection real: Multitextual reflection as an arts-based tool for reflective practice in teacher education. [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. University of Cincinnati.

McGarry, K. (2019). Stronger Together: Making STEAM Partnerships. CIRCE: Centre for Imagination in Research, Culture & Education (STEAM Edition), 92-101.

McGarry, K. (2019). Reflexivity as a Process for Coming into Knowing. LEARNing Landscapes, 12, 155-170.

McGarry, K. (2019). Multitextual literacy in educational settings: Contextual analysis and the dab. Art/Research International: A Transdisciplinary Journal, 4(2), 480-504.

McGarry, K. (2019). Supporting the Arts as Disciplines of Learning [Review of the book The Role of the Arts in Learning: Cultivating Landscapes of Democracy, by Jay Michael Haynes and Eleanor Weisman]. Democracy & Education, 28(1), 1-3.

McGarry, K. (2018). Making Partnerships With STEAM, Art Education, 71(2), 28-34.