The Routledge International Handbook of the Arts and Education

Mike Fleming, Liora Bresler, John O'Toole, Mike Fleming, Liora Bresler, John O'Toole

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317586944
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This International Handbook brings together leading writers on Arts in Education to provide a much-needed, authoritative guide to the main debates in the field and an informed account of contemporary developments in policy and practice.

Providing a detailed overview of key concepts and practical challenges, the book combines theoretical insight with specific examples of innovative projects drawing on theoretical, historical and empirical research perspectives to inform understanding. The range of content highlights the breadth of the field, addressing such issues as the importance of community arts and partnership as well as school education, and providing insight into developments in multiple and connecting arts as well as traditional art forms. Topics such as assessment, creativity, cultural diversity, special needs, the arts in early childhood, adult education, arts based research, are all addressed by recognised authorities in each area. The collection of chapters also serves to define the field of arts education, recognising its diversity but highlighting the common elements that provide its identity.

The collection addresses generic issues common to all the arts while acknowledging differences and recognising the dangers of over-generalisation. It also includes specific chapters on each of the art forms (visual art, dance, drama, literature, music, media arts) providing a cutting-edge analysis of key contemporary issues in each subject.

Bringing together specially commissioned pieces by a range of international authors, this Handbook will make an important contribution to the field of Arts Education.

1 Introduction

Mike Fleming, Liora Bresler and John O’Toole

DOI: 10.4324/9781315742717-1

Early this millennium, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) planned its first World Congress of Arts Education. While in the planning stages that got downgraded (in the UNESCO hierarchy of terms) to the First World Conference, which was duly held in Lisbon, Portugal in 2006. The same year, shortly after the Conference, UNESCO announced that Arts would be a Priority Area within Education. These connected events generated considerable interest worldwide, and a lift in the status and profile of arts in educational systems, in some countries more than others. At the Lisbon conference, the twelve hundred international delegates adopted a ‘road map’ for the development of arts education, a cautious document couched in terms of traditional Western philosophies and practices. This in turn provided lively debate and contestation, leading into the Second World Conference, held in South Korea, which came out with a sweeping and ambitious set of ‘Goals for the Development of Arts Education – The Seoul Agenda’. (That whole process is described and analysed in Chapter 9.) Within three years – and during the preparation of this book – UNESCO changed its mind, and in November 2013 removed Arts Education from its list of priorities, rather surprisingly along with Creativity.

If nothing else, all that contemporary activity and global decision-making suggest a high level of both interest and confusion about the nature and the importance of the arts and their relationship to education. That at least is nothing new.

An edited book on ‘the arts and education’ written some fifty years ago would clearly have been different in scope and content. Changes in technology alone have brought new possibilities for constructing and integrating different art forms, as well as for researching and communicating within the field. It is also likely that a book on the arts and education would have been more local than international. Speculation about possible differences is one way of locating the present collection in its contemporary context: it is deliberately broad in scope, recognising the traditional art forms but also embracing new and diverse forms and the importance of multiple and connecting arts; it sees arts and education not just in terms of school, but in relation to wider partnerships, community projects, lifelong learning and adult education; it embraces reception as well as creation of art, and concepts of learning about and through the arts; it recognises the importance of research in the arts and also the value of using the arts as a form of research. The title ‘Arts and Education’ was chosen deliberately over ‘Arts in Education’ to signal the broadening of perspective.

One of the intentions in assembling the chapters was to acknowledge diversity of views and approaches rather than impose uniformity. Nevertheless, there are theoretical perspectives and implicit assumptions that underpin much of the writing that would likely have been different in an earlier age. All the authors use the terms ‘art’ and ‘arts education’ comfortably without feeling the need to offer narrow, prescriptive definitions of exactly what art is or without subscribing to the view that ‘art’ has no boundaries. This ability to maintain what appears on the surface to be a set of contradictory assumptions (that the concept ‘art’ is both open and bounded) is, in part, a function of changing views of how language has meaning. In analytic philosophy the search for essentialist definitions of ‘art’ gave way to an acknowledgement of family resemblance, not necessary and sufficient conditions but rather strands of similarities in different uses (Weitz 1956). The view that language has meaning in social contexts rather through an isomorphic relationship to reality underpins much modern theory in many fields and contributes to a view that sees ‘art’ as a flexible concept. This development can also be seen as a pragmatic response to a globalised context in which plurality and diversity are sought and celebrated. ‘Art’ has to be seen as an open concept, in that new cases will continue to evolve.

The chapters in this collection, then, in keeping with the international and intercultural perspective, reflect an inclusive understanding of the term ‘art’. However there is also recognition of the importance of a concept of ‘art’ and ‘arts education’ as distinct from broader notions of ‘creativity’ or ‘culture’. This does not mean subscribing to traditional categories associated with art that constrain thinking. The view that sees art purely in terms of high culture is no longer tenable; there has been an increasing recognition of popular culture with its own distinctions and rankings (Dyndahl). The importance of media arts in education has increasingly been acknowledged (Dezuanni). However the inclusive view does not mean dispensing with all traditional ideas: there is no need to dismiss notions of cultural heritage when seen in the right way, balancing autonomy and societal needs (Varkøy), nor is it possible to avoid the challenge of making judgements of quality (Gingell).

There are other aspects of contemporary thinking about art that are important for education. It is no longer acceptable to account for art exclusively in formalist terms; art is part of life and it is little wonder that extreme ‘separatist’ views that attempted to remove art entirely from its social, cultural and political contexts were fairly short-lived. This collection reaffirms and celebrates the importance of arts in education without ignoring some of the challenges posed by contemporary theory that embraces fluidity and diversity over static, fixed meanings (Hunter). Ideas and definitions of art and of art’s relationship to education are not timeless but emerge from the social and historical contexts in which they are forged (Ward).

The chapters in this volume contribute to our understanding of the concept of ‘art’ in different ways. Art is a part of life. In its different manifestations it has the potential to develop creativity (Booth), enhance intercultural understanding (O’Farrell), transform and empower communities (Leong; Thomson et al.; Balfour), cultivate spirituality (Matsunobu), give expression to what is not fully understood (Brice Heath and Gilbert) and promote tolerance and mutual understanding (Akuno et al.). It has a therapeutic dimension in its capacity to help people live more flourishing lives (Jennings and McFarlane; Peter) or to instil hope in seeing how life might be (O’Connor). Art has the potential to inform and enrich the way we engage with the world (Dyndahl) and to put us in touch with our own freedom (Higgins). It can also help us face uncertainty (Hunter). These are just a selection of some of the views on the potential power of art found in different chapters. They are not competing theories nor, taken together, are they intended to present a definitive account of the value of art. Such a comprehensive statement would be in danger of appearing overblown; different art forms and different encounters with art have different outcomes. Nor are these statements intended to translate directly into a form of advocacy or to imply that evidence is not important (Harland). Rather, the themes that run through this collection represent a mosaic of overlapping explanations and insights that have important implications for education. Many of them are culturally mediated, which provides yet another layer of diversity, one so complex that trying to map it in one chapter has entailed an ongoing dialogue about the Seoul Agenda between seven authors from all parts of the globe, and resulted in a chapter approximately three times the normal length (Akuno et al.). All of the writers are realistic about the challenges and tensions involved in translating vision into educational policy and practice as explicitly articulated by Bamford and O’Toole.

One of the tensions in writing about art is the danger of making claims about the arts in general that are only true of one or two of the art forms. Theories of art that sought to establish what counts as art tended to take a different formulation when the gaze fell on the author (early expression theories), the art work itself (formalist and representation theories), the audience (aesthetic attitude) or the context (institutional theories). These often did not work as explanations when applied universally. Similarly, the focus changed when the theory was driven implicitly by particular art forms; the more extreme formalist theories were more closely associated with visual art and music, and representation theories tended to ignore music. The inclination to over-generalise can easily distort thinking and can also arise if one is locked into a particular cultural way of thinking, assuming that one’s own way of seeing things is the only way (Akuno et al.). This book therefore contains specific chapters devoted to individual art forms. These provide insight into, for example, the sheer breadth of visual art education (Hickman and Eglinton) or musicianship (Barrett) or the need for a rich pedagogy in the context of dance education (Buck and Rowe). In addition most of the other chapters draw on particular art forms for concrete examples. The tendency to over-generalise is also a danger in researching the arts where claims can be made about the arts in education as a whole that are based on limited data derived from specific forms (Harland). The use of arts as a form of research can challenge conventional ways of thinking and of forming categories (Haseman; O’Donoghue).

In terms of representing individually distinct art forms, this book cannot and does not claim to be comprehensive, even for those where commonly agreed definitions and boundaries do exist. Some art forms have historically had more educational currency than others. In ‘Western’ schools and curricula, and in postcolonial education systems based on those, Music and Visual Arts have traditionally tended to find easier acceptance in education systems than the embodied performing arts (Rasmussen), along with written literature and poetry, though these have very often been appropriated by and sequestered under ‘Language Studies’ (Pieper; Dressman). The pre-colonial traditions of many parts of Africa, Asia and Oceania have often much more strongly featured embodied performance and oral art forms. They are usually more holistic in their understanding of art, too – just to use one example, in much Australian Aboriginal and Islander traditional performance it is impossible meaningfully either in practice or analysis to separate the elements of dance, drama, music, mask and body painting, the use of space and proxemics, and communal participation. Within the size, scope and timeline of preparing this book we have not been able to honour all these diverse traditions, even those which are less local than the Barbadian stilt-walking and Senegalese hairdressing that are so memorably identified by Anne Bamford (2006) in her Global Compendium of Research in Arts Education. Time precluded us from expert discussion on the teaching of oral literature, particularly but not exclusively in Africa, or on the worldwide artistry of masks used either distinctly or integrated into other arts. Readers may at this point identify their own favourite omitted art form and start to make a case for its inclusion in the next edition.

With a broad conception of the nature and value of the arts, it is easy to understand the temptation to subsume the concept of ‘art’ into the wider notion of ‘culture’. But a theme running through many chapters is the importance of creating a separate ‘art space’. When something is designated as ‘art’ we see it and respond to it differently. We discern in art objects deliberate human intention. That does not mean that intention determines meaning but rather acknowledges the essential element of human agency in art. Art is part of life but paradoxically there is a sense in which engagement with art takes us out of life’s mainstream in order to engage with life more fully and see and feel things afresh with more depth. The aesthetic dimensions of experience with art provide its unique ability to enhance perception and intensify experience (Doddington). The concept of ‘space’ features strongly in a number of chapters (Balfour; Thomson et al.; O’Donoghue; Matsunobu) as does the concept of ‘metaphor’ (Parsons; Barrett). That something happens in a special designated space is both literally true and a helpful metaphor. Sensory, cognitive and affective experience provide ways of knowing that are distinct from other subject areas, a view that is embodied in the concept of ‘aesthetic knowledge’.

The concept of the ‘aesthetic’ for a time fell out of favour in writing about art and about art and education when the importance of socio-cultural and historical context came to the fore. As with different theories of ‘art’, the concept of the aesthetic can be applied to both art objects (aesthetic form) and percipients (aesthetic attitude and experience). Its different uses make it both narrower and broader than the concept of ‘art’. It is generally acknowledged that we can have an aesthetic experience in response to nature but the term ‘art’ is usually retained for that which is actually made. On the other hand, the term ‘aesthetic’ can also be seen as narrower than ‘art’ in the sense that it often refers to formal properties of the art object. This more limited application of ‘aesthetic’ led to a narrow account of art that celebrated its intrinsic value. While not seeking to resurrect historical, exclusive views of the arts, several writers in this volume who place emphasis on the importance of beauty, enjoyment, and celebration (Winston; Balfour) see value in aspects of the arts that have been downplayed or outright rejected in much writing about arts and education in the past.

There has been understandable reluctance to emphasise notions of joy and entertainment for fear of reducing the status of the arts in educational contexts. However, these concepts include an ethical dimension in this collection when associated with notions of ‘unselfing’ and renewal, of being taken outside oneself. In the same spirit, the importance of play is strongly emphasised (Brice Heath and Gilbert; Booth) and its marginalisation in some countries even in early years education is challenged (Dunn and Wright). There is then an element of the aesthetic tradition that emphasised the intrinsic benefits of engaging with art that is worth preserving for it acts as a buffer against the more instrumental and functional preoccupations that have dominated education in many countries (Hunter; Varkøy).

The relationship between intrinsic and utilitarian justifications for the arts in education is one of a number of dichotomies that appear in the book, which in the past have been set up as competing ideas and positions, rather than as artificial divisions arising from the limitations of language; the world does not come to us in fixed predetermined rational categories (Grumet). This perceived dichotomy between the intrinsic and the utilitarian values of art has for a long time dominated Western thinking both about art and about education. It has led in both spheres to institutionalised structures, sets of values and judgements which are sometimes mutually exclusive, and where each views the other at the very least as alien and possibly dangerous (Rasmussen).

Another dubious dichotomy bequeathed by post-Renaissance Western thinking is that between cognition and emotion. Cognition was rightly emphasised as a balance to an exclusive focus on emotion in making and responding to art but sometimes the corrective tendency went too far in neglecting emotion. Moreover, plotting a simple dichotomy between cognition and emotion as the essentials of understanding can easily lead to overlooking the fundamental importance of the body: the sensual, corporeal and kinaesthetic elements of knowing. This is a deep and longstanding failure in education rather than art, of course, as sensory experience is both the entry point and at the heart of both making and responding to artwork (Parsons; Brice Heath and Gilbert; Doddington). Aesthetic knowledge is its own indissoluble amalgam of cognitive, emotional and sensory understanding – which is again why it is sometimes puzzling to educators and systems raised in more atomistic and cognitive-dominant traditions.

In education the relative emphasis on making and responding to art varies in the context of different art forms and in different cultural contexts (Akuno et al.). The study of literature, for example, is frequently seen almost entirely in relation to analysis and response (Pieper; Gingell). Again it is helpful to see beyond the simple dichotomy and recognise the importance not just of analysis and response but of genuine, felt response to a work (Higgins). Similarly, the contrast between formalist and populist approaches to poetry education is limiting (Dresssman) as is a conception of creativity that fails to recognise its multifaceted and plural dimensions (Burnard and Fautley; Booth).

There are, then, many overlapping themes that weave through the various chapters, rendering any linear structure somewhat artificial. However the book has been divided into sections to provide a broad indication of the topics addressed and help the reader navigate through its content. The six Parts of the book in sequence illustrate the breadth and diversity of the field, leading from the narrower preoccupations in Part I to the deliberately broader scope of the final Part VI. These sections are not all of equal length largely because of restrictions of space, but the list of references in each chapter will help readers to pursue individual interests. The field of ‘arts and education’ is not always easy to define, embracing as it does different individual art subjects, cultural contexts, theoretical perspectives and a range of academic disciplines. However this collection goes some way to defining the field through the diversity of its content and by bringing together leading writers and researchers from around the world to address the key themes, concepts and practical challenges.

This whole book is a shared experience, at all levels, which we hope encapsulates perhaps the most important characteristic of education in and through the arts: its social and collaborative nature. Both making and participating in arts are acts of social as well as individual agency (Rasmussen; Neelands). By engaging in the arts we seek to act upon and remake the personal and subjective world (‘me’), the social and communal world (‘us’ and ‘you’) and the objective world (‘it’ and ‘them’). Education in and through the arts invites and assists young people to come together in order to remake their worlds.

This book is a microcosm of that. Though there are many important areas of difference, diversity and creative tensions within the arts, some of them highlighted by our writers, we have constantly been struck by the congruence in diversity: all the fifty-three writers, from all continents and representing a wide range of art forms and education systems, know, understand and agree on what we mean by the arts, and by education. Many of the authors we invited have themselves chosen to collaborate in the writing, and almost all have engaged with other artists and teachers in developing the ideas in these pages. The collaboration between editors with different backgrounds from three continents has been enriching, remaking our own understandings all the time, and we are fortunate to have worked with such a talented group of writers on this project. We invite the readers to share in this collaboration, and take it further.

References

• Bamford, A. (2006) The Wow Factor: Global compendium of research in arts education, Munster: Waxmann Verlag.
• Weitz, M. (1956) The role of theory in aesthetics, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 15, 27–35,
• reprinted in Lamarque, P. & Olsen, S. (eds) (2004) Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art, Oxford: Blackwell.

Part I The role of theory

Mike Fleming, Liora Bresler a...