36

tn
Curri cul um Change f or t he 21st
Cent ury: Vi sual Cul t ure
Art Educati on
Kerry Freedman
Northern lllinois U niversity
Patri ci a Stuhr
The Ohio State Universitv
CURRI CULUM AND VI SUAL CULTURE
National and international art educators have begun to move away from the emphasis on tradi-
tional fine arts disciplines toward a broader range of visual arts and culfural issues (Ballengee-
Morri s & Stuhr, 2001: Barbosa. 1991; Bl andy, 1994; Congdon, 1991; Duncum, 1990; Freed-
man, 1994, 2000; Garber,1995: Garoi an, 1999; Hern6ndez, 2000; Hi cks, 1990; Jagodzi nski ,
1997; Neperud, i 995; Smi th-Shank,1996: Tavi n,2000). These contri butors to the fi el d have
argued for a transformation of art education in response to changing conditions in the contem-
porary world where the visual arts, includin-e popular arts and contemporary fine afi, are an
increasingly important part ofthe larger visual culture that surrounds and shapes our daily lives.
In the process of this transformation. art educators are replacing older views of curriculum and
instruction with an expanded vision of the place of visual arts in human experience.
The change in art education has historical roots. From the beginning of public school art
education in the late l9th century, a range of design forms have been included in the field. For
example, early art education focused on industrial drawing and handicrafts; children's interests
becameat opi cof ar t educat i onbyt he 1920s: ar t i ndai l yi i f ewasasl oganof t he 1930s; dunng
World War II, visual propaganda was taught in school; and during the 1960s, crafts increased
in popularity. In the following 2 decades, a few art educators addressed important issues in
the uses of popular culture and mass-media technologies, contextualizing these in relation to
students' l i ves
(Chal mers,
1981;Gri gsby, l 9l l ;Lani er,1969 1914 McFee & Degge, 1977;
Neperud, 1973l Wi l son & Wi l son, 1977;Wi l son, Hurwi tz, & Wi l son, 1987).
Substantial differences exist between those roots of a generation or more ago and the
contemporary movement. This is the case. in part, because the global virtual culture only
suggested by theorists before the availability of interactive, personal computers in the early
1980s has now become a reality with its associated proliferation of images and designed objects.
The current transformation of art education is more than
just
a broal:nrng of curriculum
content and changes in teaching strategies in response to the immediacy and mass distribution
8 1 5
816 FREEDMANANDsTUHR
of imagery. It incluiles a new level of theorizing about art in education that is tied to emergent
postmodern philosophies based on this growing environment of intercultural, intraculfural, and
transcultural visualizations.
The shift to visual culture not only refers to expanding the range of visual arts foms included
in the curriculum but also to addressing issues ofimagery and artifacts that do not center on form
per se. This includes issues concerning the power of representation, the formation of cultural
identities, functions of creative production, the meanings of visual narratives, critical reflection
on technological pervasiveness, and the importance ofinterdisciplinary connections. The focus
in recent decades on fine arts disciplines in U.S. art curriculum and standardized testing have
resulted in the exclusion of such critical aspects of visual culture in art education. In fact, these
aspects of the visual arts have been given more attention in "nonart"
school subjects such as
anthropology and sociology and feminist, cultural, and media studies (Collins,
1989;Mirzoeff,
1998; Scollon & Scollon, 1995; Sturken & Cartwright, 2001). If the intention of education is
to prepare students for personal fulfillment and to constructively contribute to society, then art
education must deal with newly emerging issues, problems,
and possibilities that go beyond
the constraints of leaming offered by a discipline-based curriculum and standardized forms of
assessment.
The purpose of this chapter is to discuss art education in terms of the broadening realm
of visual culture and to theorize about curiculum change. The development of a conceptual
framework for postmodern visual culture is vital to any contemporary teaching with a goal of
critical reflection. Although scholars in art education and other fields have begun to develop
theoretical underpinnings for understanding visual culture, the topic from an educational per-
spective remains severely undertheorized. As a result, much theoretical work needs to be done
in order to promote appropriate interpretations and applications of visual culture in art educa-
tion. In this chapter, we have drawn on scholarship from inside and outside of the field to lay
a foundation for curriculum theory. In the following main section. we support the argument
for broadening the domain of art education by presenting the visual arts in their contemporary,
sociocultural context. After discussing this context of visual culture, we address shifts in recent
theory and practice of arl education in the second main section.
BROADENI NG THE DOMAI N OF ART EDUCATI ON
A global transformation of culture has occurred that is dependent on visual images and artifacts
ranging from what we wear to what we watch. We live in an increasingly image-saturated world
where television news may control a person's knowledge of current events, where students
spend more time in front of a screen than in front of a teacher, and where newbom babies are
shown videos to activate still-developing neurons. Visual culture is pervasive
and it reflects, as
well as influences, general cultural change. The pervasiveness
of visual cultural forms and the
freedom with which these forms cross various types of traditional borders can be seen in the
use of fine art icons recycled in advertising, computer-generated characters in films, and the
inclusion of rap videos in museum exhibitions. The visual arts are the major part of this larger
visual culture that includes fine art, advertising, folk art, television and other performance
arts, housing and apparel design, mall and amusement park design, and other forms of visual
production and cotnmunication. Anyone who travels, watches rock videos, sits on a chair,
enters a building, or surfs the Web experiences the visual arts. Visual culture is the totality
of
humanly designed images and arlifacts that shape our existence.
The increasing number of visual culture objects and images shapes not only art education
in the 2lst century but also the intergraphicai and intertextual connections between visual
forms
(Freedman,
2000, 2003). The conceptual and physical interactions of various images
and artif'acts, forms of representation, and their meanings are fundamental to the way in which
:;tm
36. CURRICULLTMCHANGEFORTHE2l STCENTURY 817
the
visual arts are interpreted and understood. Art now crosses many old borders of culture
and
form. For example, advertising photography, body fluids, and Star Wars paraphernalia are
all
exhibited in art museums. As a result, knowledge of what has traditionally been considered
f,ne
art objects and "good" taste can no longer be seen as the only visual cultural capital to
serve
elementary, secondary, or higher education students. Fine art is still of great value in
education
and an imporlant part of historical and contemporary visual culture; however, the
broader,
creative, and critical exploration of visual culture, and its local, state, national, and
global meanings is a more appropriate focus if we want students to understand the importance
of visual culture.
In this section of the chapter, we discuss four conditions of the contemporary world that
contextualize
art education and lead to changes in the production and study of visual culture
by students. First, imporlant characteristics of personal and communal identities are discussed
in terms of representations constructed in and through the range of visual culture. Second,
increasing
daily interactions with newer media, particularly visual technologies, are addressed
as a major part of contemporary human experience. Third, the permeable quality of disci-
plinary boundaries and the significance of interdisciplinary knowledge to the complexity of
visual culture are discussed. Fourth, the importance of critical processes of interpretation in un-
derstanding the complexity of visual culture is presented. Although, we have delineated these
conditions into sections for this chapter, the contents ofthese sections actually blur and interact.
Social lssues and Cultural ldentities
At one time, sociologists thought popular forms of visual culture merely reflected social life.
Contemporary images and artifacts. however, are a major part of social life. Visual culture
teaches people (even when we are not conscious of being educated) and, in the process, we
recreate ourselves through our encounters with it. As we learn, we change, constructing and
reconstructing ourselves. Global culture functions through visual culture (television, radio,
newspapers, telephones, faxes, World Wide Web, etc.) to produce hegemonic, virnral realities,
including our social consciousness and identities.
The influence of visual culture on identity occurs on personal and communal levels. Various
aspects of personal identity are made up of many cultural bits. Culture is a collage of many
cultural identities that are selected and translated on a continuing basis
(Clifford, 1988). Far
from being a unified whole, any particular identity is a combination of others, with its resulting
contradictions and incongruities. These identities include age, gender, and/or sexuality, so-
cioeconomic class, exceptionality
(giftedness, differently ab1ed, health), geographic location,
language, ethnicity, race, religion, and political status.
All we can ever understand of a cultural group is based on individual, temporal experience
as lived or expressed. Fragmented knowledge of identity is all that can exist, making it difficult
to understand even our own cultures and social groups. However, the more that is learned about
visual culture, ihe better we can grasp the concept of identity; and the more that is leamed
about the various members of a particular group, the more richly we can understand their visual
culture
(Stuhr, 1999). A recognition of our own sociocultural identities and biases makes it
easier to understand the multifaceted identities of others. It also helps us to understand why and
how students respond to visual culture as they do
(Ballengee-Morris & Stuhr, 2001; Freedman
& Wood. 1999).
Communal identity is constructed by social groups at the international, national, regional,
state or province, county, and local community levels where institutions, laws, and policies
interact and change. These communal levels are continually being cot,itructed and recon-
structed in accordance with sociopolitical positions. Con.munal identity is an important con-
ceptual site where cultural beliefs and values are formed, sanctioned, and/or penalized as it
mediates the uncertainty and conflict of daily life and change.
818 FREEDMANANDSTUHR
Global visual cuhrrre is created through commodification and distributed at an international
level. The merchandise of global visual culture has expanded beyond products to ideology,
spirituality, and aesthetics. This merchandizing can be a useful tool when coopted for positive
educational
purposes, such as for saving endangered species, protecting the environment,
or promoting human rights; however, it can have negative effects as well when it colonizes,
stereotypes, and disenfranchises.
As a result ofthe expanding,
global influence ofvisual culture
in the formation of identity and lived experience, art education has a new global significance.
Through lived experience with the increasing range, availability, and speed of visual forms,
many art educators have come to understand that visual culture is in a continual state of
becoming and should be taught as such.
Visual Technologies
A cntical issue of visual culture is the place of visual forms produced through the use of
computer and other advanced technologies. Computer technology is not only a medium but
also a means that has enabled people to see things previously unimagined and to cross borders
of form from the flne arts to the mass media to scientific visualization. Visual technologies
allow
people to create. copy, project, manipulate, erase, and duplicate images with an ease and
speed that challenges distinctions of talent, technique, and the conceptual location of form. It
could be argued that many of the issues that are seen as critical to postmodern visual culture
have existed historically in other forms; however, the global technological
presence of images
and objects, the ease and speed with which they can be produced and reproduced, and the
power of their pervasiveness demand serious attention in education'
Contemporary
visual technologies have promoted the collapse of boundaries between ed-
ucation and entertainment. Advertisements,
Web sites, and even the news, combine education
and entertainment
to promote the sale if products and/or ideas. Consumers are approached
as audiences through the instantaneous transmission of sound and imagery to even the most
remote areas. Goods and ideas are pitched under the guise of enjoyable and addicting enter-
tainment. This edu-tainment
has fictional
qualities that have become an important part of daily
reality and the sensual
qualities of the imagery are as seductive as they are didactic. It is the
wide distribution of this interaction of seduction, information, and representation that makes
newer visual technologies so powerful.
Although experiences with visual technologies
were once considered an escape into a
fictional, virtual world, students using technology today are understood as engaging
with
complex,
global communities
at multiple cognitive levels. We now experience technology
as reality and appropriate visual culture as life experience, turning it into attitudes, actions,
and even consclousness
(Rushkoff,
1994). While we are being shaped by technological
visual
culture, we shape it through our fashion, toy, music, and other preferences. Corporations
and
advertising agencies videotape students in teen culture focus groups, who act as informants
on the next
"hot"
or
"cool" thing, which are then developed into products. The products are
subsequently advertised and sold inside, as well as outside, of school to their peers though
global visual technologies. The process illustrates one of the parts visual technologies
plays
in the fusion of education and entertainment as well as in the collapse of boundaries between
student culture and corporate interests.
Visual culture forms are merging. Rarely do contemporary artists specialize in painting
on canvas or sculpting in marblel painters do performance art; actors do rock videos;
video
artists recycle film clips; filmmakers use computer
graphics, which are adapted for toys and
T-shirt advertising; and advertisers appropriate
paintings. Today's visual arts have moved
beyond painting and sculpture to include computer
graphics, fashion design, architecture'
environmental design, television, comics and cartoons, magazine advertisements, and so
on'
36. CURzuCULLM CHANGE FOR THE 21ST CENTTIRY 819
Visual culture also overlaps
with arts not usualiy categorized as visual, such as dance and theater.
Performance artists of many types use cornputerized lighting and sound to create atmospheric
and dramatic effects. The performing arts are part of visual culture. Even music has become
more visual through the increased use of rock videos and complex technologically
produced
light shows during concerts. Through the use of technology, such as computer graphics and
audio software, art objects have increasingly become recycled bits of other objects that are
collaged, reconstructed, and reproduced.
In the process of changing the visual arts, advanced technologies have changed what it
means to be educated in the arts. In the context ofpostindustrialized
culture, the visual arts can
no longer be seen as isolated from general culture, the products of a few alienated, individual
artists working in a small fine art community of museums, collectors, and galleries. Museum
or gallery exhibition contact with original fine art objects is now only one of many possible
experiences with the visual arts. Newer technologies have enabled encounters
with the visual
arts to become embedded in all aspects of our daily iives.
Permeabl e
Arenas of Knowl edge
It is becoming more difficuit to distinguish the fine arts from other aspects of visual cul-
ture because the qualitative differences among these forms have become less discrete. Visual
culture is a mode of experience that connects people through many and varied mediators.
The variety and complexity of the experience are dependent on the possibility of a range
of quaLitl,related to form, none of which shouid be inherently excluded from the investiga-
tion, analysis, and critique enabled by aft education. Even concepts and objects previously
considered fairly stable are in flux. Truth has sh,rfted from an epistemological
to an on-
tological issue: That is, it becomes iess about what we know than who we are. Time has
lost its neat linearity, space appears to expand and contract, and boundaries of various sorts
have become blurred. Perhaps most important, postmodern visual culture makes imperative a
connectedness
that undermines knowledge as traditionally taught in school. It involves in-
teractions among
people, cuitures, forms of representation, and professional disciplines. As
suggested earlier, this condition has been
particularly promoted through the use of visual
technologies.
In light of these contemporary
conditions, it seems less important than it once was to focus
determinations
of either worthiness of study or quality of object in education on distinctions of
taste or between
"high"
and
"low" arts. Such distinctions may be important to understanding
some aspects of artistic practice, such as private collecting,
museum exhibition, and the use of
fine art in advertising. These distinctions ofvisual form have long been based on socioeconomic
differences and are therefore contral)' to the democratic
purposes of schooling'
Although such
distinctions might be understandable
as boundaries of professional training in a period of
increasing specialization,
we now live in a time that includes important challenges to extreme
specialization. Such challenges are made by even highly specialized
professionals who realize
that solving the most serious and important
problems of the world demand interdisciplinary
and cross-disciplinary
knowledge.
The realm of the visual arts inherently overlaps with other disciplinary domains. Artists
and other cultural
producers draw on all types ofknowledge and cognitive
processes to create.
Recent research on cognition,
and even predictions by iabor leaders, suggests that learning in
the future will have more to do with developing a range of knowledge that involves disciplinary'
interdisciplinary,
and interpersonal
relationships than with the boundaries of professional dis-
ciplines
(Solso, 1997). Connecting content typically considered
Part
cfother school subjects
irrthe curriculum helps sfudents to understand the importance and
power of the visual culture
and their
place
in the world.
820 FREEDMAN AND STUHR
Processes of Un,:lerstanding Complexity
As a pafi of the process of concept formation in education, the arts have often been dichoto-
mously categorized, inhibiting understanding and reducing the complexity of visual culture.
The process of learning new concepts does involve dichotomous distinctions. For example,
children with pets may begin to learn that a cow is a cow by learning that is not a dog or a cat;
they learn to discern one style of painting by learning its differences from other styles
(Gardner,
1972). However, if attempts to understand visual culture are successful, the dichotomies of
early concept formation are overcome, the complexity of concepts becomes increasingly ap-
parent, categories blur, and hard and fast distinctions become less discrete. At this level of
understanding, oppositions become dualisms
("two sides of the same coin"), multiple perspec-
tives are valued, and oversimplifications
(such
as stereotypes) are replaced by more complex
representations.
Contemporary
visual culture is too complex to be represented in a dichotomous fashion.
The complexities are illustrated by practices such as image recycling, the difficulties of defin-
ing creativity as originality, and the effects of maintaining conceptual oppositions
(including
distinctions such as fine vs. popular arls and male vs. female capabilities). As discussed earlier,
it is not easy to view cultures or their creations as totally separate because they interact on
many levels and through many media. Fine artists borrow imagery from popular culture, men
borrow from women, and artists in one country borrow from those in other countries. These
intersections are revealed and supported in and through visual cultural forms.
An increasing body of contemporary theory and artistic practice represents the seductive
infusion of meaning in aesthetics as the power of visual culture
(e.g., Ewen, 1988; Shusterman,
1989). The integral relationship between deep meaning and surface qualities is one of the
reasons that visual culture is so complex. It is not the surface qualities of form that make
art worth teaching in academic institutions; rather, it is the profound and complex
qualities,
based on their social and cultural contexts and meanings, that are attached to forms. In part'
postmodern visual culture
producers of various types reflect and enable this refocusing
of
aesthetic theory. They often reject formalistic uses of the elements and principles of design
in
favor of symbolic uses that suggest multiple and extended social meanings.
Making meaning from complex visual cultural forms occurs through at least three overlap-
ping methods:
(a) cornmunication,
(b) suggestiort, and
(c)
appropriation
(Freedman, 2003)'
Communication involves a fairly direct line of thought between the maker and the viewer'
The maker has a message that she or he intends for viewers to understand, and the message
is
conveyed in as direct a manner as possible to an intended and understood audience. Suggestion
involves a process by which association is stirnulated in viewers by a maker
(whether intended
or not), resulting in the extension of meaning beyond the work. Appropriation involves
the
creative interpretation by a viewer who encounters a visual culture form in which the maker
has intentionally diffused meaning. In a sense, viewers cornplete any work of art by drawing
on their prior knowledge and experiences as they construct meaning. However, contemporary
visual culture is often complex because postmodem artists deliberately confound the construc-
tion of meaning. These conditions illustrate the importance of teaching visual culture
as
a
process of creative and critical inquiry.
NEW APPROACHES TO ART EDUCATION:
VI SUAL CULTURE I NQUI RY
In part, visual culture inquiry challenges traditional forms of art education because it is sen-
sitive to the social and cultural issues discussed in the previous section. The foundation
of
art education conceptualized as visual culture inquiry is a matter of teaching for life in
and
36. CURRICULUMCHANGEFORTHE2ISTCENTURY 821
through the visual arIs. It helps students to recognize and understand the ambiguities, con-
Tlicts, nuances, and ephemeral quaiities of social experience, much of which is now configured
through
imagery and designed objects.
In part, freedom in contemporary democracies is reflected through the ways in which visual
realities are constructed, cutting across traditional artistic and social boundaries. Students and
teachers are becoming aware of the power of visual culture in the formation of attitudes,
beliefs. and actions. ln dynamic ways, visual culture shapes the ways we look at ourselves
and perceive others, often portraying individuals and groups in ways contradictory to the
democratic
purposes of schooling. At the same time, education is one of the last public forums
for a potentially free critique of the products of mass distnbuted visual technologies that make
up the media and visual culture and for thoughtful student reflection on their own production
and uses of visual culture. The critical necessity of teaching visual culture in this context is
seen in the lack of serious debate even in the "free"
media as it becomes increasingly focused
on entertainment
(e.g.,
Aronowitz, 1994; Morley,1992).
Perhaps the people most influenced by visual culture are children and adolescents. Students
incorporate the social codes, language, and values ofvisual culture into their lives (Freedman &
Wood, 1999; Tavin, 2001). Visual culture influences students' knowledge, affects their identity
construction, and shapes their aesthetic sensibilities.
In the following sections, we flrst argue the importance of moving from a school foundation
of modernist aesthetic policy based on industrial training to a more meaningful and relevant
art education. Second, we discuss problems of atomizing visual culture in curriculum. Third,
we focus on teaching as a process of helping individuals and learning communities to make
meaning through the fusion of creative and critical inquiry.
Reconceptualizing Modernist Aesthetic Policy: Art Education
Responds to Industrial Training
An uns.tated aesthetic policy has developed through the educational application of an aesthetic
canon that underlies all of what we do. As policy, the canon has calcified and reproduced itself,
through century-long practices of schooling. Like any educational policy, this aesthetic policy
implies a social contract that is revealed through the modernist, industrial cuniculum and stan-
dardized tests taken by students and teachers. It is a historical artifact that was important in its
time for the development of the visual arts in the United States and, in public school art educa-
tion, has been based on industrial design at least since Walter Smith's work in the 1870s. Times
have changed, however, and the contract is being renegotiated. The new perspective ofart edu-
cation responds to contemporary change in what students need to know in and through the arts.
The industrial training model of education carries with it regimented, mechanistic training
and the reproduction of traditional forms of knowledge through group conformity. As a result,
students working within this model often make arl that looks very much alike. These assembly-
line-looking products, such as color wheels, are produced by rote and repeated in multiple grade
levels. The emphasis on this model has enabled the development of the school art style
(Efland,
1916, 1983) and has cramped teacher and student freedom in the exploration of conceptual
complexity in both making and viewing. Of course, some technical exercises are important to
art education, but to emphasize this model of instruction confounds the importance of art.
Like other school subjects, art education adopted industrial training as its basic approach
in the late 19th century. Today, the business community has changed from a focus on modem,
industrial production techniques to postmodern market information and services, in which
home loans and vacations can be bought on the Web, children learn about outer ri)ace through
role-play computer games, and people access maps through satellite connections in their cars.
As discussed earlier, the history of art education is replete with examples of the inclusion
822 F'REEDMAN AND STUHR
of popular culture lrnages and objects. The current movement leaves behind the technical
emphasis of industrial training that alienates producers from the larger meanings associated
with their production. Instead it gives attention to the multiple connections between form and
meanl ng.
The industrial model in art education is based on analytical aesthetics. This aesthetic per-
spective has been treated in curriculum as ifit is objective: That is, analytical aesthetics is not
generally taught as if it were a socially constructed and culturally located philosophical stance.
In curiculum, the analytic emphasis is formalism. Formalism is a pseudoscientific conception
of aesthetics that developed in the late 19th and early 20th century at a time when science was
gaining currency in application to all areas of social life. Other conceptions of aesthetics exist
but have largely been ignored as philosophical analysis in art education.
Even when the focus of instruction is not formal per se (that is, when formal qualities
are understood as supports for ideas) the educational presentation of formal qualities is not
always responsive to social and cultural issues. Consider the example of frontal views of
authority figures, which is often included as part of the aesthetic canon students must learn.
Not only is this concept relatively trivial in the big picture of the small amount of time we
have to teach students, but also it is Eurocentric. In certain Afncan cultures, authority has been
represented traditionally in female relief form in which its femaleness (protruding
breasts and
buttocks) is intended to be viewed from the side. Another instance where the Western canon
of pictorial frontal views of authority does not hold up is in the context of traditional Plains
Native American shields and teepees where authority f,gures are represented as part of symbolic
narratives. Their authority might be recognized by headgear, size, and so on. Even in European
art, the authority of male figures has been symbolically shown by uniforms, weapons, and even
by connection to a spouse as in a pair of profile portraits. These examples illustrate that the
focus of curriculum must change if students are to develop an understanding of the complexity
of thought concerning visual imagery and artifacts.
The traditional focus on historical, flne art exemplars has tended to suggest a single line of
Western stylistic development. Formal and technical qualities have been represented in cur-
riculum as the most important connection between art objects. Even the educational emphasis
of content, such as the figure, landscape, or still life, has often become formal and technical
when teachers assign students to
"make
a Van Gogh sunflower painting" with paper plates and
dry markers. In the past, the rich conceptual connections among images, objects, and other
forms of culture, which are often their reasons for being, have been missed or hidden in such
endeavors. The complex, interdisciplinary reasons we value such artists' ideas are neglected.
Under these conditions, visual culture objects are transformed through education, often losing
important attached cultural meanings.
Curri cul um as Process: Chal l engi ng At omi st i c Cont ent
and Assessment
Recently, general curriculum theorists have been struggling with the project of reconceptual-
izing curiculum from postmodern perspectives (Giroux,
1992; Pinar, 1988; Pinar, Reynolds,
Slattery, & Taubman, 1996). This project is a response to the many social and cultural changes
that are now influencing students' lives. The project of developing appropriate educational
responses to such change is increasingly important as societies and cultures leave the secure
thinking of modernistic forms of education, where knowledge and inquiry methods are rep-
resented as stable and curriculum is intended to be reproductive. For example, postmodem
curiculum theorists point out that curriculum is not a neutral enterprise; it is a matter of se-
lection. As a result, curriculum contains and reflects the interests of individuals and social
36. CURRICULUX4CHANGEFORTTIE2l STCENTURY 823
groups. Patrick Slattery
(1995)
has argued that curriculum expresses autobiography because
it is created by human beings who leave parts of themseh'es in their teaching and writing.
He has suggested that curriculum should focus on issues of the self, because that is where
learning takes place, and he argues that educators can use the concept of autobiography to
better understand educational conditions. A postmodern understanding of the personal and
social processes of curriculum planning and enactment exemplifies the aesthetic character of
education and the importance of considering individual learning in relation to social contexts.
The modernist problem of curriculum may be thought of as havin-q allowed a veil to fall
over such social issues, hidrng or obscuring them. Thrs veil has covered the complexity and
connections of artistic relationships as modernist curriculuur has sought to continually break
down knowledge into minute bits of infomation. As the curriculum has become more focused
on small objectives and traditional, fine art exemplars are used over and over again, art has been
transformed from visual expressions of multiple and complex ideas to oversimplified uses of
formal and technical qualities.
The postmodern problem of curriculum is to lift the veil and thus make art education more
meaningful than mere sensory experience. This could be accomplished by challenging students
with inquiry based on creative production and critical reflection involving deep interrogations
of images, artifacts, and ideas that approach the compiexity of visual culture as experienced.
This often requires some school subject integration.
The major issue of curriculum integration now can no longer be whether to integrate, but
rather what, when, and how to teach students most eft-ectively through the construction of
integrated knowledge. Schools are adopting integrated approaches to curriculum in an effort
to teach students the conceptual connections they need to succeed in contemporary life. Art
education should help students know the visual arts in their integrity and complexity, their
conflicting ideas as well as their accepted objects, and their connections to social thought as
well as their connections to other professional practices.
As discussed earlier. confining the visual arts to narrow learning objectives and assessment
strategies based on traditional notions of excellence in fine art disciplines is highly problematic.
The old constructs of knowledge about the visual arts have included at least one other set of
boundaries that has resulted in difficulties for an art education. lt involves the question: Where
do the boundaries of art stop and other schooi subjects begin? Reproducing nalrow constructs
of knowledge should not be the purpose of contemporary art education. Not only is finding
a perimeter for the open concept of art difficult. but also it may be an ineffective way to
approach curriculum. From a contemporary educational standpoint, our goal is to make as
many connections as possibie because connections produce integrated learning.
In order to reconceptualize curriculum in this way, it is necessary to understand curriculum
as a process rather than as a single text. The process of curriculum is its product. Curriculum
is not a unified whole. It is a collage of bits of information based on knowledge
(Freedman,
2000, 2003). It is flexible, at sorne times sequential and at other times highly interactive, making
connections not only to the previous lesson but also to life experiences.
An integral relationship exists between assessment and curriculum. Both must be of quaiity
in order to have a successful program. An authentic perspective of assessment and curriculum
is to develop both through community discourse. Criteria for assessment must be developed
through community debate, but not allowed to be trivialized through excessive fragmentation
and overassessment
(Boughton, 1991, 1997').
Art education is no different in the dissolution of its boundaries from other areas and
disciplines. Postmodernism and advances in computer and media technologies have enabled
boundary erosion that has prompted new ways of conceptualizimg subject areas and what
constitutes important drsciplinary knowledge. As a result, new methods for investigation and
824 FREEDMANANDsTUHR
data collection elr- continually being invented and developed. The arts figure prominently
in
these new methodological configurations
(Barone
& Eisner, 1997; Gaines & Renow,
1999:
Prosser, 1998; Rose, 2001).
Artistic Production: Making Meaning Through Creative
and Cri t i cal I nqui ry
In the past, the focus on formal and technical attributes of production has limited our conception
of curriculum and has been constrained by at least four interconnecting, historical foundations.
First, there has been a focus on realistic representation as a major criterion for quality
in
student art. Teachers often cite parent and administrative pressure for this focus. A focus
on realism, without conceptual foundation, addresses only one form of artistic production
and
ignores the importance of abstract and symbolic representations of ideas that are vital to human
experience. Creative and critical problem investigation and production based on various forms
of abstraction, fantasy, science-fiction, and so on can only be promoted through open-ended,
independent inquiry leading to connective forms of representation.
Second, in conflict with the focus on realism, but coexisting with it is an emphasis on ex-
pressionistic characteristics and maintaining childlike qualities in student art. This has resulted
in products that have formal and technical qualities that look somewhat like young children's
art regardless of the conceptual sophistication of the student. The painterly quality of child
art is valued as evidence ofindividual self-expression (in part, based on fine art styles such as
abstract expressionism) and is a foundation of the aesthetic of late modernism. However, these
expressionistic qualities are not necessarily evidence of individuality because they have been
socially constructed and have become a criterion for group assessment.
Third, as discussed earlier, the industrial training model has led to a focus on formal and
technical qualities, but these are also easy to teach and assess. Curriculum content is often
selected and configured to be efficiently handled in the instirutionalized settings of class-
rooms. With the emphasis on standardized curriculum and testing, the reliance on simplistic,
easily observed products or results and procedures is convenient. Although these practices
often trivialize art and are generally irrelevant to students' lives, they are considered efficient
and effective by administrative and governing bodies, and teachers have been encouraged
to
perpetuate these practices.
Fourth, art teachers are forced to compete for funds and advocate for programs through
art
exhibitions for parents and administrators who are not well educated in the arts. As a result,
teachers are often placed in a position of defending their place in the school community
based
on the success of exhibitions, which depend on a student art aesthetic that demonstrates
a
high degree of formal and technical skrll, but is not intellectually demanding. Rather
than
acknowledging that art involves a range of life issues, abilities, and concepts, art teachers
have
been pressured to think that their worth is based on students' technical production skills
and
knowledge of a few art historical facts.
The new concepti on of curri cul um and student arti sti c i nqui ry opens up the possi bi l i ty
of
moving away from these problems. A curriculum based on visual culture takes into consid-
eration students' daily, postmodern experiences and their future lives. Most students will not
be professional artists, but all students need to become responsible citizens of the world.
In
a democracy, an aim of education is to promote the development of responsible citizens
who
think cntically, act constructively in an informed manner. and collaborate in the conscious
formation of personal and communal identities. ln order for art curriculum to fulfill this
aim
in the contemporary context, students' studio experience must be thought of as part of
visual
culture and as a vital way to come to understand the visual mrlieu in which thev live. Student
36, CURRICULUM CHANGE FOR THE 21ST CENTURY 825
studio experience is essential to teaching and learning about visual culture because it (a) is
a process
of creative/critical inquiry, (b)
helps students understand the complexities of visual
culture, and (c)
connects and empowers people.
Artistic Production ls a Process of Creative/Critical inquiry
Creative production
and critical reflection are not separate in art; they are dualistic and mutu-
ally dependent. Creative production is inherently critical, and critical reflection is inherently
creative. When we look at an image or artifact, we create it in the sense that we give it meaning.
It is important to conceptualize these processes as being interconnected if art educators are
going to teach in ways appropriate to understanding visual culture.
Many different types of studios (i.e.,
commercial arts, fine arts, computer graphics, video and
film production)
and studio practices
exist. Studio practices include concepfualizing, viewing,
analyzing,
judging,
designing, constructing, and marketing visual forms. An important parr of
studio practice is participation
in the discourses of various communities (professional,
student,
ethnic, gender,
environmental, etc.) to develop contexts through which connections can be
made between production and social life. As discussed earlier, a critical aspect of teaching
visual culture is making connections and crossing borders. This is accomplished through
conceptually grounded processes
of creative/critical inquiry that promote synthesis, extend
knowledge, and enrich relationships. These are the powers of the arts and vital aspects of studio
production.
Conceptually grounded production processes cross over traditional boundaries of
form, breaking down old borders of media-driven curriculum, and turning curriculum upside-
down, so that the development ofideas are given attention first and the techniques and processes
emerge as the expression of those ideas. In this way, technique and media are related to and
enhance the making of meaning in creative/critical inquiry. Visual culture is an expression of
ideas through the use of technical and formal processes, but these processes are not the main
purpose of artistic production.
Creative/critical inquiry is not only for secondary level students; in fact, it should begin
at the elementary level. Young students are already adopting postmodern visual culture as
a framework for understanding reality outside of school. For instance, elementary students
analyze, role-play, draw, and construct environments based on the Harry Potter books, films,
and toys from interdisciplinary perspectives of casting, acting, designing, costume styling,
narration, and mechanization.
Making VisualCulture
Can Help Students Grasp
Complexities of Cultu re
Traditionally, aft has been represented in education as inherently good.
The term arr has carried
with it assumptions of quality, value, and enrichment. However, the visual arts are not inherentl-v
good. The great power of the visual arts is their ability to have a variety of effects on our lives;
but that power can make them manipulative, colonizing, and disenfranchising. The complexity
of this power needs to be considered as part of educational experience. For example, advertising
images are produced by artists and are thought of as good for the companies whose products
they are intended to sell, but, they often represent stereotypes and cultural biases that damage
viewers' self-concepts. Another example is the astronomical amount of money paid to sports
stars and forhistorical fine art, which seems inconsistent with the ideals of moral responsibility.
As a result of such complexities, investigations of issues of emporve:-:nent, representation, and
social consciousness are becoming more important in art education.
826 FREEDMAN AND STUHR
Cultural Productioi; Connects and Empowers People
Visual culture connects makers to viewers through communication, identity formation, and
cultural mediation. Addressing aspects of visual communication, identity formation, and cul-
tural mediation has become a vital issue in art education
(e.g., Ballengee-Morris,
& Striedieck,
1997; Freedman, 1994; Stuhr, 1995). Studio production can aid students to understand that
visual culture involves
personal and communal codes of symbols, images, environments, arti-
facts, and so on. Investigating the relationship between makers and viewers of visual culture
can help them to identify and recognize ethnocentric
perspectives at the national, regional,
state, and local levels. This process is important because it creates possibilities for the critique
of visual culture at all levels to achieve democratic educational
goals intended to guide the
preparation of reflective and responsible citizens, consequently leading to a more socially con-
scious and equitable society. From a visual culture perspective, production empowers makers
and viewers by promoting critique through the process of making, encouraging analysis dur-
ing viewing, and enabling makers and viewers to claim ownership of images and designed
objects.
CONCLUSI ON
Art education based on teaching visual culture requires new curriculum and instructional roles,
content, and strategies to shift the focus of the field fiom nanow, conventional approaches
to
open processes ofcreative and critical inquiry. A new language is necessary for art education
that does not solely depend on fine arts discourse. Ideally, it should involve discourses on all the
visual arts, such as media studies, design education, cultural critique, and visual anthropology.
Art teachers should be educated to become involved citizens in the various communities
in
which they live and work. They should strive to enrich the communities
to create
pride in
cultural heritage and address contemporary
problems through artistic solutions. Art should
be
approached as an equally legitimate school subject and conceptually
integrated with the rest of
the school curriculum. All educators should teach the concepts and skills necessary to function
effectively in a democratic society now and in the future.
New instructional strategies include teachers becoming role models of leadership
in their
professional community. To conceptualize art education as different from other school subjects
inadvertently disengages it from the legitimate school curriculum. In the larger sense,
art
teachers focus on what other teachers consider important: the concepts and skills necessary
to function effectively in a democratic society now and in the future. But, art teachers
do this
through visual culture, which is as profound in its effect as written texts.
Teacher education programs need to prepare teachers to act as facilitators of student
creative
and critical inquiry. As part of teaching visual culture, we must shifi from a focus on didactic
instruction to an educaiion that promotes student responsibility. When students are allowed
to investigate the range of visual culture with the guidance of a teacher, they can acdvely
discover complex meanings, multiple connections,
and enriched
possibilities for creation
and
critique. Art classrooms should be conceptualized
as multitasking arenas where images
and
objects cross over and are
produced and discussed to lead students and teachers through
the
investigation of ideas, issues, opinions, and conflicts.
Through technological advancements.
visual culture is becoming increasingly
pervasive
and
affecting the lives of students and teachers worldwide. The professional field must
respond
to the challenge of this significant social change by educating new art teachers and retrarntng
current art teachers to use technology to create students who are aware ofthe world
they
live
in and to take an active responsible role in improving life for all.
36, CURRI CULUMCHANGEFORTHE2I STCENTURY 827
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors wish to thank Ron Neperud for his careful reading and thoughtful comments on
this chaoter.
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