Nov 21st Session 7A

Presentation 1: The Contemporary Artist-Teacher, Jim Daichendt

At its very best contemporary art education is a rich field of inquiry that knows no bounds, at its worst it is a subject that has divided art teachers from the contemporary art field and left us and our students with a fleet of teachers more concerned with meeting standards, developing lesson plans, and reading educational theory than engaging the art making and the larger contemporary art field.

In contrast, the concept of the artist-teacher or teaching artist is rooted in the 19th century but has great ramifications for embracing studio thinking in the contemporary classroom. It’s a radical philosophy that bucks the blueprints and student learning outcomes that are born from schools of education. Through this paper I review the conceptual foundation of the artist-teacher, examine contemporary artists’ work as teachers and analyze the important connections these artist-teachers make between the disciplines of art and teaching. The powerful aspects of contemporary culture have dramatically shaped both art and education distinctly and the artist-teacher concept embraces and rejects different aspects of this culture.

The growth and availability of art classes in public and private schools across the Western world grew dramatically during the late 19th and 20th centuries. The adoption of art classes in universities and colleges in England and the United States during the 20th century highlights the growing specificity of art degrees that seek to reproduce themselves.

Current explanations of art education and art teacher education bachelor degrees typically emphasize learning and understanding art processes and the learning processes of children or adults. This sounds appropriate in theory, but all to often the educational theory component dwarfs the art making and students’ focus fall upon the craft of teaching rather than cultivating their own voice and education as an artist. This may sound harsh but the discipline specificity of having art education serving as a sub-discipline of education has had a detrimental impact of the field and its acceptance to amongst art departments and the larger art field. The art education degree and department has become an unwanted stepchild in the university and beyond.

As a concept, artist-teacher values the art making as essential. The activity and processes the artist engages in are useful and essential to understanding what students are encountering in the classroom. Without such knowledge and experience, art teachers are missing an essential aspect of being an art teacher. Through this understanding, there is not a professional obligation to show in galleries or live the stereotypical artist’s life. The artist-teacher is rather actively engaging in the central aspect of being an artist. Through a series of historical profile studies, several prominent artist-teachers (including Richard Hamilton, Joseph Beuys and John Baldessari) are explored to illustrate their artistic dispositions of and the different ways they translate these characteristics into the educational experiences.

Presentation 2: Can Home Economics Program Building Strategies Be Relevant 100 years Later?, Penelope Miller

For fifty years she has been buried in the university cemetery. But Joanna Hansen working within a politically insulated Home Economics team became alive to me during my masters’ research which was a classic case study using a rich vein of primary documents in the university’s archives. The conclusions were validated from multiple sources using a similar research method as Prevenier advocates (Howell & Prevenier, 2001). These curriculum-building techniques used by the Home Economic women is what got me interested in what became my career for 20 odd years. Currently Martin uses feminist biographical historical research methods, which allows transparent connections from my formative early historical research to validate the focus of my unusual career path.

Both Hansen and myself, sought to study under the world’s best art educators and we both continued to be active painters. Hansen lead the Applied Art Department for the world’s largest Home Economics College from 1919 to 1941. Others cannot duplicate some aspects of Hansen’s career. According to 1916 College Association report, Applied Art programs had three times the number of students than existing art programs. Some of Hansen’s innovations were broadcasting the nation’s first art appreciation radio programs to groups of Iowan homemakers, and connecting coursework with opportunities for women to own businesses, as they received the right to vote. In 1920, she won for ISU, Iowan President Hoover’s national community design contest. Hansen learned to develop new venues within the protective Home Economics cocoon. But when her Dean suddenly died, she learned to be invisible – giving credit for major innovations to the current ISU president such as: hiring ISU’s first artist/teacher (and first male) and later hiring her friend Grant Wood for WPA mural projects.

I deliberately used the pioneering principles of these Home Economic leaders in my own curriculum work. In six universities, I made substantial program improvements that have stood the test of time. For two education colleges, I developed a single arts aesthetic course and for another a large lecture / lab course. In an art department, I initiated an introduction to crafts course illustrating valuable other cultures’ crafts and in it’s follow-up course, how to run a business. Finally, I overhauled an undergraduate program adding a new masters' degree with on-line coursework. Faculty senate, state department of education and national accreditation for art departments, validated that program. Each curriculum challenge started with dreams of innovations the future graduates would need and layered with explanations of arts value in our everyday lives.

I sincerely hope that you will allow my voice to show how Hansen’s unknown and overlooked story guided my career successes. The generalizations in the paper comparing biography vs.an autobiographical sketches might shed light on the weaknesses/strengths of our careers. Thereby making both stories a stronger proof of action. I am not aware of any other historical art education research project that was carried over so many years to clearly demonstrate how historical theory can impact future generations.

Presentation 3: Intersections of Art Education and Peace: Past, Present, and Future, Mousumi De

Throughout history, various philosophers and art educators have advocated for using education and art for promoting peace amongst people. Ideals of international understanding and global citizenship reflect in the writings of Erasmus (1521), Kant (1795) and Rousseau (1971). Pestalozzi (1827) saw attributes of fellowship, peace and justice essential moral elements of life, and Fröbel (1887) believed that education should render learners fully conscious of the natural world and inner relations of things to one another. Educating for peace at a ‘global level’ became pertinent after the Second World War. Scholars such as Dewey (1923) argued for developing curriculum that can discourage feelings of hatred and nurture feelings of respect for other people and Montessori (1949) argued that respect for diversity must be implicit and explicit in every child’s education.

In 1947, the National Association of Art Education was established in the United States, with the mission of advancing visual arts education to fulfil human potential and global understanding (NAEA, n.d.). The International Society for Education through Art (InSEA), established in 1954, similarly recognized the necessity of representing the humanizing values of art education on a global basis (Ziegfeld, 1954). Art educators envisaged how art and art education might promote the ideals that animate UNESCO and the UN and proposed that studying about art from other cultures, exchanging children’s art and promoting cultural interchange might foster attitudes of mutual understanding and respect - since art embodies values, beliefs and socio-cultural contexts of artists and their social groups (Munro, 1953; Read, 1949; Ziegfeld 1953).

With socieities becoming increasingly multicultural, leading to social and cultural conflicts, art educators’ concerns shifted to intra-national issues of racism, ethnic diversity, gender equality, social justice and equity, and cultural pluralism (Chalmers, 1996). Scholars proposed multicultural (art) education (Barry, Poortinga, Segal, & Dasen, 1992) in its various forms  to promote tolerance and understanding, and social justice (art) education, which shares the goals and perspectives of feminist, multicultural, disability rights, environmental, community based, critical pedagogy, social reconstruction and visual culture art education (Garber, 2004). Despite these efforts and approaches, there are several challenges in educating for peace through art – a concern that reflects in Steers’s (2009) question, “can international cooperation and better understanding between peoples be furthered through art education or visual culture education? (2009, p. 316).

This paper first provides an insight into historical foundations and discourses that aimed at utilizing art education for promoting peace and international understanding. Second, it elucidates the challenges of educating for peace and tolerance in the 21st century using historical and contemorary approaches. Third, it proposes considerations at pedagogical, instructional and institutional level for utilizing art education for peace, more effectively. Finally, this paper argues that the ideals of educating for peace and tolerance at an “international” level are still relavant today and that expanding our focus on peace “education” and conflict transformation through art might contribute towards a peaceful citizenry.