“The Future of Creative Education: What We Can Learn About Technology from Art Teachers and Their Classrooms”. Li, I., Chen, A. S., Almeda, S., Chung, K., Li, J. ACM Designing Interactive Systems (DIS) 2026.

Art educators are on the front lines of designing a rising generation’s relationship with creativity and media. While public access to generative AI tools has sparked new discussions and practices in creative communities, industries, and higher academia, secondary education art teachers often lack the digital literacy and resources to align emergent technology trends with classroom goals. We interviewed 19 art educators across the United States, surfacing 1) constraints around technological access, guidance, and agency; 2) five core values for art education; and 3) the social-emotional labour educators perform to create classroom communities. Lensed by educator needs and the sociotechnical contexts they teach within, we call for researchers to critically consider how art education technology can motivate creative thinking, enable peer teaching among students, complement analogue art-making, and prioritise joy over results to better attend to classroom needs.