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Due to developments in visual technology, teachers and students are exposed to an increasing number of images in their everyday life, which also finds its way into the classroom. This study aims to contribute to further understanding of how knowledge and positions are constructed in visual meetings in the classroom by problematizing the discursive practice of visual art education in upper secondary school. 

The study investigates how art teachers construct positions when talking about their choices of images for teaching and what kind of knowledge thereby is constructed as valuable. The study also analyzes how art teachers and students construct positions in visual meetings in the classroom and what kind of knowledge thereby is constructed as valuable.  

The study is theoretically framed by theories and concepts in visual culture and Foucauldian discourse analysis. The concept visual meetings refers to how art teachers and students interact and make meaning when using images that the art teachers have chosen. The perspective of discourse analysis involves that classroom interactions are seen as expressions of knowledge and power in general and of prevailing views on visual art education in particular. 

Data production is carried out through ethnography, which involves interviews with two art teachers and observations of eleven lessons in visual art classes at two upper secondary schools. 

The results show that a dominating overall school discourse regulates how the art teachers and students are constructed as active/adult/experienced and passive/child/unexperienced subjects. One of the classroom practices is shown to prioritize position and knowledge constructions related to production of aesthetically pleasing images. The other classroom practice is shown to prioritize position and knowledge constructions related to image interpretation in terms of understanding cultures and contexts. Both classroom practices also show that despite the art teachers’ stated intentions in constructing independent and critically examining positions for the students, looking practices are formed in the classrooms that do not allow such positions for the students to any great extent. 

The study concludes that the dominating discourses in these two classroom practices reveal régimes of truth that regulate what kind of knowledge constructions that are valued within these two examples of visual art education.