elliot w.

eisner, connoisseurship,
criticism and the art of education
Elliot W. Eisner has deepened our
appreciation of education in a
number of areas. Here we examine
his argument that education involves
the exercise of artistry and the
development of connoisseurship and
criticism. We also assess his
contribution to the debates around
school reform.

contents: introduction | elliot w. eisner | art |

artistry | elliot w. eisner on connnoisseurship
and criticism | knowledge | elliot w. eisner's
contribution to school reform | conclusion |
further reading and bibliography | links | how
to cite this article
see, also, on these pages: elliot w. eisner: what can
education learn from the arts about the
practice of education?

Elliot W. Eisner (1933-) has made a significant

contribution to our appreciation of the educational process. He is particularly
known for his work in arts education, curriculum studies, and educational
evaluation. However, much of what he has to say has a resonance for a far
wider readership. Among his most noted works are The Educational
Imagination (1979, 1985, 1994) - an exploration of the design and evaluation
of curriculum programmes); The Art of Educational Evaluation (1985) - a
collection of essays covering key aspects of his earlier work; Cognition and
Curriculum (1994) - an examination of the mind and representation); and The
Enlightened Eye (1991, 1998) - the extension of his thinking to qualitative
research into education). He also made an important contribution to the school
reform debate in North America especially through his book, The Kind of
Schools We Need (1998). His examination of process and the artistry of
education is of particular importance for the sphere of informal education (see
Jeffs and Smith 2005). His work shares a number of important themes with
John Dewey (on experience, creativity, education and art), Donald Schön
(on reflective practice) and Howard Gardner (around multiple
intelligences).

Elliot Eisner has received various awards including the Palmer O. Johnson
Memorial Award (from the American Educational Research Association), a
John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship and five honorary
degrees. Eisner has also served as president of the National Art Education
Association, the International Society for Education through Art, the American
Research Association, and the John Dewey Society.

Elliot W. Eisner - career

Born in 1933 Elliot Eisner grew up in the west side of Chicago.

He looked set for some sort of career in art. From early in his
schooling he displayed considerable talent and this was
encouraged by his mother - who hoped he might be a
commercial artist (Uhrmacher 2001: 247). He studied at
Roosevelt University, Chicago (gaining a BA in Art & Education
in 1954). P Bruce Uhrmacher reports that while in college Elliot
Eisner worked with African American boys in the American
Boys Commonwealth in the neighbourhood where he grew
up). His focus moved from art as such to art education. He
completed an MS (Art Education) at Illinois Institute of
Technology in 1955; an MA (Education) at the University of
Chicago in 1958; and a PhD in Education at the University of
Chicago in 1962.

Eisner worked as a high school art teacher in Chicago (1956-

1958); an art teacher at the University of Chicago (1958-1960);
an instructor in art education at Ohio State University (1960-
1961); and an instructor in education, University of Chicago
(1961-1962). He became an assistant professor of education at
the University of Chicago in 1962. In 1965 he joined the faculty
at Stanford - first as an associate professor of education and
art (1965-1970); and then from 1970 on as a professor of
education and art.

Art

From an early point in his career Elliot Eisner was worried that
most schools, by failing to properly appreciate the significance
of art, were offering an unnecessarily narrow and seriously
unbalanced approach to education. Moreover, he began to
recognize that many of the then current conceptions of
cognition - because they lacked proper attention to artistic
modes of thinking - were inadequate (Uhrmacher 2001: 247).
Later, Howard Gardner, was to make a similar point within
his argument for attention to 'multiple intelligences'. Elliot
W. Eisner made the case for developing a proper attention to
the cognitive in art rather than it being only driven by
emotional and what were termed 'creative' forces. Uhrmacher
(2001: 248) comments that Eisner 'stressed that environment
shapes artistic attitudes and that art education has unique
contributions to make to growing children'. Eisner was also to
argue strongly for a concern for the critical and aesthetic in art
education (see below) - and for a better exploration of
historical context. He was later to argue that approaches which
simply gave children arts materials in the hope that their
creativity might flow resulted in programmes 'with little or no
structure, limited artistic content, , and few meaningful aims'
(Eisner 1988). Uhrmacher judges that 'in large measure due to
Eisner's advocacy, art education has become a content-
oriented discipline.

Part of the reason for Elliot W. Eisner's influence has been his
involvement in key projects and initiatives. These include the
Kettering Project (begun in 1967) providing curriculum
materials for new and untrained elementary teachers (and
based around his theories) and the Getty Center for Education
in the Arts (he served on the advisory board from 1982 on).
The Getty Center is well known for its advocacy of what has
become known as 'discipline-based art education' (DBAE) (see
Alexander and Day 1992). DBAE also had it roots in Harry
Broudy's advocacy of aesthetic education during the 1950s. It
emphasizes four main content areas (disciplines): art
production, art history, art criticism and aesthetic enquiry.

A further element in Elliot Eisner's influence has been his

obvious enthusiasm for the artistic activity of others. Both he
and his wife Ellie are known for their support of the arts.

Artistry (proses seni)

A further, important, strand to Elliot W. Eisner's work has been

his interest in educational work as artistry. Viewing education
work as an expression of artistry allows us to look beyond the
technical and to develop more creative and appropriate
responses to the situations that educators and learners
encounter. In this activity Eisner shares much with Donald
Schön and his advocacy of alternative approaches to viewing
the way that professionals 'think in action' (1988). When we
listen to other educators, for example in team meetings, or
have the chance to observe them in action, we inevitably form
judgments about their ability. At one level, for example, we
might be impressed by someone's knowledge of the benefit
system or of the effects of different drugs. However, such
knowledge is useless if it cannot be used in the best way. We
may be informed and be able to draw on a range of
techniques, yet the thing that makes educators special is the
way in which they are able to combine these and improvise
regarding the particular situation. In so doing they also draw
on an idea of what might be good or make for flourishing (see
Jeffs and Smith 1990). It is this quality that can be described as
artistry. It involves a shift from a focus on technique to one
more focused around praxis (see the discussion of
curriculum).

Artistry, therefore, can serve as a regulative ideal for

education, a vision that adumbrates what really matters in
schools. To conceive of students as artists who do their art in
science, in the arts, or the humanities, is, after all, both a
daunting and a profound aspiration. It may be that by shifting
the paradigm of education reform and teaching from one
modeled after the clocklike character of the assembly line into
one that is closer to the studio or innovative science laboratory
might provide us with a vision that better suits the capacities
and the futures of the students we teach. It is in this sense, I
believe, that the field of education has much to learn from the
arts about the practice of education. It is time to embrace a
new model for improving our schools. (Eisner 2004)

Eisner's belief that education had much to learn from the arts naturally led to
the his exploration of the significance of aesthetic judgement and critique - and
his attention to these (particularly in The Art of Educational Evaluation and
later in The Enlightened Eye) has found an appreciative audience among who
find the formulaic and technical orientation of current, dominant approaches to
curriculum activity and education work wanting.

Elliot W. Eisner on connoisseurship and criticism

(penghayatan seni dan kritikan seni)

One of the great benefits of Elliot W. Eisner's activities has been the way in
which he has both made the case for a concern with connoisseurship and
criticism, and mediated these concerns for educators and researchers. The
importance of of his advocacy of these ideas cannot be underestimated -
especially at a time when rather narrow concerns with instrumental outcomes
and an orientation to the technical dominate. Together they offer educators a
more helpful and appropriate means to approach evaluation, for example.

Elliot W. Eisner describes connoisseurship as follows:

Connoisseurship is the art of appreciation. It can be displayed

in any realm in which the character, import, or value of objects,
situations, and performances id distributed and variable,
including educational practice. (Eisner 1998: 63)

The word connoisseurship comes from the Latin cognoscere, to know (Eisner
1998: 6). It involves the ability to see, not merely to look. To do this we have to
develop the ability to name and appreciate the different dimensions of
situations and experiences, and the way they relate one to another. We have to
be able to draw upon, and make use of, a wide array of information. We also
have to be able to place our experiences and understandings in a wider context,
and connect them with our values and commitments. Connoisseurship is
something that needs to be worked at – but it is not a technical exercise. The
bringing together of the different elements into a whole involves artistry.

However, educators need to become something more than connoisseurs. They

need to become critics.

If connoisseurship is the art of appreciation, criticism is the art

of disclosure. Criticism, as Dewey pointed out in Art as
Experience, has at is end the re-education of perception... The
task of the critic is to help us to see.

Thus… connoisseurship provides criticism with its subject

matter. Connoisseurship is private, but criticism is public.
Connoisseurs simply need to appreciate what they encounter.
Critics, however, must render these qualities vivid by the artful
use of critical disclosure. (Eisner 1985: 92-93)

Criticism can be approached as the process of enabling others to see the

qualities of something. As Eisner (1998: 6) puts it, ‘effective criticism
functions as the midwife to perception. It helps it come into being, then later
refines it and helps it to become more acute’. The significance of this for those
who want to be educators is, thus, clear. Educators also need to develop the
ability to work with others so that they may discover the truth in situations,
experiences and phenomenon.

Knowledge

Elliot W. Eisner's work around cognition - Cognition and Curriculum (first

published in 1982) revisited and developed in 1994) - has become a significant
reference point in debates around teaching and curriculum making in the
United States (and to some extent in the UK as well). Perhaps best described as
a 'cognitive pluralist' Eisner argues that cognition frequently approached as a
phenomenon that deals with knowing rather than feeling. For Elliot Eisner,
knowledge cannot be just a verbal construct (and constrained by the structures
of language). Rather, as Lloyd-Zannini (1998) has put it (after Eisner)
'knowledge is an intensely variable and personal "event", something acquired
via a combination of one's senses - visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, gustatory
- assembled according to a personal schema, and then made public - expressed,
typically, by the same sensory modalities utilized in the initial acquisition'.

The key to developing knowledge within schooling and other educational

settings (such as the family) is to create a varied and stimulating environment
in which people become 'immersed'. Educators also need to encourage people
to try make meaning; to 'read' (or conceptualize) the situation. This they do by
constructing images 'derived from the material the senses provide' and refining
'the senses [as] a primary means for expanding...[one's own] consciousness'
(Eisner 1994 28-9). People need access to the experience of different forms of
representation or symbol systems. Trying to make sense of these, being
encouraged to draw upon them and play with them, nurtures the imagination
and allows people to be more creative in their responses to the situations in
which they find themselves. 'When we define the curriculum, we are also
defining the opportunities the young will have to experience different forms of
consciousness' (Eisner 1994: 44). Eisner, like John Dewey, is clear that our
ability to know is based in our ability to construct meaning from experiences.

School reform - Elliot W. Eisner's contribution

Uhrmacher (2001: 250) has helpfully adumbrated Elliot W. Eisner's

contribution to school reform around three major poles:

• Advocating moving beyond technocratic and behaviouristic modes of

thinking - and for having a concern for 'expressive outcomes'.
• Calling to attend to fundamentals. Eisner has consistently warned
against educational fads and fashion. He has criticized dominant
paradigms and invited educators and others to ask questions such as
 'what is basic in education?'.
• Arguing that schools should help children create meaning from
experience, and that this requires an education devoted to the senses, to
meaning-making and the imagination. Eisner argues for a curriculum
that fosters multiple 'literacies' in students (especially by looking to
non-verbal modes of learning and expression) and a deepening of the
'artistry' of teachers.

Elliot W. Eisner (1998, 2004) has argued strongly for a shift in the emphasis
and direction of schooling. He has commented that educators know
experientially that context matters, 'indeed, context matters most in the
"chemistry" that makes for educational effectiveness'.

Even to talk about effectiveness as though it were independent of the kind of

intellectual values that schools ought to support, seems ill conceived.
Thoughtful educators are not simply interested in achieving known effects; they
are interested as much in surprise, in discovery, in the imaginative side of life
and its development as in hitting predefined targets achieved through routine
procedures. In some sense our aim ought to be to convert the school from an
academic institution into an intellectual one. That shift in the culture of
schooling would represent a profound shift in emphasis and in direction.
(Eisner 2004)

Over the time that Eisner has been writing there have been significant shifts in
the context in which schools have to operate. While there have been other
voices calling for changes in the culture of schooling (notably Howard Gardner
in this arena), the impact of globalization, growing centralization in many
schooling systems, reaction against more process-oriented forms of pedagogy,
and a growing instrumentalism education have served to make Eisner's
message both more pertinent to schools, and more difficult to respond to.

Elliot W. Eisner - an assessment

Here I want to begin by briefly turning to three areas of criticism that relate to
some issues arising when bringing Eisner's thinking into the realm of
educational practice.

First, there are some questions around the way in which Elliot
Eisner's work around cognition (and art) has tended to be
translated into a discipline-based, rather than a more child-
centred and relational approached (as is arguably the case
with Howard Gardner). In part, the appeal to discipline is
linked to Eisner's concern with both connoisseurship and
criticism. The later does lend itself to a location within
particular tradition before critique and movement can be
properly attempted - and this may have something to do with
the adoption of the notion of 'discipline' as an organizing idea.
This does not preclude, however, the adoption of 'project' ways
of working as Elliot Eisner has demonstrated in Cognition and
Curriculum Reconsidered.

Second, Elliot W. Eisner is asking educators to develop in

particularly sophisticated ways. To be connoisseurs and critics
- as Parker C. Palmer (1998) has shown - they have to engage
in a continuing exploration of themselves, others and their
arena of practice. They have to be able to reflect-in- and -on-
action, engage with feelings, and be able to make informed
and committed judgements. Some would argue that many
educators currently in practice are simply not up to this.
Indeed, this was a case that Lawrence Stenhouse made with
some force with regard to the difficulties that classroom
teachers had with more process-oriented approaches to
curriculum during the 1970s (see the article on curriculum
theory and practice on these pages). However, it could be
the issue here is less about the inherent ability of people to
develop as connoisseurs and critics, and rather more about the
quality of environments that organized educational systems
afford both around the development of their staff and the
resources and discretion they have in the classroom or
learning environment.

Third, there will, inevitably, be criticism of Eisner's approach

from those who have come to either view education as
commodity or as something that should be approached as a
product. Unfortunately, it is they who dominate the agendas of
many educational systems today (see, for example, the article
on globalization and education on these pages). Those who
want to reduce education to training; constrain exploration by
specifying preset outcomes; and focus on what can be
accredited rather than experienced and learnt, will have
profound difficulties in approaching Elliot W. Eisner's work in
any meaningful way. For to work in this way entails entering
into what Erich Fromm (1976) called 'being' rather than a
'having' orientation to the world. It involves approaching
education in a completely different frame of mind - and as
Donald Schön and others have shown this is an exercise
fraught with difficulty.

P. Bruce Uhrmacher has commented that Eisner has striven not

merely to infuse education with art, 'but to make art central to
the mission of schools' (2001: 250). He quotes from The Kind
of Schools We Need:

The arts inform as well as stimulate, they challenge as well as

satisfy. Their location is not limited to galleries, concert halls
and theatres. Their home can be found wherever humans
chose to have attentive and vita intercourse with life itself. This
is, perhaps, the largest lesson that the arts in education can
teach, the lesson that life itself can be led as a work of art. In
so doing the maker himself or herself is remade. The remaking,
this re-creation is at the heart of the process of education.
(Eisner 1998: 56)

Elliot W. Eisner's contribution has been both to highlight, again,

the importance of art and artistry in education (and research) -
and to bring some significant insights into the process of
remaking and re-creation that is education.

Further reading and bibliography

Alexander, Kay and Day, Michael (eds.) (1992) Discipline-based

Art Education. A curriculum sampler, New York: Oxford
University Press.

Eisner, Elliot W., and David W. Ecker (1966) Readings in art

education, Waltham, Mass.,: Blaisdell Pub. Co.

Eisner, Elliot W. (1971) Confronting curriculum reform, Boston,:

Little Brown.

Eisner, Elliot W. (1972) Educating artistic vision, New York,:

Macmillan.

Eisner, Elliot W. and Vallance, Elizabeth (1974) Conflicting

conceptions of curriculum, Berkeley, Calif.,: McCutchan Pub.
Corp.

Eisner, Elliot W. (1979, 1985, 1994) The educational

imagination: on the design and evaluation of school programs.
New York: Macmillan.

Eisner, Elliot W. (1982) Cognition and curriculum : a basis for

deciding what to teach, New York: Longman.
Eisner, Elliot W. (1985) The art of educational evaluation: a
personal view. London: : Falmer Press.

Eisner, Elliot W. (1988) The role of Discipline-Based Art

Education in American Schools, Los Angeles: Paul Getty Trust.

Eisner, Elliot W., and Peshkin, Alan (1990)Qualitative inquiry in

education : the continuing debate, New York: Teachers College
Press.

Eisner, Elliot W. (1991) The enlightened eye : qualitative

inquiry and the enhancement of educational practice. New
York: Macmillan.

Eisner, Elliot W. (1994) Cognition and curriculum reconsidered,

2e, New York: Teachers College Press.

Eisner, Elliot W. (1998) The enlightened eye : qualitative

inquiry and the enhancement of educational practice. Upper
Saddle River, N.J.: Merrill, 1998.

Eisner, Elliot W. (1998) The kind of schools we need : personal

essays, Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Eisner, Elliot W. (2004) 'Artistry in teaching', Cultural

Commons, http://www.culturalcommons.org/eisner.htm.
Accessed: February 11, 2005.

Fromm, Erich (1976) To Have or to Be, 1979 edn. London:

Abacus.

Jeffs, Tony and Smith, Mark K. (2005) Informal Education.

Conversation, learning and democracy 3e., Derby: Educational
Heretics Press.

Lloyd-Zannini, L. P. (1998) 'A review of Elliot Eisner's Cognition

and curriculum reconsidered', Gifted Child Quarterly, 42 (1),
63-64.

Palmer, Parker C. (1998) The Courage To Teach, Exploring the

Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s Life, San Francisco, California:
Jossey-Bass.

Schön, Donald (1983) The Reflective Practitioner. How

professionals think in action, London: Temple Smith.
Stenhouse, Lawrence (1975) An introduction to Curriculum Research and
Development, London: Heineman.

Uhrmacher, P. Bruce (2001) 'Elliot Eisner' in J. A. Palmer (ed.)

Fifty Modern Thinkers on Education. From Piaget to the
present, London: Routledge.

Links

What can education learn from the arts about the

practice of education? Elliot W. Eisner argues that the
distinctive forms of thinking needed to create artistically
crafted work are relevant not only to what students do, they
are relevant to virtually all aspects of what we do, from the
design of curricula, to the practice of teaching, to the features
of the environment in which students and teachers live.
[Originally given as the John Dewey Lecture for 2002, Stanford
University.]

See, on these pages, Howard Garner, Donald Schön, John

Dewey, curriculum theory, and globalization.

How to cite this article: Smith, M. K. (2005) 'Elliot W. Eisner,

connoisseurship, criticism and the art of education', the
encyclopaedia of informal education,
www.infed.org/thinkers/eisner.htm. Last updated: .