Discipline-Based Art Education Research Articles

The Broadening of Art Perspectives in an Art Course of Non-Art Major Students through a Korean Art Teacher’s Asian Art Viewpoint

This research explores how Multicultural and Asian art affects college students in a U.S. university. The students did not major in art, and they chose art as elective subjects. The art course consisted of art theory and practice based on DBAE(Discipline-Based Art Education). In the art class, some non-white students always enrolled in the course. The researcher found that DBAE was satisfactory but sometimes inappropriate because DBAE is rooted in Western high art. The researcher changed the art studio class with a multicultural perspective, especially Asian art because he wanted to introduce a new art style to the class and give them a chance to appreciate non-western art. Qualitative action research and arts-based research methods were used to conduct this project. The result revealed that the students of color showed more confidence and actively participated in the class. The works of students of color were changed and improved. Second, women became more aware of social issues and expressed their feelings and emotions in their works. It seemed that the women students would become social activists and voice their opinions by making their art. Third, some students, especially Hispanic and Asian students showed their identity through their artworks. Forth, some Korean students did not make much progress. By including multicul-tural art in art classes, more students could broaden their perspectives on art and understand diversity through their artworks.

Should China Draw From the DBAE in Its Art Education

This study is dedicated to analyzing discipline-based art education and its potential impact on art education in China. First, it examines DBAE's core ideas and the prominent researchers in the field. Jerome Bruner, Manuel Barkan, and Elliott Eisner's study are credited with laying the groundwork for the establishment of DBAE. Secondly, it looks at how art instruction is implemented in Chinese schools and the curricular standards. The growth of the entire spectrum of art disciplines is valued in China's art education, which has begun to trend toward comprehensiveness. However, the emphasis on various disciplines in the curriculum standards is imbalanced. Finally, a questionnaire was used to collect Chinese students' opinions on Art History, Art Criticism, Art Creation, and Aesthetics in DBAE and their perspectives on art classes and art education in schools. According to the research, Chinese students support DBAE, with art production being the most significant discipline to be taught in art classes. It also demonstrates the curriculum's lack of art criticism and aesthetics. Students typically feel that arts education is essential in schools, particularly in primary schools. Art education in China should take the DBAE into account more carefully. There is much convergence between the Chinese art curriculum standards and the DBAE, which meets the goals and needs of Chinese education.

액티브 시니어를 위한 패션 중심 색채교육 프로그램 개발

With the increase in human lifespans and the consequent emergence of an aging society, senior citizens aged 50 years or older, unlike the elderly in the past, are receiving attention as new leaders in modern society and the economy. These people prefer an experience-centered culture and art education to doing exercise or conducting dynamic activities. It seems that programs involving color that employ elements that can be useful in their daily lives, rather than general education to increase their knowledge, must be established. Accordingly, this study includes the goal of developing a program that combines elements and colors according to the interests of active seniors who are keenly interested in appearance and fashion. A color education program was designed by combining the analysis, design, development, implementation, evaluation (ADDIE) program—an instructional systems design model proposed by Seels and Richy (1944)—with the discipline-based art education (DBAE) approach created by Eisner. The fashion-centered color education program the was developed consisted of programs titled “Personal Color Education Program,” “Fashion Color Styling Education Program,” “Fashion Products Art Coloring Education Program,” and “Interior Color Coordination Education Program.” To valuate the program’s effects, two 45-minute sessions of color education per week were taught to 10 active seniors in their 50s and 60s over four weeks. The results demonstrated that satisfaction with the program was extremely high and that color was also found to be helpful in both work performance and daily life. The fashion-centered color education program was found to increase the understanding of self-expression, creativity, arousal of interest, improvement in expression, and color. The experimental treatment with the fashion-centered color education program had substantially changed how color was perceived before and after the treatment. In addition, ego-resilience, self-esteem, life satisfaction, psychological satisfaction, and self-efficacy improved among the study participants.

A COMPARISON ON THE WORKS OF EROL DENEC AND ERNST FUCHS

Fantastic Realism, rising from the surrealism movement, began with the Vienna Fantastic Realism school, founded in 1945 by Rudolf Hausner, Ernst Fuchs, Wolfgang Hutter, Anton Lehmden and Arik Brauer after World War II. Famous critic Prof. Johann Muschik named this core group "Fantastic Realists" due to the religious, mysterious subjects and symbolist approaches, that they dealt with in their works. In this research, the works of Ernst Fuchs (1930-2015), one of the world's leading representative of the fantastic realist art movement, "The Cross (1950)" and the "Human, Horse, Eagle Trio (1991)" by Erol Deneç (1941-…) are analyzed by using E. B. Feldmann’s "investigative art criticism" method, which is included in the discipline-based art education. E. B. Feldmann's method of "investigative art criticism"; consists of description, analysis, interpretation and judgment sub-titles. After examining the works independently, they were compared in terms of their similarities and differences. Despite the subject and technical richness of fantastic realism, a comparative study of the works of two artists from different lives and cultures produced with similar characteristics emphasizes the importance of the study, in this aspect it is thought that it will contribute to art education and shed light on researchers interested in the field. Keywords: Fantastic Realism, Ernst Fuchs, Erol Deneç, investigative art criticism

The U.S. K–12 Art Education Curricular Landscape: A Nationwide Survey

In the midst of future-oriented dialogues within the field, we turned our attention broadly toward the multiplicity of educational approaches that might characterize U.S. K–12 art education today. Through large-scale descriptive survey research (N = 742), we explored K–12 art teachers’ emphasis on 10 common educational approaches: choice-based art education/teaching for artistic behavior (TAB); community-based education; discipline-based art education (DBAE); design education; ecological/environmental education; interdisciplinary education or arts integration; multicultural education; social justice; science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)/science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics (STEAM); and visual/material culture. The results confirm we are in a period of plurality, albeit more defined by visual/material culture and multicultural education. The range of ways in which these 10 educational approaches can exhibit theoretically and in practice raises a number of critical questions. We recommend any future sketches of the field explore these nuances—delving deeper into how each of these curricular movements is conceptualized and enacted in K–12 art education practice.

Re-conceptualizing the Jordanian Art Education Curricula: Suggested Entries for Teaching Discipline-Based Art Education Theory

The curricula of art education in the elementary and secondary schools of Jordan is limited to teaching technical skills for making art, and students did not receive tangibleeducation about history of art, aesthetic, and critical aspects of art. This study identified the theory of Discipline-Based Art Education (DBAE) and its significance in teaching art, and it provided suggestions for teaching history of art, criticism, aesthetic and artistic production. Furthermore, the study justified the possibility of implementing the DBAE approach in Jordan art education curricula. The research revealed that DBAE theory improved and elevated art education to a new level because the four disciplinary content area played a significant role in the development of essential knowledge and skills in the art such as developing the creativity, appreciation, understanding and learning about the role and function of art in human civilization. The study recommends to include the components of DBAE to art education instruction in Jordanian curricula.

A Case Study in Discipline Based Development of General Public Art Courses at Science and Technology Universities

The difficulty of combining general art courses with specialized courses is one of the biggest obstacles to developing general art courses at engineering universities. The course “Design and Humanities—Contemporary Public Art” emphasized teaching based on characteristics of different engineering disciplines, with public art, the most representative multi-disciplinary art, being the starting point. The objectives of this course were determined according to the Discipline Based Art Education (DBAE) theory. The content of this course was designed based on typology and several teaching assessment methods were developed. A quantitative analysis was conducted to examine the outcome of this course. The results demonstrate that engineering majors are able to efficiently acquire art knowledge and certain design skills and this is a win-win for the development of both specialized and general courses.

False Echoes of the Past: Using Visual Art to Teach Critical Thinking about History

ABSTRACTIn this article, we explain how the Discipline-based Art Education Model (DBAE) represents an instructional tool to disturb teacher candidates and elementary students' commonly held notions of US history, motivate research into historical events, and revise understandings of historical topics so that they begin seeing how the past has shaped the present social environment. We describe a social studies methods course assignment that requires candidates' exploration of common history myths and development of lessons about accurate historical information. Finally, we provide two examples of lessons developed through the assignment to teach revisionist historical accounts using the DBAE.

Teaching the arts as a second language: A school-wide policy approach to arts integration

ABSTRACTThe arts can be used to teach, not just as activities that enhance learning, but also as the primary medium through which students process, acquire, and represent knowledge. This means the arts can function as a language. If we accept this metaphor, and we truly want students to be fluent in the artistic languages, then the arts can be taught in the same constructive, sequential way language is taught, where the rules of the system are explicitly learned and fluency is acquired through regular application within a meaningful context. This article provides a framework for the implementation of effective arts integration in line with second language learning: Arts as a Second Language. In doing so, it addresses two common problems in arts education: when arts integration is disconnected from artistic development, and when discipline-based arts education is disconnected from other learning. Nine principles for teaching with an Arts as a Second Language policy are proposed. Ultimately, it is a call for pedagogical reform that enables equitable access for all students to learn in, about, and through the arts with school-wide policy that scaffolds artistic learning across the grades, embedded in meaningful contexts.

VISUAL THINKING: ENHANCING ART CRITICISM SKILLS AMONG SPATIAL LEARNERS

Art criticism is one of the four foundational disciplines of Discipline-based Art Education (DBAE). It refers to an organized system for studying the work of art by looking and talking about art that involves making description, analysis, interpretation and judgments about artworks. However, most of the times, students do not know what to say, or how to go about saying it, or they might make the wrong judgments. Art students are mostly visual-spatial learners. Very often these students also end up writing in a dull way, with little sense of academic values. Therefore, visual imageries play an important role for these spatial learners who are skilful in representing, transforming, generating, and recalling symbolic, non-linguistic information. In the 21st century, teaching and learning with technology have diversified to complement the age of digital era where technology is made available to cater for all learning styles. A Visual Thinking Courseware (VTC) was designed and developed to help solve the problem of teaching Art Education by introducing systematic strategies particularly on visuals to enhance students’ Art Criticism skills. Built on Gestalt Theory, the objective of this research was to determine the best visual selections for the teaching and learning of Art Criticism between Random Visual Selection (RVS) and Sequenced Visual Selection (SVS). Research was carried out to determine the difference in students’ performance in Art Criticism between High Spatial Learners (HSL) and Low Spatial Learners (LSL) using these RVS and SVS modes. The methodology used in this research was quantitative and qualitative in nature. A quasi-experimental design was applied to collect the necessary data. A pretest and posttest for the two treatment groups was implemented. Six research instruments were used in the research to obtain the data namely, Index for learning Styles Questionnaire (ILSQ), Spatial Ability Test, Pretest and Posttest, Courseware Evaluation Form, Art Criticism Rubrics and Critical Thinking Rubrics. Sixty-three post degree education diploma students participated in this study. This research indicates that there are significant difference in students’ performance in Art Criticism skills between High Spatial Learners (HSL) and Low Spatial Learners (LSL) using RVS and SVS. Data analysis showed that among HSL students, the RVS mode helped them to improve Art Criticism skills better than the SVS mode. For the LSL students, the SVS mode helped them to improve their Art Criticism skills better than the RVS mode. Therefore, it can be concluded that regardless of the visual selections, Visual Thinking Courseware used in this research enabled students to criticize better and help improve their Art Criticism skills. Keywords : Visual Thinking, Spatial Ability, Art Criticism, Art Education

In Memoriam: Elliot Eisner from Inside the Academy

When you do things long enough and thoughtful enough,you change yourself. In fact, the role of education might be conceived of as the invention of yourself.-Elliot Eisner (2012)Dr. Elliot Eisner-distinguished artist, scholar, and professor emeritus at Stanford University-passed away in January 2014 at the age of 80.Through his profound contributions to arts education, curriculum studies, and evaluation, Eisner passionately advocated for and eloquently articulated the important role of the Arts in education beyond simply cultivating children's creativity and developing their critical thinking skills. He dedicated his life and work to the realization of a new vision of arts education in America's public schools, and also around the world, inspiring generations of teachers to see their schools, classrooms, and professional practices anew. Eisner, recently honored on Inside the Academy' (Amrein-Beardsley, 2012) for his distinguished contributions as an artist, educational researcher, and visionary, will be remembered as one of the academy's finest.Widely appreciated for his pioneering work in qualitative research methods, most notably in educational connoisseurship and criticism, he challenged the oft-narrow educational focus on instructional outcomes and procedural view of professional practice, emphasizing the need to examine what actually happens in schools and class- rooms (Uhrmacher, 2001). Describing inquiry in education as an attempt to broaden our own views about what it means to know, Eisner (1998) taught others the importance of seeing through an enlightened eye as opposed to merely looking as central to making meaning. Encouraging educators to see their own schools, classrooms, and teaching practices anew, Eisner not only shared his talent as an artist with generations of teachers and students, but also dedicated his career to the realization of a profound vision for arts education.A Past President of the National Art Education Association, the International Society for Education through Art, the American Educational Research Association, and the John Dewey Society, Eisner displayed considerable artistic talent-even as a young child,first studying painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago while in elementary school. He continued his studies, receiving multiple degrees in art and education from Roosevelt University (1954), the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology (1955), and the University of Chicago (1958, 1962). First as a high school art teacher and then as a distinguished member of the faculty at Stanford University since 1965, Eisner devoted his career as a teacher, lecturer, and writer, advancing appreciation for the Arts. Through his involvement in the Kettering Project (since 1967) and lateras a member of the board of the Getty Center for Education in the Arts (since 1982), Eisner worked on several curriculum initiatives, providing materials to new elementary teachers and advancing discipline-based art education (DBAE)-an art curriculum model adopted by NAEA and used almost universally in the United States, as well as Australia and the United Kingdom (Uhrmacher, 2001).In recognition of his unwavering support for arts education, Eisner received numerous national and international awards and honors including the Harold McGraw Prize in Education, the Brock International Prize in Education, and the Grawemeyer Award in 2005 (for his book The Arts and the Creation of the Mind, 2002) as well as election to the National Academy of Education, the Institute of Education of the University of London, the Royal Society of Art in the United Kingdom, and the Royal Norwegian Society of Arts and Sciences. Also renowned for his extensive scholarly publications, Eisner authored or edited an average of seven published works per year since 1970 including: Educating Artistic Vision (1972), The Educational Imagination (1979, 1985b, 1994), Cognition and Curriculum (1982), The Art of Educational Evaluation (1985a), The Enlightened Eye (1991, 1998), and The Kind of Schools We Need (1998) (Uhrmacher, 2001 ). …

A Study on Content Design for Early Childhood Formative Hangul Education based on Discipline-Based Art Education

The present study examines creative formative activities and Hangul educational contents related to art for children aged four to five based on discipline-based art education, a famous type of art appreciation education as well as the theological foundation of visual perception training. During the process of designing contents for the activity “Amusement Art Museum: Level1 - Dreams of the Jungle”, the most suitable words for infants’ physical development process (study level 1 and 2) were chosen based on study results by Hangul education professionals. The stages from the image-word communication stage?in which children aged four to five show interest at the basic Hangul text learning level?to the final stage of literacy were applied to this content. In this Hangul learning process, the program was designed to allow aesthetic education through famous artworks and, at the same time, to allow instinctive acquisition of Hangul through play activities and engagement in creative formative activities. This new learning approach distances itself from the current cramming method of education, and it will be viewed in a new light as Hangul education provided through convergence of content.

A Mutual Reshaping: Theory and Practice

Educational scholar Lee Schulman (1998) characterizes the relationship between theory and practice in education as tense and even painful (p. 521). As a research journal in a practice-based field, Studies in Art Education must necessarily dwell in this unsettled and difficult territory. It is not that the relation of theory and practice suffers from a lack of interest or regard among art educators. The joint call for papers addressed to theory and practice from Studies and Art Education was met with enthusiasm, generating remarks such as, This is an idea we talk about all the time, but do little to change.This of course is the dilemma. Theory and practice should be residents of the same spaces and territories, but for such reasons as lack of a common language, shared concerns, favorable circumstances, and consequential exchange, they often remain separately quartered.The intent of the call from Studies and Art Education was to make this predicament more visible while perhaps fermenting movement toward change. And although the papers in this special issue [which corresponds to the September 2014 issue of Art Education] address theory and practice with rich demonstrations, often productively worrying this confluence, they will not resolve nor banish the theory/practice divide. Our ambition is rather to draw attention to this breach while perhaps creating a ground for rethinking the proverbial elephant in the room.Cultural theorists Gregory Seigworth and J. Macgregor Wise (2000) maintain that theory is neither a detour away from practice nor vice versa. Theory, Seigworth and Wise contend, should be circumstantially inscribed and radically contextualized within practice in a manner that gives rise to new events. These scholars further observe that theory does not melt into practice; they coexist in a shared relationship of mutual shaping and fashioning. Theory thus should not simply wrap itself around practice, but should allow for a mutual reshaping between the concrete situations of practice and the abstractions of theory. Given this perspective, theory simply cannot do its work if it remains outside of practice.Graeme Sullivan's article, which covers the material he presented in the 2013 Studies in Art Education Invited Lecture, procures the potential for mingling theory and practice through the mutually supportive processes of research and artistic practice. A well-recognized voice of arts-based research, Sullivan sets the stage for engaging artists and art educators with inquiry-not as a detour through either practice or theory, but as an intertwining. Unfolding a personal journey, Sullivan establishes the essential requirement for exposing theory to practice. Throughout his narrative, Sullivan insists that knowledge must be subject to the revisions, uncertainties, dislocations, and equivocations of experience. Most significantly for art education research and classroom practice, Sullivan locates these ideas in the art studio, arguing that artists and their processes can and do play a unique role in research communities. The artist's processes-which include visualizing, sensing, intuiting, focusing, reasoning, questioning, grounding, comparing, and interpreting-Sullivan argues, offer an important way of knowing differently. Sullivan challenges researchers to frame these processes as critically relevant and significant for changing the way we think about what we do and the ways in which information, experience, and understanding can be communicated.Margaret A. Walker also narrates the intersection of theory and practice found in the practice of public high school art teacher David Miller, who moved his pedagogy from a formalist model to concept-based inquiry. Educational scholar Frances Schoonmaker (2007) identified the teacher as the linchpin in the theory-practice connection, the one who either brings research into the classroom or disregards it. Walker's account readily exemplifies this premise as Miller relates becoming very bored with the limitations of Discipline-Based Art Education, while finding the more expansive concepts of Postmodernism, Poststructuralism, and semiotics liberating. …

The Subject of Theatre in the Lithuanian School: Relationships within the General Educational Cultural Context

The article investigates the rather new educational phenomenon – about twenty years ago under the impact of educational reform the theatre subject teaching was introduced. In many neighbor’s countries there is no such separate theatre subject still yet. The focus of the article is on the relationships between the curricula of theatre subject (2008, 2001) and the practice of long-lived non-formal education of children and youth of Lithuania. The curricula of theatre subject were prepared according to comprehensive discipline-arts education conception formed in United States of Amerika. Taking into account the notion of M. Lukšienė, that experience of other cultures, as well as the educational innovations must be adopted according to “own cultural model”, the attention is paid to analysis how curricula of theatre subject are grounded on traditions of Lithuanian non-formal education, especially its artistic trend. The self-expression paradigm or psychological trend of theatre education is less evident in our context.
 The roots of artistic trend are in Jesuit’s school theatre that existed in Lithuania 1570–1843. The artistic trend was recreated at the end of 20th century in non-formal theatre education in Lithuania by relaying on the professional theatre pedagogy (the training of professional theatre pedagogues started, the first books of methodology of theatre education appeared). Analysis showed that common concepts, as “theatre” and “education through theatre” are those which relate artistic trend of non-formal theatre education with curricula of theatre subject, accordingly, which are grounded on discipline-based art education conception. Especially that is clear from the revealing of content of “education through theatre” concept and explaining its formative and cognitive impacts on children and youth who are acting the roles created by dramaturge. The biggest challenge related with coming of theatre subject as separate, is the creating of theatre knowledge appropriated for school children. Now the theatre subject curricula describe the knowledge which are known in professional theatre pedagogy and in artistic trend of non-formal theatre education, but only in part. Thy must be expanded by new knowledge which will be get by way of externalization from direct practice. Also, there is a need of artistic orientation of theatre didactics – that can guarantee the succession of the best traditions of Lithuanian‘s theatre education and encourage their development.

Art Instructor's Attitude towards the Art Curriculum for Undergraduate Degree in Tehran Universities.

The present research aims to investigate lecturer’s feedback over the art curriculum in Tehran, the capital of Iran, and introduce the applicability of Discipline-Based Art Education (DBAE), as a new way of teaching art, and its implication of art instruction in studio-based fields of study for undergraduate degree. This study is carried out based on a survey in which fifty art lecturers contributed. The standard questionnaires included 22 questions were used to assess the objectives of the study. The findings revealed that: (a) of the three components of DBAE, art history, art criticism, and aesthetics were not dominated in seven art university studio based classes according to the lecturers’ ideas; (b) all participants were dissatisfied with the current art curriculum; (c) the majority of the lecturers were enthusiastic about further training which would enable them to teach the four components of DBAE. In the conclusion, a novel curriculum might be welcome based on the participants’ responses, and also a discipline-based art education curriculum may be presented as superior method. Key words: University degree, curriculum, studio-art class, discipline-based art education

Foreword: Why Lacan for Art Education?

ForewordWhy Lacan for Art Education? Michael Parsons and Sydney R. Walker The work of Lacan has had significant influence in psychoanalytic circles and perhaps even more so in other academic areas, especially in cultural studies and education. But it is not well known in art education. Lacan is still a relative newcomer to art education studies, and the purpose of this special issue of Visual Arts Research (VAR) is to help make the possible value of his work better known to art educators. We think it has much to offer the field, especially as extension and revision of current trends, and we want to explore some of what that might be. We don't see ourselves as committed to Lacanian thought or approaches in any consistent theoretical way. Lacan was a theoretician (as well as a practitioner), but he constantly changed his theory and refused to allow it to be pinned down with too much certainty. Consequently, unlike with Freud's work, those who have used his thought in the humanities—as opposed perhaps to psychoanalytic practice—have tended to use particular concepts or parts of his theory, rather than the theory as whole, to illuminate their topic. Some of these concepts are desire, the objet a, méconnaisance, the Real, the sinthome, the mirror stage, and the Gaze; with the unconscious being the most fundamental of all. The essays here use several of these Lacanian concepts, each in a different way. Lacanian thought seems useful because it allows us to raise questions or focus on issues that otherwise we tend to ignore because they do not fit our current approaches and theories. In very general terms, art education has tended to move in cycles: from an emphasis on the child and expression (Victor Lowenfeld, Herbert Read) to the emphasis on the disciplines of art (discipline-based art education [DBAE]) to a concern with diversity and, most recently, to an emphasis on [Begin Page v] visual culture, post-structural thought, and social justice. All of these phases have no doubt contained differences and controversies, and none were truly systematic or hegemonic, which is perhaps what allows the wheel to turn. Nevertheless, they have each, sequentially, led to the promotion of some interests and topics and the submergence of others. One currently submerged topic is what Lacan called subjectivity, close to what in our literature is usually called the subject. In the visual culture/post-structural paradigm, the subject has been understood as basically constructed as a set of positions taken within a variety of discourses; that is, identity is determined mostly by social influences. It seems fair to say that in general this paradigm has done much better with analyzing the social than the individual: It accounts much better for the effects of the social on persons than for the reverse. For example, it does not do well with the idiosyncrasies and persistence of desire, fantasy, refusal to understand, and thought that falls outside of consciousness. It is true that recently the socially constructed post-structural subject has begun to show signs of morphing into something else. The role of the viewer responding to mass media or artwork has increasingly been acknowledged as an active and creative one. There is recent interest, for example, in the carnivalesque and the "transgressive pleasures" of visual culture (Duncum, 2009). But we have no good way of acknowledging the implications of this. How can we account for the individuality of responses, the fact that individuals often have highly specific obsessions, interpretations, and resistances? And what is the origin of the variety of pleasures in visual culture? ("Pleasures" is surely an inadequate word for the complexities of desire involved.) In his essay, jagodzinski discusses this situation and says that we appear to be faced with a choice between the older belief in an innate identity struggling to get expressed and an ever-changing set of positionalities within multiple discourses. jagodzinski argues that Lacan's account of subjectivity, complex and difficult to follow as it is, offers a way out of this opposition. That account manages to acknowledge—to insist on—the post-structural insights about the influences of social structures, the importance of discourses...

Rethinking Aesthetic Education

Scholars have continuously debated about the importance of aesthetics in art education and of aesthetic education and have posed numerous questions about the possibility of practicing aesthetics in the educational field. Aesthetic education was first introduced in the structured curriculum of Discipline-based Art Education (DBAE). Since DBAE, the significance of aesthetic education has become manifested, and the meaning of aesthetic education has become recognized. However, aesthetic education in DBAE was not fully developed. The primary reasons for this lack of development include an absence of available curriculum for aesthetic education, problems with aesthetic education related to its birth under the influence of modernism, and the complex and ambiguous meanings that the term aesthetics has. Because of these reasons, it is still difficult to define aesthetic education, which has led to the continued confusion about what aesthetic education is and how to teach aesthetics to children. In addition, some scholars insist that the discourse of aesthetics in art education is useless. Therefore, this study suggests that these difficulties and problems come from a narrow understanding and interpretation of the meaning of aesthetic education. Thus, this study attempts to overcome these problems by redefining the meaning of aesthetics by reexamining the term aesthetics from its origin in order to break through the modernist dichotomy between body and mind, emotion and reason, sense and thought, as well as art and life. Based on this investigation, this study emphasizes the importance of aesthetic education and the possibility to practice it in art education.

The Condition of Art Education: Critical Visual Art Education [CVAE] Club, Winter 2010

Artist Ad Reinhardt's 1 991 prediction of the Future of Art can be interpreted as the condition of art education in 2010. He writes, next revolution will see the emancipation of the university academy of art from its market-place fantasies and its emergence as a center of consciousness and conscience (p. 62). The focus in the fields of art and art education has increasingly turned toward the social as well as aesthetic aspects of experience. Creating and responding to art in the context of people's everyday lives has become a dominant center of art practices. Art educators should recognize these shifts and work collectively to realize our strengths and responsibilities as we grapple with the complexities of art in society. Collectivity involves a process of coming to relative agreement on shared goals of the field and an understanding of the necessary components of a cohesive art education. Establishing a broad yet defined framework for the field provides a unifying structure that promotes opposing discourse and investigation without fragmentation (see Figure 1 ).In an effort to move beyond previously defined disciplinary boundaries, (i.e., seeking broader, yet related, transdisciplinary discourse), this document strives to confront art education's moment of crisis; a crisis that stems from instability in public education, economic uncertainty, the impact of No Child Left Behind, standardized testing, and technocratic forms of education. The Critical Visual Art Education (CVAE) Club argues for a collective, transdisciplinary process moving forward into a new era of art education.1 In this document, CVAE identifies declarative statements that approach the field with inclusive examination of its past, present, and future.In order to determine what has been successful and what has failed, what we wish to keep and to discard, our argument extends from specific movements and categories derived from literature that have served to define, promote, explain, and clarify new and renewed movements in the field. These include: Creative Self-Expression, Child-Centered Approach, Discipline-Based Art Education, Social Reconstructionism,Multiculturalism,Environmental/ Eco-Based Art Education, Community-Based Art Education, Narratives/Literacy, Issues-Based Art Education, Arts-Based Research, and Visual and Material Culture (Carpenter & Tavin, 201 0; Gaudelius & Speirs, 2002).From these movements, CVAE derives its own statements that symbolize holistic art education. We envision an art education that promotes an understanding of visual and material culture and its influence in shaping everyday life through transdisciplinarity, critical dialogue, cultural production, global discourse, and artistic reasoning and practice. These themes are useful in framing the following declarative statements that describe the needs of the field based on our individual perspectives as contemporary art educators.2 We wish to promote transdisciplinarity and collective processes that may engage a broader range of citizens, artists, teachers, theoreticians, and scholars. These statements reflect the growing effort of many like-minded art educators who call for broader dialogue informed by localized cultural communities and global interactions (Delacruz, Arnold, Kuo, & Parsons, 2009; Grierson, 2008). Our intent is to explore a concept of art education informed by theories and practices relative to the field of art education. These statements attempt to form an inclusive and permeable network for art education that we hope others will contribute to, perforate, and disrupt.StatementsTransdisciplinarityThe present situation in art education is one of 'crisis', e.g., instability in public education, economic uncertainty, the impact of No Child Left Behind, standardized testing, and technocratic forms of education driven by the politics of accountability (Sabol, 201 0,-Taubman, 2009). Radical new technologies are shaping how we live and interact (Roland, 2010), as well as extraordinary political and economic shifts in culture. …

This Land Was Made for You and Me: Teaching for Economic Justice in Upper Elementary and Middle School Grades

ABSTRACT Teaching for economic justice can be challenging for upper elementary and middle school teachers. Many teachers may feel uncomfortable with the subject matter and thus avoid addressing sensitive social issues related to economic/financial inequities. This article describes how selected songs and works of visual art, expressions of social protest and social commentary from past and present, can be used appropriately as starting points for introducing the concept of economic justice. By using principles and strategies of Discipline-Based Arts Education (DBAE) and employing works of art as organizing centers for instruction, potentially sensitive social issues are simultaneously personalized and depersonalized. Music and art provide a relatively safe and comfortable means for teachers to promote student awareness and sensitivity towards economic injustices. Two sample lesson plans, the first for upper elementary students and the second for middle school students, are provided and discussed.

Volitional Aesthetics: A Philosophy for the Use of Visual Culture in Art Education

This article is a philosophical argument that seeks to contribute to the field of art education by contributing toward and justifying a different aesthetic philosophy to support the use of visual culture in art education. Using the theoretical changes in art history and cultural theory as a backdrop, an aesthetic theory is constructed and labeled volitional aesthetics. First, it refocuses on the role of aesthetic experience and an integrated view of culture and society that situates art and the art world within culture—not as a hierarchy of cultural forms. Second, it sees people as actively participating in the creation of culture through dialog and creative choice. It will provide a new philosophical foundation for a curriculum that maintains the disciplinary structure of Discipline-Based Art Education (DBAE), but broadens the category of instructional images/artifacts beyond that of fine art, to include the category of images referred to as visual culture. This contribution to theory will re-establish and reconceive the role of aesthetic experience, not only in human creativity, but also as it relates to ethics and morality.