Discovering a Gap: A Comparison of Personal and Educational Aesthetic Preferences of Students and Teachers

Abstract

Some of the art teachers with whom I have worked were honest enough to admit that they had little or no knowledge of their students' aesthetic preferences. When it came to selecting works of art for historical, critical, or aesthetic study, some teachers included works they personally preferred, while others hoped to include works their students might prefer. These teachers wanted to embrace a tenet of Deweyan pragmatist philosophy, which holds that it is important to `start where students are,' recognizing that where they are, what they perceive and prefer are largely dependent on students' past experiences, training, and intentions (Dewey, cited in Rosen, 1968). In an effort to build on their students' range of learned behaviors, values, interests in, and aptitudes for responding to art, these teachers attempted to predict student preferences. Despite such efforts, some art teachers and I suspected that there were differences between the teachers' own personal preferences, their predicted student preferences, and the students' own stated preferences. Moreover, these teachers were left to wonder whether the artworks their students found most personally appealing were the same ones they would like to learn about in school. As indicated by a particular body of empirical research in the art education literature, researchers also have wondered about aesthetic preference (Farley & Ahn, 1973; Farley & Dowling, 1972; Gardner & Gardner, 1973; Gardner, 1973-74; Salkind & Salkind, 1973). Distinguishing between aesthetic preference and aesthetic perception, judgment, or development, these researchers sought to identify those factors, such as subject matter, style, color, texture, degree of realism, and spatial depth, which most influence preference. Although somewhat conflicted, findings have suggested that style is an important factor influencing children's preferences. Hardiman and Zernich (1977) found that children in grades 3-8 preferred realistic paintings to semiabstract styles. In a later study, they found that degree of realism was more influential than subject matter in shaping the preferences of children and adults (Hardiman & Zernich, 1982). Taunton (1980) studied the influential factors of subject matter, degree of realism, and spatial depth individually and in combination. She found that 4-, 8-, 12-, and 16-year olds, as well as adults, preferred reproductions depicting a high degree of realism and deep space to those depicting a low degree of realism and flat space. In addition, 8- and 12year olds most preferred still-lifes, followed by figure groups and portraits. Adults were found to prefer figure groups, followed by still-lifes and portraits. In this study, I seek to revisit and extend this research by identifying, and more importantly, by comparing, the stated and predicted aesthetic preferences of children, adolescents, and adult pre- and inservice teachers for artworks in a particular collection. In addition to comparing what each of these groups finds personally appealing, I consider what each finds educationally appealing (students' and teachers' preferences for learning about or teaching with artworks, respectively). I seek to determine if there are differences, or gaps, between stated and predicted references for artworks in a particular collection, and if there are correlations between the artworks found to be personally appealing and those found to be educationally appealing. Method To determine the stated and predicted aesthetic preferences in a sample of children, adolescents, and adults, and the relationships between these preferences, a repeated measures balanced sequence (or within-subjects) study was designed. In this design, responses of the participants to 23 different art reproductions (experimental conditions) were measured. Because each participant responded to each condition, s/he served as his/her own control. The sequence of conditions (reproductions) to which participants responded was randomized. …