This work was produced in conjunction with Union Institute and University's Masters of Education program at Vermont College.
The
Intersection of Pedagogy in Art and the Language Arts
The aim of art
education in the public schools is not to make more professional artists but to
teach people to live happier, fuller lives; to extract more out of their
experience, whatever that experience may be.
--Grant Wood, “Art in the Daily Life of the Child” (as cited by Decker, 2001).
--Grant Wood, “Art in the Daily Life of the Child” (as cited by Decker, 2001).
The
practice and pedagogy in action in the secondary language arts classroom may
become better informed by the examination and utilization of some modern methods
and rationale at work in art education. As the value of visual and performing
arts curriculum in public schools became contested during the 1980s and 1990s,
many new rationale, as well as a trove of methods implementing ‘arts across the
curriculum’ were developed. The secondary language arts classroom in the
American public school deserves, and is in need of, a similar debate: some
forms of communication at work in the world today may be expressive, containing
emotion, meaning, and power, and expression can still be an art, and may still
help students, in the words of Grant Wood, “extract more out of their
experience.”
Drawing from Eliot
Eisner’s 2002 Arts and the Creation of Mind, John Dewey’s Art as
Experience (2005), and Dennis Atkinson’s Art in Education: Identity and
Practice (2003), this paper will review common pedagogies, in theory and in
practice, at work in arts curriculum, and will provide suggestions for a new
approach for educators in the language
arts classroom.
Art
education pedagogy regards the importance of art education to both the
individual and the wider community. This difference in the language arts
classroom could manifest in whether or not the student’s writing assignment
will be handed in to the teacher for assessment; it is important to note that
language arts, and creative writing, can offer students a classroom opportunity
to express themselves privately. Art education, especially the facilitation of
students’ production of visual art, may offer less privacy, as often students
in an arts classroom can view each other’s methods and products as they are
created. This distinction of classroom environment is an important one: that a
student’s painting, pottery, or sculpture is automatically shared with the
class, and that is not a condition of the language arts classroom.
As well, a
student’s participation in a language arts or art education learning
environment requires more than simply transmitting and receiving information.
In the most effective situation, both of these educational environments may
allow for an individual to make an artistic, creative, and unique contribution
to a group or community. Dewey (2005) cites poet Samuel Alexander:
The artist’s work proceeds not from
a finished imaginative experience to which the work of art corresponds, but
from passionate excitement about the subject matter… The poet’s poem is wrung
from him by the subject which excites him. (Alexander, as cited by Dewey, 2005,
p. 67).
This helps
identify an important distinction between art education pedagogy and all
others; it is as well an important similarity between the teaching of Language
and the teaching of Art: an individual’s “passionate excitement” may, through
careful method and practice, help shape a curriculum. To entertain this pedagogical
leap in Art, Music, or English class is to allow a student’s educational
process to become transformative, an aid to their self-reflection and
definition.
This
paper will first examine a few art education pedagogies that specifically seek
to educate and empower the individual, before identifying a few art education
pedagogies that seek specifically to educate and empower communities, including
new pedagogies rooted in hermenuetics.
John
Dewey (2005) builds upon previous theories of experience and education
in Art as Experience, as he discovers new regard for the importance of
developing an individual’s aesthetic perception. He provides quaint examples of
a tranquil life: a wife watering houseplants, someone stoking a fire, and a
baseball player who finds his presence “infects the onlooking crowd” (p. 3).
“These people, if questioned as to the reasons for their actions, would
doubtless return reasonable answers” (Dewey, 2005, p. 3). The individual’s
perception of their environment, and their action and experience within that
environment, result in rational, or “reasonable” answers.
According
to Dewey (2005), however, an individual’s perception does not function solely
to construct reasonable answers, but to become, in the case of the fire-tender,
“fascinated by the colorful drama of change enacted before his eyes” (p. 3), to
such an extent that he “imaginatively partakes in it” (p. 3). Dewey asserts
that because human perception allows for the discovery of aesthetic quality in
our everyday actions and environments, our sense of “art” may be derived
directly from our experiences (2005, p. 4).
Often, the
language arts classroom seeks to achieve a similar goal: the development of an
individual’s aesthetic perception, and, to whatever extent able, the expression
of that perception through language. While many students relish their success
in the language arts classroom upon mastering grammar, mechanics and typing,
the acquisition of these skills might equate to a painter learning different
brush strokes, or a sculptor learning how to use a hammer and chisel. These
different media—visual art, tactile art, and the language arts—may not
necessarily be viewed as equitable.
Writing and
reading does directly challenge students to develop their ability to percieve
in an aesthetic way; the written description of a campfire, watering
houseplants, and a baseball player are all likely assignments in the language
arts classroom. The teaching of writing, no matter the subject matter, shares
with the teaching of creating visual art the challenge to an individual’s
perceptive abilities, beyond seeking merely “reasonable answers” (Dewey, 2005,
p. 3).
Alongside the
improvement of students’ perceptive abilities, many art education pedagogies
seek to develop an individual’s critical thinking skills. Eisner, in Arts
and the Creation of Mind, asserts that “one lesson the arts teach is that
there can be more than answer to a question and more than one solution to a
problem; variability of outcome is okay” (2002, p. 196).
The previous
distinction regarding privacy and the creative environment in the art and
language arts classrooms again becomes relevant here, as Eisner’s (2002)
“variability of outcome” (p. 196) among student work is, often in the visual
arts classroom, immediate public knowledge—‘my painting looks different than
yours.’ This condition does not often exist as often in the language arts
classroom.
Though some
pedagogical goals at work in the teaching of writing, reading, and
communication skills may be have “more than one answer” (Eisner, 2002, p. 196),
a great deal of learning must take place before students achieve a reasonable
skill level in grammar and mechanics, and assimilate a vocabulary that supports
sensible written expression.
In Arts and the Creation of Mind,
Eisner (2002) presents a number of pedagogical modes for art education (p. 26).
A summary of each of these pedagogical approaches will inform this discussion,
as each approach may inform the methods and curricula in use in the language
arts classroom.
In one approach,
Eisner (2002) uses twentieth-century psychology and philosophy to give support
to the pedagogical notion that “perception itself is a cognitive activity” (p.
36). Eisner (2002) asserts that art education programs could empower students
in a new way “if they emphasized the cognitive consequences of work in the arts
and wanted to exploit such work for educational purposes” (p. 37).
This pedagogical
approach calls for stronger recognition of the students’ actions, of perception
and subsequent cognitive development, in the art classroom—actions of analysis,
comparison and contrast, description, and more. According to Eisner (2002),
students’ skills of cognitive development and perception are often shaped by
their ability and tendency to “decode values and ideas embedded in pop culture”
(p. 28).
In both visual art and modern
American poetry, readers are often challenged in this regard. In the language
arts classroom, students’ perceptive skills and cognitive development are
developed to the extent that they may understand Keats’ axiom “truth is beauty,
and beauty, truth.” However, students’ understanding of the concepts like
“beauty” may have been derived from their interpretation of pop culture itself.
Can we assume that a high school graduate has been exposed, in either the arts
or language arts classroom, to a discussion discounting a Barbie ™ doll’s
anatomic proportions?
While Eisner’s (2002) first
pedagogical approach to art education presented here sought to emphasize
students’ cognitive development through understanding their own perception at
work in pop culture, a different approach seeks to establish more broadly our
cultural and societal understanding of the arts: “the arts are often thought to
have very little to do with complex forms of thought. They are regarded as
concrete rather than abstract, emotional rather than mental… imaginary rather
than practical or useful” (p. 35).
Perhaps the teaching of visual art
suffers more from misnomers in its common societal and cultural conception;
language arts differs from art education in that the skills acquired are
immediately practical and useful, as communication. While Eisner (2002) regards
the popular conception of the visual arts as “easy not tough, soft not hard,
simple not complex,” (p. 35), only specific elements of the language
arts—perhaps most dominantly, poetry—suffer from this inaccurate
conception.
Eisner (2002) identifies another
pedagogical approach to art education in citing
the esteemed research of V. Lowenfeld
and H. Read (p. 32). Lowenfeld and Read were educational researchers who tried
to validate the necessity of art through examining art education in Germany,
prior to World War II. According to Eisner (2002), “both Read and Lowenfeld
believed the arts to be a process that emancipated the spirit and provided an
outlet for the creative impulse” (p. 32); thus, the world saw the disastrous
consequences of an education system that suppressed an individual’s normal
creative urges.
Eisner (2002)
advocates for the theraputic use of the arts in the classroom: “the child who
has developed freedom and flexibility in his expression will be able to face
new situations without difficulties” (p. 32). In recognizing the psychological
and fluid nature of this pedagogical approach to art education, Eisner (2002)
describes Lowenfeld and Read’s notions of creativity and expression as
“psychodynamic” (p. 32); art can provide a way to facilitiate students’
personal, emotive expression into real objects.
Through
creating an art education environment that embraces this “freedom and
flexibility in expression,” (Eisner, 2002, p. 32), the production of art
objects becomes a byproduct of the personal realization—“for Read,” surmised
Eisner (2002), “art was not so much taught as caught” (p. 33). In this
pedagogical approach, an arts educator is charged with, not an action that
seeks exclusively to “teach,” but the more difficult action of ‘catching’
students’ interests, being aware of students’ moments of earnest expression,
and to provide opportunities for these expressions to manifest in art.
While
Eisner (2002) formalizes a theraputic art education pedagogy, a similar
theraputic approach applies the language arts classroom: with “freedom and
flexibility” (p. 32), students are challenged to express themselves, through
poetry or prose, the real or the imagined.
It is interesting
to distinguish between the degree of “freedom and flexibility” available to
students in the theraputically-aligned language arts classroom, against the
degree that exists in a theraputic arts classroom. Students may be offered a
variety of forms in each educational environment: short or long poems, large or
small pottery, short stories, small sketches, massive canvases, novels, found
poetry, junk art, sonnets—each of these can provide a venue for students to
share some emotional, spiritual, or psychological element, or elements, of
themselves.
While classroom
method, curriculic choices, and educational goals may weigh against the degree
of “freedom and flexibility” in both classrooms, it is important to note the
variety of unique products available for use in both environments. Though the
language arts classroom relies on students’ construction using words alone, a
strong variety of forms are available to create a theraputic writing
assignment.
Derived another
pedagogical approach to art education from the Bauhaus movement, Eisner (2002)
describes this approach as the completion of a task, and production of a useful
artifact, assessing both its aesthetic design as well as its function (p. 31).
Suggesting an arts educator “problematize” a creative product in the arts
classroom, Eisner provides an example of designing new compact disc cases—a
product whose creation challenges both a student’s aesthetic and functional
design abilities.
In the curriculum of the secondary
Language Arts classroom, this approach is especially significant, as students’
expository writing may be framed by the supposition of a ‘problem,’ the
solution to which exists in the pending product. A writing task similar to
Eisner’s compact disc cases may be an essay that challenges students to, with
brevity and aesthetic value, introduce the members of their immediate
family.The development of students’ persuasive and argumentative essays may also
serve as an example of this pedagogy at work in the language arts classroom.
Eisner (2002)
using a pedagogical statement by a corporate executive to frame his next
pedagogical approach to art education:
Today there are two sets of basics.
The first—reading, writing, and math—is simply the prerequisite for a second,
more complex, equally vital collection of higher-level skills required to
function well in today’s world… the ability to allocate resources; to work
successfully with others; to find, analyze, and communicate information; to
operate increasingly complex systems of seemingly unrelated parts. (p. 34).
Interestingly,
the CEO asks for education to prepare individuals by embracing a skill set that
extends beyond rudimentary literacy and math skills: the “higher-level”
(Eisner, 2002, p. 34) skills the executive described are analytical,
organizational, interpersonal. New emphasis of the development of these
elements in students, through art education pedagogy may serve the educational
goals of the corporate world.
In
both the art education classroom and the language arts classroom, educators may
follow models that exist in the corporate workplace, and have students develop
a portfolio of their own work for presentation. Or, students may work in teams
on unique, and multi-faceted projects—not simply the design and production of a
CD case, but perhaps an entire CD, of spoken word poetry or music.
While it may not
be frugal to allow the pedagogy of the art education classroom be dictated by
corporate America, or any one realm, the value of utilizing with students a
sense of designing, executing, and completing large-scale “projects,” in both
visual and language arts, may not be overestimated. Students may be more likely
to gain an “ability allocate resources” (Eisner, 2002, p. 34), and gain a sense
of aesthetic connection, if they are charged with the task of assembling a
collection of their revised, polished poems. Asking students to draw
connections between their own unique works of artistic, creative expression may
help educators more directly fulfill the aims in this pedagogical approach.
According to Eisner (2002), discipline-based
education—the most widely-used of his seven pedagogical modes—aims to teach
students the aesthetic quality of visual art, as “seeing from an aesthetic
perspective is a learned form of human performance” (p. 26). Through gaining an
understanding of how a work of visual art is created, and being provided with
examples, students are challenged to see, ask, evaluate, and think about the
world like Andy Warhol, Georgia O’Keefe, and Pablo Picasso.
The emulation of, and learning from,
others’ work as a method for improving students’ aesthetic knowledge may be a
useful classroom method for the language arts environment. At many levels—both
the mechanical replication of grammatically-correct sentences, as well as in
the emulation of a specific poet’s style in an original work—students gain some
degree of aesthetic understanding regarding their use of language as
communication and expression.
Eisner
(2002) establishes four goals for discipline-based arts education: to establish
imaginative skills that promote “high quality art performance” (p. 26), to gain aesthetic perspective for use within
and beyond the understanding of art, to comprehend a work’s historical
contexts, and to evaluate the importance and value a work provides (p. 26).
Support exists in
the language arts classroom for these aims: “high quality… performance”
(Eisner, 2002, p. 26) might translate into promoting students’ mastery of
grammar and mechanics—the raw techniques of effective written expression might
be the equivelent of a painter finding a comfortable way to hold a paintbrush.
The acquisition of an aesthetic perspective could translate in the language arts
classroom into understanding of what qualities in a poem a reader/student does
or dos not like. Improving students’ comprehension of a written work through
providing supplemental historical context information is common. New methods of
self-evaluation and assessment help educators allow students to understand
their own work in a new way: do they think it is good, or not?
Eisner’s
(2002) final approach to arts education is an integrated vision, seeking to
utilize art concepts throughout any school environment (p. 39). Perhaps as
schools assess and evaluate the value of arts curriculum, and budgetary
constraints greatly reduce some areas of a learner’s educational experience, an
integrated arts curriculum may help maintain a level of aesthetic and artistic
awareness in public schools.
Eisner
(2002) promotes four methods of arts curriculum integration (p. 39). First, the
arts may be utilized to help learners understand a historical period of
culture: alongside a history unit on the Civil War, for example, Eisner (2002)
suggests the curriculum include music of the time, or a series of Matthew
Brady’s famous battlefield photographs. Second, elements of artistic design may
be included in more than one realm of curriculum: the teaching of ‘rhythm’
across visual design, music, and poetry, all at once (p. 40). Thirdly, Eisner
advocates for the identification and teaching of major themes or concepts
across different forms of expression: to convey the notion of ‘metamorphosis,’
an educator may use a Mozart symphony, information on changing population
demographics in urban development, and Kafka’s short story. Last, and perhaps
most useful, Eisner proposes that a curriculum utilizing a ‘problem solving’
approach may relate readily to the arts: challenging high school students to
design a playground for preschool and kindergarten students, for example, would
require students employ skills learned in almost every realm, including the
arts.
In sum, Eisner
(2002) presents seven new approaches to art education pedagogy, and each is
rooted in debunking the false societal perception that regards art and art
education as less than useful: “the arts have long been perceived as being
“affective” rather than cognitive, easy not tough, soft not hard, simple not
complex” (2002, p. 35). Eisner (2002) promotes new methods for the art
education classroom that promote an individual’s cognitive development.
Beyond its
importance to the individual, Detels (1999) recognizes art education as
important to any community, for it “does not lead to monetary gain or other
clearly quantifiable values; rather, it serves a broader and deeper purpose of
helping us to understand ourselves and others” (p. 14). While Eisner (2002)
promotes art education for its theraputic, cognitive, and developmental
abilities, Detels (1999) evaluates the connections between individuals that are
forged through art education pedagogy.
Art may allow for
an individual’s self-discovery, which, when shared with other individuals,
creates a community, and shared knowledge and experience. This pedagogical
approach to art education is new, and, in the work of Detels (1999) and
Atkinson (2003), targets to reform discipline-based art education pedagogy.
Atkinson (2003)
describes hermeneutics as maintaining an understanding of “who and what we are
and the way in which we percieve others” (p. 194). In the art education and
language arts environments, students’ identities are formed, through factors
such as classroom activities, instruction, and curriculum. Eisner (2002) notes
that “arts teach children… their signature is important” (p. 197). These
identities—as ably-equipped creative individuals—are the unique result of art
education curriculum.
Assessment in the
art education classroom is more difficult than other classrooms; how can we
know when a student has learned that “their signature is important?” (Eisner,
2002, p. 197). Atkinson (2003) elaborates on these identities, and seeks to
determine how art education assessment methods allow for a “pedagogized other”
(p. 5), a term he uses to define those students whose work falls outside of the
set of expectations and ‘norms’ during assessment. Because “their signature is
important,” (Eisner, 2002, p. 197), how can art education assessment, or, in
the language arts, the assessment of students’ creative writing, more fully
embrace students whose individual expression doesn’t match up to what the
curriculum sought?
Atkinson (2003)
asserts that the current art education assessment pedagogy is at risk of
maintaining a “particular discourse of levels of attainment and achievement in
which specific standards are articulated according to certain norms of practice
and understanding” (p. 10). Students’ identities may not become as developed in
the art education classroom, if standards of “attainment and achievement” drive
classroom assessment procedures.
The language arts
classroom may also create this dangerous condition of a “pedagogized other”
(Atkinson, 2003, p. 5), though standards of “attainment and acheivement” (p.
10) may be more easily recognized in the teaching of grammar, mechanics, and
vocabulary. The language arts classroom is most at risk of developing
identities within students that resemeble Atkinson’s (2003) “pedagogized other”
(p. 5) when students are challenged and assessed not by the learning of forms,
but through the creative and unique choices they make as they express
themselves.
Atkinson (2003)
examines art education assessment methods, and acknowledges the important
aesthetic component (p. 11); an example of this improper type of art education
assesment could be telling students, ‘use all five colors on this color wheel
for an A on this assignment.’ In the language arts classroom, this could
manifest in assessing students’ sonnets, assessing their work solely on the proper
execution of the sonnet form.
Hermeneutics at
work in the language arts classroom helps educators empower students. Through
creating an environment that allows for students’ earnest, creative expression,
and an environment that recognizes the importance of self-evaluation, students
will be motivated to learn the mechanics, grammar, and vocabular necessary to
express themselves more fully. Language arts educators may embrace a
hermeneutic pedagogy at work in art education by teaching students that, through
writing, they may find a better answer to “who and what we are” (Atkinson,
2003, p. 194), and assessing students’ products on both its aesthetic
qualities, its understanding of form, and its qualities of expression.
Detels (1999)
explores hermeneutic art education pedagogy through acknowledging two goals of
art in the classroom: the transmission of knowledge, and, built of that
knowledge, some amount of understanding, about ourselves and about those around
us (p. 12). Detels (1999) notes that since the Renaissance, education has
become increasingly specialized, preparing individuals for work in specific
trades.
Detels (1999) says
individuals are at risk of losing the ability to communicate with society as a
whole, having become “so narrowly focused within their disciplines as to lose
the ability to communicate their knowledge to others” (p. 12). Technological
advancements have not often been accompanied by advancements in the way we
communicate; because of an increasing specificity of trade in society,
individuals’ unique knowledge and experience becomes harder to communicate to
those who work in a different trade.
Writing to
summarize a keynote address by Christopher Lasch, delivered at a conference in
1983 on “The Future of Musical Education in America,” Detels (1999) seeks to
better frame this problem of specificity and communication, and to offer a new
vision of art education pedagogy as its cure: “[Lasch] went on the address the
need for music and humanities scholars to challenge the narrow consumeristic
approach to education and life in late industrial America, instead of just
participating in specialized professional debates” (1999, p. 119). Detels seeks
to identify the way students may benefit from art education, or language arts
pedagogies that confront this specialization.
The “narrow
consumeristic approach” (Detels, 1999, p. 119) identified here applies to the
application of art education pedagogy within a variety of curricula. According
to Detels (1999), teaching the arts is viewed by most, educators and students
alike, as unique from other curriculum: “none of the arts is seen as having
comparable importance with history, English, math, or other subjects, so their
representation in K-12 schools often depends on the presence of extra funding”
(p. 120). As schools prepare students for work in a specific trade, Detels
(1999) proposes a re-evaluation of art education pedagogy at work in all
classrooms.
Detels acknowledges the difference between the
value of using art across curricula in education, and the lesser value of
specified music classes, visual art classes, etc. Before defining the
relationship between the 1994 National Standards for Arts Education, the
product of a group of arts educators, and the Arts Education aims as listed in
the Goals 2000 National Education Standards (legislation usurped by the No
Child Left Behind Act), Detels (1999) notes that the proper functioning of
these ‘arts across the curriculum’ goals assigned “responsibility for teaching
the arts to single-disciplinary specialists in the various arts disciplines, as
if schools commonly have specialists in all four disciplines” (p. 121). Detels
(1999) identifies that the principle of ‘arts across the curriculum’ may not be
sound practice, as educators often teach students in more than one area of
curriculum.
While ‘arts across the curriculum’ may appear
as a valid mode of pedagogy to help reform education, ‘writing across the
curriculum’ may not be as valid. The language arts are useful for their
teaching of communication skills; thus, funding for English class in public
education is not debated in the same way as Art class.
Detels (1999)
might notice, however, that the debate regarding “single-disciplinary
specialists” (p. 121) could be applicable to the language arts: as every
teacher is required to employ the language arts in their classroom, the English
curriculum in the school quickly comes into play.
The “narrow
consumeristic approach” (Detels, 1999, p. 119), and dilemma of specialization
in education and society that Detels identifies regarding art education
pedagogy is important to language arts education. To view the unique components
of English class—reading comprehension, grammar, mechanics, and vocabulary, the
process of writing and the writing itself—which of these could be emphasized in
curricula other than English? Educators might answer this question regarding
their own classroom, and invent new methods of reenforcing some component of
language arts curriculum through their own teaching. As the move toward
specialization of trade continues in society, the implementation of art
education and language arts pedagogy across many curricula needs to be
carefully considered as well.
Detels
(1999) presents a distinct remedy to the “narrow consumeristic approach” (p.
119) of art education pedagogy when she calls for the re-examination of the
method of historical inquiry that results in establishing a literary or visual
arts canon (p. 28). The process of how works are selected for inclusion in a
canon may not fully represent students’ interests; Detels (1999) questions
directly why Elvis, Madonna, Michael Jackson, and John Coltrane are excluded
from music history curriculum (p. 28).
In
the language arts classroom, students may achieve some level of ‘cultural literacy’
through creating a specific curriculum or canon of modern works. While art and
music education may face difficult questions regarding the inclusion of popular
and modern works, language arts curriculum may offer educators more
flexibility: using resources as fresh as a daily newspaper, or, better,
reliable internet news sources, educators may make use of students’ pop culture
interests.
Through
examining art education pedagogy, methods of instruction and curriculum
development at work in language arts classroom may be strengthened and
improved. Recognizing what Eisner (2002) called “the cognitive character of the
arts” (p. 36), a language arts educator may seek, through a number of
approaches, to offer students a number of unique venues for their creative
expression. An educator in the language arts classroom may be more challenged,
in a good way, to embrace Dewey’s (2005) affirmation, that “art is a more
universal model of language” (p. 349). Both Dewey (2005) and Atkinson (2003)
regard as important the development of a student’s sense of aesthetics, in and
out of the art education environment. The practice and pedagogy in action in
the secondary language arts classroom can become better informed by the
examination and utilization of some modern methods and rationale at work in art
education.
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