The Arts and Education: Knowledge Generation, Pedagogy, and the Discourse of Learning

Within the past 20 years, the arts have gained increasing prominence in educational discourses as well as public arenas. At the same time that traditional genres of art (e.g., music, visual art, and performance) are being taught as part of school curricula, the study of the arts in education has taken on new venues in supporting learning and teaching through technology and multimedia (Carey, 2005; Eisner, 2002; Flood, Heath, & Lapp, 2005). These new foci are especially critical in bridging the local and the global, and in linking cultures and worlds across age, time, and space that in earlier periods in history would have been virtually impossible to connect. Moreover, they portend opportunities for enhancing learning and improving pedagogy and practice (Bresler, 2001; Bresler & Ardichivili, 2002). They call attention to the ways in which these opportunities are constructed across place and culturally diverse groups, how knowledge (and what counts as knowledge) is defined and shaped within and outside of formal classrooms, and the ways in which reciprocal relationships across different settings are (re)formed and sustained. In short, they prompt us to examine critically how patterns of practice in areas outside of the arts are supported through the arts. They urge us to take up questions about the role the arts play in linking students’ knowledge outside the classroom with the knowledge gained through the official curriculum and, in turn, about how such knowledge contributes to the formation of student and teacher identities. This chapter focuses on the arts within a social–cultural–contextual framework, examining their role as a (re)source in educational theory, research, and practice. Rather than highlighting individual disciplines within the field, typically referred to as “the arts,” the chapter is concerned with the changing nature of the arts and what counts as the arts.1 The chapter has a six-part structure that begins with an overview of issues that are central to redefining the relationship of the arts and education. This is followed