Arts in Education, Impact and Inequalities

Forms of Arts Education

Before considering the empirical literature, it may be instructive to consider some of the broad [Page 130]categories—shaped by normative notions of what arts learning is or should be—that distinguish different arts learning environments, and to some extent the design and interpretation of research conducted to understand them. Elliot Eisner, a leading scholar of arts learning, identified several versions of arts education that have somewhat different theoretical foundations, pedagogies, curricula, and learning goals. Eisner's work is discussed in this entry.

Discipline based arts education, a central model for arts learning—particularly in the visual arts—is designed to encourage students to think and act like artists and has four main goals: (1) build skills and imagination for high-quality arts performance, (2) help students see art and talk about what they see, (3) help students understand the historical and cultural contexts in which a work of art is embedded, and (4) enable students to engage with values in art.

Visual culture, a different version of arts education, has as a primary goal teaching students to decode works of popular and fine art. According to Eisner, its main purpose is to help students to see whose interests are being served by a particular image or work. Eisner draws explicit parallels here between these educational goals and those of multiculturalism, feminism, and postmodernism.

Creative problem solving and creative self-expression, two somewhat distinct versions of arts education, according to Eisner, share the common feature of seeking to develop student creativity. Creative problem solving, originating with the German Bauhaus design program, seeks to apply student creativity to practical problems of design, while creative self-expression is less goal oriented and focuses more on the student's personal experience and emphasizes limited teacher intervention.

Several other conceptions of arts learning are identified by Eisner in which arts instruction is applied to promote student learning in content areas outside of the arts. Eisner identifies four such versions of arts education:

• 1.
  Preparation for work: here student involvement in the arts is geared toward the development of skills and attitudes valued in the workplace;
• 2.
  Cognitive development: arts learning is used to promote the development of thinking skills such as goal-setting and metacognition;
• 3.
  Improvement of academic performance: the arts are used to promote learning in subjects such as reading and math; and
• 4.
  Integrated arts: here arts pedagogy and content are applied to both arts and non-arts subjects; for example, photography could be used to help students better understand a historical concept.

Eisner makes explicit that the varieties of arts education he identifies seldom operate alone. In practice, arts instruction in schools and in nonformal settings often incorporates goals and pedagogical approaches from a combination of several of the varieties described above.

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