Aesthetics in Art Education: A Look Toward Implementation. ERIC Digest.

Overview & Synopsis

Aesthetics, or the philosophy of art, is perhaps the most troublesome discipline advocated in a discipline-based approach to art education. It is troublesome for many reasons, including its largely verbal nature and the lack of experience of most art teachers with its content and modes of inquiry. Nevertheless, aesthetics can serve as a basis for all other content in an art curriculum because of its nature and its foundation of general questions about all works of art. Issues examined in this digest include: (1) relating aesthetics to art education; (2) placement of aesthetics in the art curriculum; (3) philosophical inquiry in art education; and (4) reconstruction of aesthetics in art education. A 9-item reference list concludes the digest. (DB)