Where Are the Liberal Arts?

Research in Higher Education - Responses to the College Student Experiences Questionnaire at each of five types of institutions (Selective Liberal Arts, General Liberal Arts, Comprehensive Colleges...     

Increasing Secondary Teachers’ Capacity to Integrate the Arts

Abstract

Examples from a team of collaborating secondary teachers—one visual arts teacher and one science teacher—highlight key aspects of this professional development project in arts integration. The article traces a regional network designed to build teacher capacity with implications for the design, effectiveness, and sustainability of professional development for secondary teachers. It describes the framework for professional development through the first two years of the project. In year one, teachers increased their understanding of arts integration; collegial collaboration; the design and use of assessments that align with standards, benchmarks, and learning goals; and how to reflect on student work. In year two, professional development activity focused on co-teaching and helping teachers to increase the rigor of student learning goals as a way to improve student learning in arts and non-arts content areas. Project outcomes and challenges to sustaining such job-embedded and networked professional learning opportunities are discussed and directions for further research are offered.     

A Review of “Teaching the Bible Through Popular Culture and the Arts”

Pope Francis incarnates a praxis of encounter in an age of polarization. For Francis, encounter entails displacement, dialog, and discernment. Relational pedagogy illuminates the fecundity of relationships between the teacher and student at the heart of education. Nel Noddings, preeminent proponent of relational pedagogy, grounds an ethics of care in the mother–child relationship and Levinasian encounter. Noddings points toward the application of encounter in education. The hyper-individualized, commodified, and technocratic culture of Catholic higher education today is a formidable challenge to a pedagogy of encounter. However, indigenous ways of teaching and learning offer pedagogical practices for realizing encounter.     

‘Touched by the Earth’: a place-based outdoor learning programme incorporating the Arts

With growing disconnection from the natural world, educators who work in the outdoors need to philosophically rethink their modus operandi. Past efforts by adventure and outdoor educators to promote connection with nature have often centred upon risk-centric approaches incorporating adventure-fuelled and high-adrenalin activities. This paper explores how the Arts may be incorporated into ecopedagogies, and what creative work can reveal about the nature of communication with the environment. ‘Touched by the Earth’ is a year-long place-based enrichment programme using multi-modal creative methods with young adolescent participants. Our research addressed the following questions: what does it mean to be ‘Touched by the Earth’; and how can the Arts amplify a personal relationship with the environment? Data were collected through interviews as well as student-generated material such as artefacts, video and photographs and field observation. Our findings indicate the crucial role the Arts can play in embodied and multi-sensory learning for participants, which in turn nurtures greater nature awareness and attachment. This transformation may, in fact, be termed ‘love’. We conclude that place-based, interdisciplinary and immersive modalities galvanise a deeper appreciation of the natural environment.     

Skills versus pedagogy? Doctoral research training in the UK Arts and Humanities

The traditional ‘lone scholar’ view of an Arts and Humanities doctoral student sits uneasily with the skills-based discourse underpinning policies aimed at enhancing researcher development and employability. This paper reports on a case study of a research training programme for doctoral students in the Arts and Humanities at a UK university. It calls for the embedding of the generic skills agenda within a more clearly articulated pedagogic discourse and formulates four pedagogic principles for research training programme design. Additionally, the paper problematises the research trainer role and highlights the importance of paying attention to the students' own learning agendas and the learning value they are prepared to derive from training.     

“Talent” and the Misrecognition of Social Advantage in Specialized Arts Education

Attention has been drawn to the persistent underrepresentation of underserved populations in gifted education programs. Though a small number of working-class students, students of color, recent immigrants, and students with limited English proficiency attend these programs, access to gifted education remains closely linked to White and upper-middle-class populations. The question remains: how, in a system that claims to be committed to achieving equity, do such disparities come to be and, furthermore, how are they justified? In this article we attempt to make sense of this phenomenon by examining how discourses of talent are mobilized within the context of a particular kind of gifted education program: a specialized arts program within a Canadian public secondary school.     

Instructional Supervision and Curriculum Monitoring: Reinterpreting the Principal’s Role through the Arts of Inquiry

The gulf between educational leadership theory and contemporary curriculum scholarship is becoming increasingly problematic now that principals have been legally mandated to add curriculum monitoring to their duties as instructional leaders. Lacking familiarity with curriculum theory and practice, many overburdened administrators are turning to Management by Walking Around (MBWA) as a way of dealing with their ever burgeoning list of responsibilities. This article briefly reviews a particular MBWA model, the Three-Minute Classroom Walk-Through (Downey et al. 2004) and then interprets it through the lens of Henderson and Kesson’s (2004) arts of inquiry, a heuristic developed for helping curriculum workers think through the current multitude of reform proposals. This provides one example of the way that dialogue between the fields of curriculum studies and educational leadership may augment possibilities for lasting and positive reform of instructional supervision.     

‘Exploring the “Construction” strand in the Irish Primary School Visual Arts Curriculum through the Forest School approach’

Forest School is a concept, or intervention to traditional educational settings, backed up by research and built upon long-standing theories that children engage with nature naturally and that learning becomes more relevant to the student when they can relate it to real life scenarios. This research documents the implementation of the Irish Primary School Visual Arts Curriculum through Forest School, specifically, the ‘Construction’ Strand. The research was a qualitative inquiry that was supported by an action research methodology. It was conducted over six weekly sessions. Key findings show the development of a sense of responsibility, resilience, independence, happiness in a sense of achievement and an awakened awareness of the child’s own surroundings. The findings advocate the benefits of implementing this approach to enhance the Primary School Visual Arts Curriculum, as well as promoting happiness and contentment in the remainder of the day at school in other curricular subjects. .     

Teacher as ‘Shape-shifter’: Exploring the Intersection of New Times and the Teaching of English Language Arts

This article explores how the current era in which we live, ‘New Times’, a term used to characterize the changing social, economic, and technological conditions of our current era, both affords and constrains the identities of future teachers. The case of Anna Cunningham, a pre-service English language arts teacher, is highlighted as a portrait of the intersection of New Times with teacher identities rooted in content/disciplinary affiliations. Findings suggest the beginning teachers in New Times become adept at negotiating multiple, and sometimes divergent, teacher identities. This negotiation becomes a primary tool in responding to a changing notion of what is means to teach English language arts.     

The Bachelor of Arts: slipping into the twilight or facing a new dawn?

Undergraduate students have historically engaged with the humanities and social sciences through the Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree programme. Recent experiences suggest that the relevance and the value of the degree to the modern world is now being challenged: populist press questions the value of the humanities to the modern knowledge economy; public funding for teaching in the social sciences and humanities in higher education has been slashed in the UK and elsewhere; humanities and social sciences schools and departments in the USA, New Zealand and Canada rationalised and restructured; BA programmes in some Australian universities closed. All seems to suggest that the sun is setting on the BA. This paper argues that, in Australia at least, these actions have been made on the basis of a flawed understanding of contemporary BA programmes. It asserts that the contemporary BA is a very different creature to that of even the recent past. The paper offers a new definition of the contemporary Australian BA degree programme developed as a result of a comparative historical analysis research study across 39 Australian institutions. It extends an argument that perhaps the time is right for a re-examination of what is meant by ‘BA’ – before we declare the degree a relic of the past.     

Do the Study of Education and Teacher Education Belong at a Liberal Arts College?

The question whether the study of education and teacher education belong at a liberal arts college deserves careful consideration. In this essay Bruce Kimball analyzes and finds unpersuasive the three principled rationales that are most often advanced on behalf of excluding educational studies, teacher education, or both from a liberal arts college. Specifically, Kimball argues that no principled definition of the conventional liberal arts disciplines excludes the study of education without barring other fields now regarded as legitimate, and consistency demands that all such fields be excluded if any are. In addition, teacher education, even if considered as merely “craft know‐how” or as professional training, cannot be excluded from liberal arts colleges without arbitrarily classifying it as suspect and subjecting it to strict scrutiny. But the question of whether educational studies or teacher education fit any asserted definition of liberal education does not finally resolve the question of whether they belong in a liberal arts college. Kimball concludes by suggesting that there are moral and prudential reasons for liberal arts colleges to offer teacher education and, concomitantly, the study of education, even apart from the unpersuasive objections that they do not fit a definition of liberal education.     

The Development of Some Textbooks on the useful Arts c.1000‐c.1250

‘... I will formulate two hundred doubts supported for the sake of a trial...’ Paul of Venice, Quadratura. ^{1 1}‘Quoniam otium mors est hominis una viventis nec non ad multorum genera viciorum relapsus continuus, ideo ut inter mortuos vivam nec solito vel ceteris peior efficiar quatuor formabo dubia denariis quinque fulta temptativis’. Paulus Venetus, Quadratura (Venice: Bonetus Locatellus, 1493), Hain 12.521, no pagination. All references are to this edition. On Paul of Venice see Alan R. Perreiah, ‘A Biographical Introduction to Paul of Venice’, Augustiniana, XVII (1967), 450–461.      

How Can Visual Arts Help Doctors Develop Medical Insight?

This research project examines how using the visual arts can develop medical insight, as part of a pilot programme for two groups of medical students. It was a UK study; a collaboration between Liverpool and Glynd? University's and Tate Liverpool's learning team. Tate Liverpool is the home of the National Collection of Modern Arts in the North of England and one of the largest galleries of modern and contemporary art outside London. The project adapted Tate Liverpool's Opening Doors course in devising and piloting a single day programme that engaged students in exploring perception, communication, emotion and narrative. Opening Doors introduces participants to modern and contemporary art and empowers them to work in new ways with groups and individuals. The exercises used as part of the programme allowed us to observe what connections and interpretations were made, and to discuss with the participants what influenced student choice and decision making in relation to specific works of art. This article will focus on the use of gallery education to highlight examples of contemporary culture to develop links between art and medicine, alongside the development of transferable skills. The study is of professional interest because it is using a cross‐disciplinary approach, broadening the disciplines involved in teaching medical skills; and could form a model for further cross‐curricular and cross‐discipline work.     

Liberal Arts in China’s Modern Universities: Lessons from the Great Catholic Educator and Statesman,Ma Xiangbo

Ma Xiangbo was born in 1840 and became a pioneer of educational reform during the republican period. He was responsible for introducing the idea that science and humanities should be valued equally in liberal arts education, a concept that became key to the model of university education. Ma’s view of education combined Western humanism and science with classical Confucian humanism. His ideas still have a referential value for contemporary Chinese higher education and society.     

艺术(Arts)在STEAM教育中的角色分析

随着社会人才培养方向及学生自身发展需求的转变,STEM教学模式亟需艺术元素对其进行丰富与完善,通过创新性的STEAM教育模式对传统学科的教育内容进行平衡.为保证艺术与STEM教育中其他学科的有效对接与整合,需要准确界定艺术教育的理念与定位,从创造力、理解力、学习力三个角度突出艺术学科的价值,并基于艺术的角色定位,提出STEAM教育发展进步的途径.     

Liberal Arts与Humanities的区别:概念史的考察

博雅学艺(liberal arts)与文科(humanities)是西方教育史上两个核心的概念。在中文学界,liberal arts常常被翻译为人文学科或文科,这在一定程度上混淆了两者的关系。文艺复兴之后,liberal arts和humanities之间的区别越来越大,自始至终,liberal arts囊括了两种性质截然不同的知识,其一是体现敏感性精神的文法、修辞、诗歌,其二是体现几何学精神的算术、几何、天文学,等等,而自文艺复兴之后,人文学的概念已经将数学彻底排除在外。     

Is Creativity Masculine? Visual Arts College Students’ Perceptions of the Gender Stereotyping of Creativity and Its Influence on Creative Self-Efficacy

This study investigated visual arts college students’ perceptions of the gender stereotyping of creativity and the influence of this stereotyping on creative self-efficacy. The sample consisted of 1198 Chinese visual arts college students. The results showed that (a) both male and female students identified stereotypically masculine traits as more important to creativity than stereotypically feminine traits are, (b) male students demonstrated higher creative self-efficacy than their female counterparts did, and (c) students’ gender significantly moderated the effect of the gender stereotyping of creativity on creative self-efficacy. Specifically, the gender stereotyping of creativity had a positive effect on male students and a negative effect on female students. These findings revealed that gender stereotypes dominate concepts of creativity in Chinese art education and may hinder female students’ development of creative self-efficacy, resulting in gendered inequality in the visual arts field. The implications of these findings for visual arts education in China are discussed.     

The Importance of Art Viewing Experiences in Early Childhood Visual Arts: The Exploration of a Master Art Teacher’s Strategies for Meaningful Early Arts Experiences

The visual arts can be an important and rich domain of learning for young children. In PreK education, The Task Force on Children’s Learning and the Arts: Birth to Age Eight (Young children and the arts: Making creative connections, Washington, DC: Arts Education Partnership, 1998) recommends that art experiences for young children include activities designed to introduce children to works of art that are high quality and developmentally appropriate in both content and presentation. This paper documents the teaching strategies utilized by a master art teacher at the Denver Art Museum to engage preschool-age students in art viewing experiences which were part of a museum-based art program. This research provides support for integrating rich, meaningful art viewing experiences as a regular part of young children’s arts experiences while offering early childhood educators teaching strategies for early art viewing experiences.

Developing ‘active citizens’: Arts Award,creativity and impact

Creativity has become the new watchword in UK academic and policy circles. Within this context, policy discussions about the arts and their impact emphasise economic benefits over educational value, drawing clear distinctions between quantifiable or ‘hard’ measures of impact and those described as ‘soft’, less tangible and lacking a strong evidence base. Departing from the binary logics often underpinning notions of arts impacts, this article is novel in exploring the entwined relationship between impacts seen as ‘hard’ and ‘soft’. We draw on research examining the links between arts education and young people's future trajectories and use the concept of ‘active citizenship’ to show how informal, softer skills fostered through creative learning are an important part of citizenship-making for some young people. Participants’ accounts show how improvements in soft skills can give young people opportunities for agency, which shape progression pathways leading to measurable change. This finding is directly relevant in the context of evaluations of arts impacts in the UK and abroad, and should encourage further examination of the impact of creative learning on transfer of skills as well as policy developments in this area.