Dr. Marissa McClure Sweeny is committed to reconceptualizing images of historically marginalized groups of young children and to centering difference through collaborative scholarship, community-based pedagogy, and mentoring. She currently serves as Professor and Program Director of Early Childhood Education at Carlow University. Her forthcoming book, Children’s Digital Images, explores potentials of digital languages with young children and is based on over fifteen years of direct research with young children using digital tools to describe their worlds. Her collaborative digital photographic work with young children has been exhibited in national venues including the Phoenix Museum of Art.

As Montessori-prepared (AMS) and Reggio-inspired early childhood educator, she received her PhD in Art Education with an emphasis in early childhood studies from Penn State, an MA from the University of Arizona, and a BA from the University of Pennsylvania. She has been leading and administrating community-based and Saturday School art programs for young children and their caregivers for more than fifteen years. She is P-12 certified in Art and Language Arts. She is the co-author with Dr. Lynn Beudert, Professor Emerita of the University of Arizona, of the best-selling Curriculum Inquiry and Design for School and Community-Based Art Education, published by the National Art Education Association (NAEA) Press. She is co-editor with Dr. Mona Sakr of the forthcoming Postdevelopmental Approaches to Digital Arts in Childhood, and co-editor with Drs. Georgina Badoni, Shana Cinquemani, and Elizabeth Garber of Transformative Motherscholarship and Art: Public Pedagogies of Childhood, and an inaugural co-editor of Childhood Art: An International Journal of Research from the University of Arkansas Press.

She founded SQUAD Art Studio, a community-based multi-site, intergenerational art and STEAM program for young children and their caregivers, in 2017. She regularly serves as an educational consultant and creative caregiving coach. Her work has been funded by grants from regional, state, and national foundations including the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Art Education Foundation, and Remake Learning. Marissa received the 2024 National Art Education Association Coalition for Feminisms in Art Education June King McFee Award, the 2023 IUP Center for Teaching Excellence Heiges-Lamberski Award in Experiential Education, and the Charles and Irene Putnam Award for Excellence in Teaching from the University of Arizona.

Education

  • PhD – Art Education with an emphasis in Early Childhood Studies, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA
  • MA – Art Education with an emphasis in Language and Literacy Education, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ
  • BA – Literature & Culture, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 

Research

Interests: Early Childhood Education; Early Childhood Art; Language And Literacy Education; Feminist Pedagogies; Curriculum Inquiry & Design; Digital Technologies; Community-Based Education; Intergenerational Education

Publications

  • 2025. Transformative Motherscholarship in Art: Public Pedagogies of Childhood. London: Bloomsbury. Feminist Thought in Childhood Research Co-Editor with Georgina Badoni, Shana Cinquemani & Elizabeth Garber.
  • 2024. Storytelling and Error: Challenging Pioneer Ontologies in Early Childhood Education. Pedagogy, Culture, and Society Special Issue Co-Edited by Jayne Osgood, Sidharth Mohandas, Nathan Archer & Jo Albin-Clark. Co-author with Browning Neddeau.
  • 2024. Postdevelopmental Approaches to Childhood Digital Arts. London: Bloomsbury Postdevelopmental Approaches to Childhood Series. Co-Editor with Mona Sakr.
  • Children’s Images within Digital Technologies and New Media. London: Routledge Contesting Early Childhood Series. (May 2024)
  • 2023. S/m/othering. In E. Walker, M. Novotny, & Silbergleid, R. (Eds.). Infertilities, A Curation. Wayne State University Press.
  • December 2022: Transformative Art Making and Caregiving with Young Children: Motherscholarship with The Scribble Squad. Special Issue of Visual Arts Research, University of Illinois Press.
  • 2022. Hidden mothering and mutated modest witnessing in Hopscotch Studio. In J. Osgood & M. Sakr (Eds.). Postdevelopmental Approaches to childhood observation. London: Bloomsbury (pp. 141-155).
  • 2022. Drawing as felt. In L. Trafi-Prats & C. Schulte (Eds.). New Images of Thought in the Study of Childhood Drawing. New York: Springer (pp. 137-57).
  • 2022. Release. In. K. Aughterson & J. Moriarty (Eds). Performing Maternities (Accepted for publication).
  • 2021. SQUAD Art Studio: An Alternative Community-Based Multi-Site Saturday Art Lab School for Negotiating Theory and Practice in Early Childhood Art Education with Preservice Art Educators and Digital Media, Studies in Art Education, 62(4), 339-355.
  • 2019. No one is as surprised as I am now. Visual Arts Research, 45(1), 27-40. Co-author with Elizabeth Dubin.
  • 2019. Don’t forget to show them this one! Post-qualitative potentials of research with young children. In C. Schulte (Ed.). Ethics and research with young children: Personal pedagogies, pp. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
  • 2018. Then and now: Reflections on arts-based participatory research with young children. In A. Eckhoff (Ed.). Participatory research with young children, pp. 195-204. New York: Springer.
  • 2017. Defining quality in visual art education for young children: Building on the position paper of the Early Childhood Art Educators. Arts Education Policy Review 118(3). First author with Patricia Tarr, Christine Thompson, and Angela Eckhoff.
  • 2017. Beyond screen time: Aesthetics of digital playscapes for young children. In C. Schulte & C. Thompson (Eds.). Communities of practice: Art, play, and aesthetics in early childhood, pp.153-163. New York: Springer.
  • 2016. Service learning as the new lab school: Engaging pre-service art educators within local communities of art and knowledge. In K. Heider (Ed.). Service Learning as Pedagogy in Early Childhood Education: Theory, Research, and Practice, pp. 169-178. New York: Springer.
  • 2015. “So, bye, Justin Bieber, I love you!” The Affective Work of Managing Masculinity and Femininity in Preschool Girls’ Digital Video Productions. In M. Kallio-Tavin & J. Pullinen (Eds.). Conversations on Finnish art education in international contexts, pp. 230-246. Helsinki, Finland: Aalto University Publication Series.
  • 2015. McClure, M. & Sweeny, R. In K. Heider & M. Jalongo (Eds.), Children’s digital lives. In Young children and families in the information age: Applications of technology in early childhood. Springer, pp. 245-254. New York, NY: Springer.
  • 2015. Beudert, L. & McClure, M. Curriculum Inquiry and Design for School and Community-Based Art Education. Reston, VA: National Art Education Association (NAEA) Press.
  • 2015. s/m/othering. In A. Young (Ed.). Teacher, Scholar, Mother: (Re)Envisioning Motherhood in the Academy, pp. 203-215. New York, NY: Lexington Books.
  • 2014. Children as theorists: Potentials of pedagogical documentation as an approach to research. In M. Buffington & S. Wilson McKay (Eds). Practice theory: Seeing the power of teacher researchers, pp. 60-63. Reston, VA: NAEA Press.
  • 2014. Co-Editor, Art and Early Childhood: Personal Narratives and Social Practices. Bank Street College of Education Occasional Papers.
  • 2013. Thompson, C. M., Schulte, C. M., McClure, M., & Sunday, K. Being there with children through art. In O. N. Saracho (Ed.), Handbook of research methods in early childhood education, pp: 393-431. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
  • 2013. The Monster and Lover Girl: Mapping complex relations in preschool children’s digital video production. Studies in Art Education, 55(1), 18-34.
  • 2012. The princess’s protagonist: The affective and discursive work of managing masculinity and femininity in Mexican and Native American preschool girls’ digital video productions. In O. Ivashkevich & M. Bae (Eds.). Girls, cultural productions, and resistance, pp. 13-24. New York: Peter Lang.
  • 2011. ¡Pendejo! Preschoolers’ profane play: Why children make art, Journal of Social Theory in Art Education, 30, 77-101.
  • 2011. Child as totem: Redressing the myth of inherent creativity in early childhood art education, Studies in Art Education, 52(20), 127-141.
  • 2010. Riding through borderlands: Understanding sustainable and collaborative community-based art education. In E. Clapp (Ed.). 20Under40: Reinventing the arts and education in the 21st century, pp. 220-234. AuthorHouse: Bloomington, Indiana.
  • 2010. Site-specific kinderculture and digital media, Arts & Learning Research Journal, 26(1), 20-34. 2009.
  • 2010. Digital visual childhood: Little kids, video, and the blogosphere. In R. Sweeny, (Ed.). Digital visual culture: Intersections and interactions in 21st century art education, pp. 20-29. Reston, VA: NAEA Press.
  • 2009. Images of children and their educational consequences. Visual Arts Research, 35(2), 91-104.
  • 2009. A private occasion in a public place: A dialogue about mentoring. Visual Arts Research, 35(2), 105-109. Co-author with Christine Thompson.
  • 2008. Jean Dubuffet and child art during the Second World War. Revue Frontenac Review
  • 2007. Thompson, C., & McClure, M. Child art. In R. New & M. Cochran, (Eds.). Early childhood education: An International encyclopedia, Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers.
  • 2007. Choice, translation, reconfiguration, and the process of culture. Visual Arts Research, 33(65), 63-70.
  • 2006. Drawing on the toy: Contemporary perspectives on childhood by children. In P. Duncum, (Ed.). Visual culture in the art class: Case studies (p. 24-31). Reston, VA: NAEA Press.
  • 2006. Thank heaven for little girls: Girls’ drawings as representations of self. Visual Culture and Gender 1, 63-78.
  • 2005. Play as process: Choice, translation, reconfiguration, and the process of culture. Cultuur & Educatie 15, 3-12.

Awards & Recogition

  • June King McFee Award, Coalition for Feminisms in Art Education (NAEA Women’s Caucus), National Art Education Association (2024)
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