Her tasks include teaching, developing the curriculum, and conducting research. Pusa's doctoral thesis (2012) was situated within the discourse of phenomenological-based research in art education. Her present research interests consider queer issues in the context of art education and the societal and political role of a teacher.

The article examines if and how gender diversity and queer are present in the policies guiding Finnish art education and how these documents might influence praxis. The authors explore relations between policy and practice through a close study and analysis of the Finnish national core curriculum for basic education as it relates to the broader Finnish culture of power and politics. The authors approach the topic using epistemic injustice as the framework, and suggest that current international and national policy and guidelines that define human rights, gender equality, the rights of gender and sexual minorities, and education have created a broad and deeply seated normative, binary mindset that not only impairs the actualization of equity in education but also makes it a paradox. To unpack the suggested epistemic injustice, the authors contextualize their arguments through a critical study of policies and guidelines for human rights and Finnish compulsory education and frame this with particular theories, the capability approach and feminist and critical pedagogy.

She focuses her research on critical artistic and arts-based practices and research in questions of diversity, disability studies, social justice and critical animal studies. She is a World Councilor of InSEA (International Society for Education Through Art), the founder of the International Disability Studies, Arts and Education (DSAE) conference, and the founder of Nordic Visual Studies and Art Education (NoVA) master's program. She is the author and editor of six books, and editor of journals Research in Arts and Education (principle editor) and The International Journal of Education through Art (editor).Heidi Fast is an artist-researcher and singer with MA in live art and performance studies. Fast is currently finalizing her artistic doctoral research on the transformational potential of non-verbal affective communication, in Aalto University. Fast works in a multidisciplinary research project, called "Experiential Demarcation: Multidisciplinary Inquiries into the Affective Foundations of Interaction" (led by J. Taipale, University of Jyväskylä). Her doctoral research is actualized in co-operation with Helsinki University Central Hospital of Psychiatry. The themes of Fast´s artistic research are imminently connected with art working, that involves wide projects and series of artworks, such as Hospital Symphonies (2015-2019), which was actualized to the hospital space, concert hall and radio.

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The objective of the study was to examine current pedagogical practices in Finnish early childhood education. Our purpose was to cast light on how kindergarten teachers implement visual arts education in day-care environments. Finnish kindergarten teachers become qualified through two routes: bachelor studies in educational sciences at university or bachelor studies in social services at universities of applied sciences. We gathered qualitative data by interviewing five kindergarten teachers in five day-care centres in the Helsinki metropolitan area during the spring of 2014. The data were analysed qualitatively on the basis of themes, and the results were reduced to reveal the variation underlying the data. Through these findings we constructed two approaches to visual arts education, naming them the "instrumentally focused approach" and "art-focused approach". We hope that the study will help in designing better curricula for BA studies for future kindergarten teachers at both types of universities. We also hope we have provided new insights into the question of what high-quality visual arts education in early childhood is.