The ART EDUCATION PROGRAM
An Intellectual Journey
by Dr. Joseph Amorino
The Art Education Program at Kean University offers a unique curriculum
rooted in current research and contemporary conversations in the field. This
rigorous program seeks the development of future educators who can engage in
conceptual thought about learning in the visual arts and translate these
understandings into an active and vivified form of pedagogy. To achieve this
goal, our students are offered a strong studio preparation augmented by an
academic study of the psychological and intellectual origins of artistic
expression as they unfold within the growing individual. Historically, these
elemental concerns have not been well recognized or understood in the field of
art teacher preparation.
The philosophy which underpins the program suggests that artistic learning
is most effectively implemented when viewed through the lens of developmental
psychology. Further, artmaking is seen as a process rooted in sensory,
emotional, and kinesthetic ways of knowing, areas hitherto considered apart
from the intellect. When these systems operate in close conjunction with
cognition, a highly afferent and holistic educational experience is provided for
children and adolescents. An understanding of this intellectual complex is vital
to the art educator’s ability to design meaningful and effective learning
experiences for young people.
Through the program described above, we stand to cultivate art educators
who understand and engage with teaching and learning in complex, vital, and
important ways. These future teachers recognize the critical contributions that
artistic learning can make to fostering a creative intelligence as a lifelong trait in
their students. Specifically, such an approach can profoundly enliven the act of
educating and enable teachers to revitalize the authentic artistic voices of
children and adolescents, while nurturing conceptual understandings and
fostering creative and discovering thought processes. Meanwhile, important
concerns such as the development of basic skills and formal knowledge, as
noted in state standards, emerge as by-products of the educational experience.
It is also anticipated that the approach described above will prepare future
educators to engage with their classrooms as arenas of exploration, reflection
and ongoing professional growth.
-A Background and Rationale-
Shaping the Art Education Program
at Kean University
by
Dr. J.S. Amorino, 2005
The Art Education Program at Kean University retains a healthy interest in its own continued
pedagogical growth. The program recognizes that, with the onset of a new millennium, the field
of art education has become increasingly complex and dimensional. Research over the past two
decades, which is strongly supported by findings dating much further back, presents us with new
ways of thinking about artistic learning, especially with considerations to developmental
psychology and the role that sensory knowing plays in the artistic process. Current thinking
suggests a critical need for art teachers to understand the inner landscape, that is, the
developmental stages of their students. The art educator must also become proficient at
translating such conceptual knowledge into a pedagogical practice, which includes the
construction and sequencing of theme based, highly experiential learning experiences for children
and adolescents.
By broadening their own understandings in the area described above, future art teachers can
better address the intellectual and artistic development of their students. In order for teachers to
approach education in this manner, they must become familiar with the elemental origins of
artmaking. Simply put, they must understand “where art comes from.” Unfortunately, the notion
of apprehending the origins of artmaking at an elemental level has remained largely unaddressed
in art education. Robert Witkin (1974) identifies this problem quite eloquently when he writes:
“The arts teacher rarely involves himself in the process of developing or
evoking the sensate disturbance within the pupil which is to be the origin of the
pupil’s self expression. He provides a space and a set of instructions, and his
own praxis becomes engaged only with what emerges. In this he is rather like
a gardener who pays no attention to the time of planting, to the soil or what
goes on underneath it, but waits till a plant emerges above the soil from
somewhere…”
Witkin is far from alone in his assessment of the problem. Richard Gregory (1995), William
James (1911), Herbert Read (1963), and Heinz Werner (1978), are just a few of many researchers
whose findings suggest that educators have historically attempted to teach art externally, due to a
lack of understanding of its elemental infrastructures. Indeed, while certain lines of educational
thought over the last century have suggested that artmaking originates from the psychological
complexion of the individual, obtaining a clear picture of this phenomenon is a challenging task.
By their very nature, both psychological and artistic aspects seem resistant to direct clinical study.
Without these clear understandings, past trends towards teaching “art for expression” have
usually become vague and amorphous, lacking in needed sequence or structure, and ultimately
destined to failure. However, current methods which examine the issue through a number of
lenses (psychology, educational theory, philosophy, cultural anthropology, and artistic discourse),
have provided a more clinical understanding of the nature of artistic learning. Findings show that
the human intellect is a multifaceted complex, a global and highly afferent phenomena involving
various processes originating from within the growing individual and impacted upon through his
or her environment.
In order to meet these concerns, the Art Education Program at Kean University is evolving to
provide future teachers with a psychology-based, multifaceted learning experience. Through this
intellectual journey these future professional may develop an academically grounded, meaningful
and exciting professional practice.
Bibliography
A wide number of researchers provide support for the concepts set forth herein. Given the brief nature of
this writing, it would have been distracting to include them all in the text. This listing details the major
figures cited in the text and others for those interested in further inquiry. Additional references on this
topic are available upon request.
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