Intricate Palette Working the Ideas of Elliot Eisner

This book is about many things. It is about ways of thinking about curriculum, about educational evaluation and research, about arts education, and about teaching, teacher education, and school reform. What makes this book unique is that the ways of thinking about these issues are influenced by aesthetic and artistic paradigms. Remarkably, the ways of thinking about these separate areas of educational specialization are inspired by the works and life of a single person, Professor Elliot Eisner (1933- ). No one has been a greater champion of the broad utility of artistic and aesthetic paradigms for educational thought and practice than Elliot Eisner. Eisner's educational importance and influence is a result of his profound understanding of the implications of the aesthetic approach; his visionary, challenging, and appropriate application of this approach in a number of areas; and his rare ability to communicate his ideas with clarity and eloquence. When we began to contact authors who would help us understand Eisner's ideas and contributions to education, some of them said, "Ahh, you are writing afestschrift," a celebration of Elliot's life. Indeed, to some degree we are, but in addition to that we have asked each of the authors to begin with Eisner's ideas--not end there--and to consider the implications and possible extensions of his ideas to the next generation. The book begins with a chapter that introduces Elliot Eisner's basic ideas and their origins in his experience. The body of the book is composed of four sections that address Eisner's impact on curriculum; arts education; research and evaluation; and school reform, teaching, and teacher education. The fifth section offers reflections on Eisner by Howard Gardner and Maxine Greene. The book ends with an epilogue that provides observations culled from the various chapters. An essential Eisner reading list, selected from his hundreds of works, is also provided. CURRICULUM William Schubert writes of philosophical sensibilities and imagination, qualities that Elliot Eisner not only embodies but that he brings out in others. Schubert's autobiographically flavored work reveals how his own trajectory in the curriculum field has been fueled and fostered by Eisner's. In melding theory and autobiography, Schubert argues that "lives" matter. While Eisner is renowned for the power of his works, these works are best understood in the context of his life--as a mentor, a gatekeeper of sorts to the profession, a colleague, and a tireless worker for educational issues that matter most. Daniel Tanner's chapter recovers John Dewey's observation that four types of impulses animate children. Tanner believes these impulses or functions ought to be lifelong in all of us and that schools could do more to develop them interdependently. The "lenses of art," writes Tanner, "can help curricularists to develop a more holistic conception, vision, and realization of the curriculum field." An arts-mediated perspective would help educators to properly emphasize emergent-generative processes rather than established-convergent ones. Kieran Egan reminds us that keeping an end in view in the difficult and complex profession of education is no easy task. Eisner, says Egan, has been a keeper of the vision and a critic of the means that have lost sight of their ends. Egan persuades us that the current standards and testing movement is a means that fails to convey us to desirable educational ends, a muddled strategy that is as miseducational as employing the arts in the curriculum for no-narts ends. Egan's chapter explores multiple instances of damagingly deficient means-ends thought and practice. In an educational environment that deludedly works at cross purposes to its best and ultimate ends, Egan argues that we desperately need Elliot Eisner and others with a similar ability to discern the consequences of educational ideas and aUhrmacher, P. Bruce is the author of 'Intricate Palette Working the Ideas of Elliot Eisner', published 2004 under ISBN 9780131122727 and ISBN 013112272X.