Philosophy of Art Education

Art offers a way of understanding oneself and it enables connections between art and

our own culture and the cultures of diverse peoples. –Eliot Eisner, Stanford University

Due to the continuing rapid advancement in technology, students of the 21^st Century face challenges that previous generations could not have imagined. Culturally diverse global citizens with global responsibilities, bombarded with a constant barrage of media input, art education provides the ideal platform for students to both make sense of their world and to respond to it in kind.

My students will explore media; traditional as well as digital. They will have the opportunity to play with the materials, processes and techniques, to examine potential, and limitations. They will explore and consider copyright and copyleft. I will encourage deep exploration and imagination, ever posing the question, “What if?”  I will provide opportunities for the synthesis of knowledge, encouraging my students to explore and solve problems in a variety of ways.

As an elementary art educator I will introduce my students to the use of Duncum’s principals: power, ideology, representation, seduction, gaze, intertextuality, and multimodality. I will build on this framework developmentally, guiding students through the exploration of visual media ranging from fine arts to the applied arts.   My students will learn to deconstruct visual culture, and analyze its meaning.  Students will then create art, with an understanding of the message it communicates.

As much as possible, taking into account the age of my students, I will employ Gude’s postmodern art making practices into lessons: Juxtaposition, Recontextualization, Layering, Interaction of text and image, Hybridity, Gazing, Representin’, Imagining a future, Elaborating Fantasies, and Believing as strategies for making and understanding contemporary art.

I will use Gude’s Principles of Possibility: Playing, Forming Self, Investigating Community Themes, Encountering Difference, Attentive Living, Empowered Experiencing, Empowered Making, Deconstructing Culture, Reconstructing Social Spaces, Not Knowing and Appropriation when planning units of study to foster meaningful representation of personal experience and in doing so, contribute to the development of respectful and responsible global citizens

Carroll, K. L. (2003). Better Practice in Visual Arts Education: Vol. IV. (J. L. Tucker, Jr.). Baltimore, MD: Maryland State Department of Education.  

Churches, A., Crockett, L., & Jukes, I. (2010). The Digital Diet : Today's Digital Tools in Small Bytes. Charleston, SC: 21st Century Fluency Project Inc & Corwin Press.

Duncum, P. (2010). Seven Principles for Visual Culture Education. Art Education, 63(1), 6-10.

Gardner, H. (2008). Five Minds for the Future. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.

Gude, O. (2004). Postmodern Principles: In Search of a 21^st Century Art Education. Art Education, 57(1), 6-14.

Gude, O. (2007, January). Principles of Possibility: Considerations for a 21st Century Art & Culture Curriculum. Art Education: the Journal of the National Art Education Association, 60(1), 10-17.