Releasing the Social Imagination: Art, the Aesthetic Experience, and Citizenship in Education
Author(s)
Seungho Moon,
Shawn Rose,
Alison Black,
James Black,
Yeorim Hwang,
Lisa Lynn,
Jason Memoli
Affiliation(s)
School of Teaching and Curriculum Leadership, College of Education, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, USA.
School of Teaching and Curriculum Leadership, College of Education, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, USA.
ABSTRACT
This paper is about releasing the social imagination through art in education. This research examines possibilities to use the aesthetic experience as a means to awaken students’ consciousness for advancing democratic values, including multiple perspectives, freedom, and responsibility. Drawing from Maxine Greene’s (1995, 2001) philosophy of social imagination and aesthetic education, this inquiry aims to enrich discourse in the field of curriculum studies, creativity, and citizenship education. Six educators initiated a social imagination project separately. They designed, implemented, and assessed a semester-long project founded in Greene’s philosophy of social imagination. The participants challenged habitual ways of thinking about self/other, culture, and community through active engagement between art and the subject. The aesthetic encounters with art (a) fostered the participants’ wide-awakeness about the society and (b) engaged participants to imagining “things as if they could be otherwise” (Greene, 1995:p. 16). An emphasis on the aesthetic experience through art contributes to advancing democratic values in a pluralistic society.
This paper is about releasing the social imagination through art in education. This research examines possibilities to use the aesthetic experience as a means to awaken students’ consciousness for advancing democratic values, including multiple perspectives, freedom, and responsibility. Drawing from Maxine Greene’s (1995, 2001) philosophy of social imagination and aesthetic education, this inquiry aims to enrich discourse in the field of curriculum studies, creativity, and citizenship education. Six educators initiated a social imagination project separately. They designed, implemented, and assessed a semester-long project founded in Greene’s philosophy of social imagination. The participants challenged habitual ways of thinking about self/other, culture, and community through active engagement between art and the subject. The aesthetic encounters with art (a) fostered the participants’ wide-awakeness about the society and (b) engaged participants to imagining “things as if they could be otherwise” (Greene, 1995:p. 16). An emphasis on the aesthetic experience through art contributes to advancing democratic values in a pluralistic society.
Cite this paper
Moon, S. , Rose, S. , Black, A. , Black, J. , Hwang, Y. , Lynn, L. and Memoli, J. (2013) Releasing the Social Imagination: Art, the Aesthetic Experience, and Citizenship in Education. Creative Education, 4, 223-233. doi: 10.4236/ce.2013.43033.
Moon, S. , Rose, S. , Black, A. , Black, J. , Hwang, Y. , Lynn, L. and Memoli, J. (2013) Releasing the Social Imagination: Art, the Aesthetic Experience, and Citizenship in Education. Creative Education, 4, 223-233. doi: 10.4236/ce.2013.43033.
References
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[1] Crane, C., & Urban, H. (2003). P is for Pilgrim: A Thanksgiving alphabet. Chelsea, MI: Sleeping Bear Press. [2] Dewey, J. (1980). Art as experience. New York, NY: Perigee Books. [3] Dewey, J. (2013). My pedagogic creed. In D. J. Flinders, & S. J. Thornton (Eds.), The curriculum studies reader (pp. 33-40). New York, NY: Routledge. [4] Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York, NY: Continuum. [5] Gaudelli, W., & Hewitt, R. (2010). The aesthetic potential of global issues curriculum. Journal of Aesthetic Education, 44, 83-99. [6] Greene, M. (1988). The dialectic of freedom. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. [7] Greene, M. (1994). Carpe diem: The arts and school restructuring. Teachers College Record, 95, 494-507. [8] Greene, M. (1995). Releasing the imagination: Essay on education, the arts, and social change. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. [9] Greene, M. (1998). Introduction: Teaching for social justice. In W. Ayers, J. A. Hunt, & T. Quinn (Eds.) Teaching for social justice (pp. xxvii-xivi). New York: The New Press. [10] Greene, M. (2001). Variations on a blue guitar: The Lincoln Center Institute lectures on aesthetic education. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. [11] Greene, M. (2007a). Aesthetics as research. URL (last checked 20 December 2012). http://www.maxinegreene.org/articles.php [12] Greene, M. (2007b). Imagination and the healing arts. URL (last checked 20 December 2012). http://www.maxinegreene.org/articles.php [13] Hirsh, R. A. (2010). Creativity: Cultural capital in the mathematics classroom. Creative Education, 1, 154-161. [14] Mendoza, J., & Reese, D. (2001). Examining multicultural picture books for early childhood classroom: Possibilities and pitfalls. Early Childhood Research & Practice, 3, 1-38. [15] Miller, J. L. (2010). Maxine Greene. In C. Kridel (Ed.), The Sage encyclopedia of curriculum studies (pp. 417-419). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. [16] Moon, S. (2012). Disciplinary images of “Korean-ness”: Autobiographical interrogations on the panopticon. SAGE Open, Journal, 2, 1-12. [17] Panzer, M. (1999). Philippe Halsman: A retrospective. URL (last checked 10 December 2012). http://www.npg.si.edu/exh/halsman/intro.htm [18] Pinar, W. F. (2012). What is curriculum theory? (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge. [19] Pinar, W. F. (Ed.) (1998). The passionate mind of Maxine Greene: “I am… not yet”. Bristol, PA: Falmer Press. [20] Pinar, W. F., Reynolds, W. M., Slattery, P., & Taubman, P. M. (1995). Understanding curriculum: An introduction to the study of historical and contemporary curriculum discourses. New York, NY: Peter Lang. [21] Riessmann, C. K. (2008). Narrative methods for the human sciences. Los Angeles, CA: Sage. [22] Robinson, K. (2010). Sir Ken Robinson—Changing paradigms. URL (last checked 10 December 2012). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCbdS4hSa0s [23] Robinson, K. (2011). Out of our minds: Learning to be creative. West Sussex: Capstone. [24] Smith, S., & Watson, J. (2000). Reading autobiography: A guide for interpreting life narratives. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. [25] Taubman, P. M. (2009). Teaching by numbers: Deconstructing the discourse of standards and accountability in education. New York, NY: Routledge. [26] Tishman, S., & Palmer, P. (November 2006). Artful thinking: Stronger thinking and learning through the power of art. URL (last checked 24 December 2012). http://www.pz.harvard.edu/Research/ArtfulThinkingFinalReport.pdf [27] Van der Veen, J. (2012). Draw your physics homework? Art as a path to understanding in physics teaching. American Educational Research Journal, 49, 356-407.