Alex F. de Cosson, Ph.D., is an a/r/tographer who has worked as a professional sculptor, exhibiting nationally and internationally for over twenty-five years. He recently walked/ran the Victoria International Marathon in 4 hours and 47 minutes; a pedagogy of walking plays a central role in his understanding of being a teacher. Alex has an MFA from York University and was on the faculty of the Ontario College of Art and Design from 1989 to 2006 and is currently Coordinator of the Teaching From The Heart Cohort for the Teacher Education Office and Academic Advisor for the Burnaby Visual and Performing Arts Cohort. Alex has been an active member of Inner City Angels in Toronto, dedicated to bringing art to inner city school kids through artist-centered programs since 1987. He has been awarded numerous grants from, among others, the Canada Council, the Ontario Arts Council, and the BC Arts Council. Alex was awarded the Gordon and Marion Smith Award for Excellence in Art Education from UBC’s Curriculum Studies Department in 2003.
Alex passionately believes that art and art making, in the broadest possible terms, are central to a curriculum of well-being in the classroom. His research interests are centered within arts-based and autobiographical ways of knowing and being. He has published in numerous educational journals and contributed chapters to books furthering arts-based forms of teaching and learning. In 2004 he was co-editor, with Rita L. Irwin, of A/r/tography: Rendering Self through Arts-Based Living Inquiry, published by Pacific Educational Press. And in 2007, he was a contributor to Gary Knowles & Ardra Coles’ Handbook of the Arts in Qualitative Research: Perspectives, Methodologies, Examples and Issues, published by Sage Publications.