National Art Education Association

Reply to Elliot Eisner's "Relationship of Theory and Practice in Art Education."Author(s): Ann HeidtSource: Art Education, Vol. 35, No. 3 (May, 1982), p. 44Published by: National Art Education AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3192598 .

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Reply to Elliot Eisner's "Relationship of Theory and Practice in Art Education."

Ann Heidt

his is written in response to Dr. Eisner's column, "The Rela-

tionship of Theory and Practice in Art Education" in the January 1982 issue of Art Education. In an effort to speak to the importance of theory and research in art education and its relationship to teaching, Dr. Eisner assumes many (the majority?) art educators reject it because they regard teaching as secondary to art making. Dr. Eisner also appears to limit the development of artistic sensibility to art making. Developing art educators who respond to art as well as make it may be one way to close the gap he writes about.

In my life, where responding to art is at least as important as making it, art education is not secondary to art making. I know very few art educators who feel differently. We, like coaches of major football teams, do not feel we have to make the touchdown ourselves to do our job well. But we may participate in art making and writing about art, and we may do it in such a way that we are called "artists" or "critics."

Theory and research, as Dr. Eisner identifies them, do "point us in a

direction. They give us concepts through which we can look at the world; they remind us of what to look for ... guidelines, reminders, platforms from which to view and think about a complex and dynamic set of considerations." But theory and research are not found in the "subject" of art education alone, but in the field of art as well. Dr. Eisner uses art criticism as an example. He might also use something like the study of Baroque art as an inter- pretative tool important to the art educator, too. And, of course, the studio person may argue that theory and research take place in areas like color and that color research is important to the art educator as well.

It may be true that the "major emphasis in the training of art educa- tors is the studio" and "only a small percentage of courses at the college and university level are devoted to a discipline of art education per se." It is also possible, however, that art historians, art critics, and aestheticians have decided to become art educators and that their major background may not have been studio art. Is it not possible that these other art educators are not as skeptical about the relevance of art educational theory and research to their "practice" because theory and research are so vital to their areas of art study?

And if this is true, shouldn't our colleges (those that desire a smaller gap between theory and practice-bless them) place more emphasis upon these courses (i.e., art history, aesthetics, and criticism)? Then the major emphasis in the training of art educators is not a studio emphasis but a balance between art education and courses requiring students to respond to art as well as make it.

If art schools have "trades" in art history and criticism as they do in such areas as filmmaking, then art education would be better situated in an art school than in institutions of higher learning.

But institutions of higher learning may be the only places where students in art education may enroll in as many non-studio art classes as studio classes. And because of this possibility, shouldn't art educators continue their development in these institutions?

Shouldn't art educators be art historians, critics, aestheticians, and artist-teachers instead of artist- teachers? If so, responding to art may become as important as art making in school curricula, and today's child will receive an art education.

Ann Heidt is art teacher at Canyon High School in Saugus, California.

Art Education May 1982 44

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