Session Information
10 SES 13 C, Research on Programmes and Pedagogical Approaches in Teacher Education
Paper Session
Contribution
This paper is based on the concept that teaching can be viewed as an art. Drawing on the works of the philosophers Rudolf Steiner and John Dewey, as well as on educators such as Elliot Eisner, Seymour Sarason and Maxine Greene, a view of teaching will be advanced in which developing a teacher's artistry becomes the central focus of teacher education.
Considering teaching as an art implies adopting a requisite framework of knowledge. The musician’s sensitivity to nuances of tone, the actor’s to voice and gesture, the clown’s to the possibilities of improvisation, all represent forms of knowledge and expression which do not lend themselves easily to rational, scientific discourse. Nor do they represent that type of knowledge which most educational research and theory has propagated as essential in teacher education, or, for that matter, for pupils in their schooling. At the same time they are all, incontrovertibly, examples of highly precise and expressive ways of knowing and acting. In this paper it will be argued that the specific and highly demanding skills which classroom teaching continually requires, are closely connected to those capabilities and forms of knowledge which can best be viewed as artistic. In a chapter called ‘On the Art of Teaching’ Elliot Eisner explains the four reasons which lead him to view teaching within an artistic framework:
First, it is an art in the sense that teaching can be performed with such skill and grace that, for the student as for the teacher, the experience can be justifiably characterized as aesthetic. (…)
Second, teaching, is an art in the sense that teachers, like painters, composers, actresses, and dancers, make judgements based on qualities that unfold during the course of action. (…)
Third, teaching is an art in the sense that the teacher’s activity is not dominated by prescriptions or routines but is influenced by qualities and contingencies that are unpredicted. (…)
Fourth, teaching is an art in the sense that the ends it achieves are often created in process. (…)
It is in these four senses – teaching as a source of aesthetic experience, as dependent on the perception and control of qualities, as a heuristic, or adventitious activity, and as seeking emergent ends – that teaching can be regarded as an art. 1
The perspectives which Eisner has presented address different, but related aspects of the process of teaching itself, emphasizing its aesthetic, creative, dynamic and indeterminate qualities. In establishing parallels between such processes in the arts and in teaching, a framework is created in which the paradigms of the arts also become relevant and attainable for teachers through realizing possibilities within their own medium. This perspective raises implicit questions regarding the forms of knowledge that can be considered most relevant for teachers.
1. Elliot Eisner, The Educational Imagination: On the Design and Evaluation of School Programs 2nd ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1985) 175-177.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Dewey, John. Art as Experience. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons 1980. Eisner, Elliot. The Educational Imagination: On the Design and Evaluation of School Programs. 2nd ed. New York: Macmillan, 1985. Greene, Maxine. Variations on a Blue Guitar: The Lincoln Center Institute Lectures on Aesthetic Education. New York: Teachers College Press, 2001. Lutzker, Peter. The Art of Foreign Language Teaching: Improvisation and Drama in Teacher Development and Language Learning. Tübingen: Francke Verlag, 2007. Sarason, Seymour.B. Teaching as a Performing Art. New York: Teachers College Press, 1999 Steiner, Rudolf. Texte zur Pädagogik aus dem Werk von Rudolf Steiner: Anthroposophie und Erziehungswissenschaft, ed. Johannes Kiersch. Dornach: Rudolf Steiner Verlag, 2004
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.