The City as Metaphor for Integrated Learning in the Arts

Abstract

For a number of years I have explored the kinds of curriculum models implied by conceptions of cognition. The spiral curriculum, suggested by Jerome Bruner in the 1960s, was a prime example of such a model (Efland, 1987;1995)1. It featured the idea that early learning provided the foundation for later learning and the possibility that certain key ideas might be introduced to children in forms they can accommodate at early stages in their cognitive development. These key ideas embodied the structure of the discipline. Once introduced, these structures were to provide the foundation for subsequent learning. Finding forms of representation to support higher order understandings became the hallmark of research and curriculum reform efforts in the early days of the cognitive revolution (Bruner, 1960). While certain features of this model were, and still are, intuitively satisfying, problems arose when it was applied to curriculum work. It worked remarkably well in science and mathematics, less well in the humanities and the arts. Some ideas, principles, or concepts cannot be represented in forms that young children can grasp at early developmental levels. They require an extensive accumulation of cases over time before they can be activated. For example, understanding a concept like style in art without some experience in comparing artworks for similarities and differences is difficult, if not impossible. When untutored children are asked to place works of art into groups of things that seem to belong together, they place subjects like flowers, animals, or people together before they select works by style, artist, or cultural idiom. Awareness and use of the latter categories ordinarily does not begin without the mediation of persons knowledgeable in the visual arts. The spiral form had other problems as well, in that its research focused upon each domain of knowledge in relative isolation. Physical science developed in one project, the new math in another, with little consideration given to the integration of these domains into the learner's overall understanding. Subjects were taught apart from the life world of the learner, the overall context that might enable such learning to become meaningful. Learning theory in the early phases of the cognitive revolution (the 1950s and `60s), was essentially content-free reflecting the behaviorism that preceded it, especially its attempt to formulate universal laws that might explain or be applied to all learning situations. For example, if complex mathematical propositions could be represented to young children in concrete ways that pave the way for the use of abstract symbols at later stages, then it should be possible to approach learning in other fields in a similar way. For example, Bruner (1961) suggested that comparable structures of knowledge might be identified in such fields as literature where the form of the tragedy might be common to many literary or dramatic works of art. This inspired Barkan (1966) to approach curricular reforms in the arts as discipline-centered inquiries. Unfortunately Bruner's assumption was not borne out by subsequent research (Efland, 1987; 1988). Not until the 1980s did fundamental differences in the structures of the disciplines enter into discussions of learning. Then, it became clear that learning was domain-specific in character and that strategies found to be effective for procuring knowledge in one domain may not necessarily work in another. The assumption that universal (domain general) laws actually exist was not warranted by the facts. The Knowledge Base as a Lattice To remedy these shortcomings, I proposed an alternative to the spiral curriculum based on the metaphor that the mind's knowledge base is a lattice (Efland, 1995). The lattice was seen as a way to open up avenues of interconnectivity between domains that stood in isolation within the curriculum. The spiral curriculum also tended to impose a hierarchical arrangement of content with instruction proceeding from broad generalizations or principles to the study of particular cases subsumed under these key ideas. …