Synopses & Reviews
"Education without the arts would be an impoverished enterprise." So says award-winning author Elliot Eisner, an internationally renowned authority on how the arts can be used to improve education. In a long and distinguished career, Eisner has given eloquent voice to the concerns of those who decry the marginalization of the arts in school curriculums. Now, for the first time ever, readers will have access to his best essays in one concise volume.
The Kind of Schools We Need reviews Eisner's ground-breaking theories on aesthetic intelligence-theories that have helped us rethink the connections among art, literacy, research, and evaluation. A full section devoted to cognition and representation explains how the process of education expands and deepens the kinds of meaning people have in their lives. Schools must therefore help children learn to encode and decode the many forms of meaning they encounter, be they visual, auditory, linguistic, kinesthetic, or mathematical. It is precisely because those meanings are often expressed through the arts, that Eisner believes the critical methods employed in the arts have broader educational relevance. That relevance is explored in a section entitled "Rethinking Educational Research," which examines how the arts can be used to study, understand, and improve educational practice.
In an era when school reform movements are sweeping the nation, Eisner's organic or "ecological" approach is more cogent than ever. He discusses this approach in detail in the final section of the book, "The Practice and Reform of Schools," making problematic beliefs about the utility of fixed and uniform standards in a nation whose schools serve fifty million students. It is fitting, then, that with The Kind of Schools We Need, teachers, school administrators, and scholars will find a connection to one of the most influential thinkers in education today.
Synopsis
In a long and distinguished career, Eisner has given eloquent voice to the concerns of those who decry the marginalization of the arts in school curriculums. Now, for the first time ever, readers will have access to his best essays in one concise volume.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 219-224) and index.
About the Author
Elliot Eisner is Professor of Education and Art at Stanford University. He has published fifteen books and has won numerous awards for his work, including a Fulbright Fellowship, a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Palmer O. Johnson Award from the American Educational Research Association. Eisner was President of the National Art Education Association, President of the International Society for Education Through Art, President of the American Educational Research Association, and is President of the John Dewey Society.
Table of Contents
Cognition and Representation
Rethinking Literacy
The Celebration of Thinking
Aesthetic Modes of Knowing
Cognition and Representation: A Way to Pursue the American Dream?
The Arts and Their Role in Education
What the Arts Taught Me About Education
The Education of Vision
The Misunderstood Role of the Arts in Human Development
Does Experience in the Arts Boost Academic Achievement?
Rethinking Educational Research
The Meaning of Alternative Paradigms for Practice
Forms of Understanding and the Future of Educational Research
Reshaping Assessment in Education
What Artistically Crafted Research Can Help Us Understand About Schools
The Practice and Reform of Schools
Educational Reform and the Ecology of Schools
Standards for American Schools: Help or Hindrance?
What a Professor Learned in the Third Grade
Preparing Teachers for the Twenty-first Century