This book fills a gap in the literature of 21st century international visual arts education by providing a structured approach to understanding the benefits of Philosophical Realism in art education, an approach that has received little international attention until now. The framework as presented provides a powerful interface between research and practical reconceptualisations of critical issues and practice in the domains of art, design, and education that involve implications for curriculum in visual arts, teaching and learning, cognitive development, and creativity. The book extends understanding of Philosophical Realism in its practical application to teaching practice in visual arts in the way it relates to the fields of art, design, and education. Researchers, teacher educators and specialist art teachers are informed about how Philosophical Realism provides insights into art, design, and education. These insights vary from clearer knowledge about art to the examination of beliefs and assumptions about the art object. Readers learn how cognitive reflection, and social and practical reasoning in the classroom help cultivate students’ artistic performances, and understand how constraints function in students’ reasoning at different ages/stages of education.
Neil C. M. Brown
Arts curriculum reform Arts education and assessment Arts teaching and practice Authenticity and assessment in arts education Beliefs about art objects Cognitive development and creativity Creativity as praxis Outcome statements and arts curriculum Philosophical arts education Realism and art education Visual arts eduation and conceptual terms Visual arts teaching Visual literacy
“A volume that brings together Neil Brown’s work is long overdue. Whether one totally agrees with or has qualified reservations over Brown’s position on Philosophical Realism and how he sees it as being central to the development of art, design and education, reading this book is a must. This volume presents its readers with an argument and thesis to be reckoned with, particularly in how it brings together the philosophical, pedagogical and political realms of art and design, and how it sustains such realms by challenging their schooled realities and their strange but necessary dialectic.” (Professor John Baldacchino, University of Dundee, UK)