The pedagogical aesthetic and formative experience: educating for aletheic imagination in the fine arts curriculum

Abstract

This article attempts to articulate the role of what I call the ‘aletheic imagination’ within contemporary aesthetic education and the fine arts curriculum, broadly conceived. In proposing such an idea I intend it to assist arts educators to undertake a more satisfactory pedagogical use of the aesthetic in theory and practice. Enriching the imagination by way of aletheia — ‘of one who speaks truthfully or frankly’ enabling a liberating syntax in aesthetic practice — encourages educators to highlight the multifaceted presence of the aesthetic in students’ artistic awareness. The aesthetic is the opening up of the immanent potential for meaning: an endorsement of perception which generates the communicative possibilities of imagination in creative action. Here I offer a critique and reappraisal of John Dewey's naturalistic metaphysic of thinking and experience in relation to education in contrast with Lev Vygotsky's transformative psychological aesthetic. I argue that their stances may contribute to a contemporary revitalization of aesthetic education and, conceived alongside the paradigm of the aletheic imagination, promote a more discerning visual arts philosophy and practice for our times.