Ad Litteram Art and Cognition Integrating the Visual Arts in The

Art and Cognition Art and Cognition INTEGRATING THE VISUAL ARTS IN THE CURRICULUM Arthur D. Efland Teachers College, Columbia University National Art Education New York and London Association Published simultaneously by Teachers College Press, 1234 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY 10027 and the National Art Education Association, 1916 Association Drive, Reston, VA 22091-1590 Copyright © 2002 by Teachers College, Columbia University All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Efland, Arthur, 1929- Art and cognition : integrating the visual arts in the curriculum / Arthur D. Efland. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8077-4218-X (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-8O77-4219-8 (cloth: alk. paper) 1. Art—Study and teaching—United States. 2. Art—Psychology. 3. Cognitive learning—United States. 4. Curriculum planning—United States. I. Title. N353 .E34 2002 707'.1'073—dc21 2001060391 ISBN 0-8077-4218-X (paper) ISBN 0-8077-4219-8 (cloth) Printed on acid-free paper Manufactured in the United States of America 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 To David and Amy Contents Acknowledgments xi 1 The Uneasy Connection Between Art and Psychology 1 The Positivist Legacy 2 Objectivism in the Sciences 5 Purpose of Book 6 Organization of Book 12 2 Artistic Development in Cognitive Developmental Theories 14 The Legacy of Behaviorism 14 Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development 23 Sociocultural Cognition: The Vygotskian Perspective 30 Difficulties with Piagetian and Vygotskian Theories of Cognitive Development 38 Theories of Development in Children’s Drawings 41 Implications for Art Education 48 3 The Cognitive Revolution and Conceptions of Learning 52 Three Cognitive Orientations 52 Cognition as Symbol Processing 55 Sociocultural, or Situated, Cognition 69 vii viii CONTENTS Toward Integrated Theory 72 Requirements of an Integrated Cognitive Theory for Education in the Arts 78 Implications for Education in the Arts 79 4 Cognitive Flexibility Theory and Learning in the Arts 82 Differences Between Introductory and Advanced Knowledge Acquisition 85 Complex Domains and Learning 86 Instruction That Promotes Cognitive Flexibility— Hypertext Technologies in Instruction 89 Misconceptions Resulting from Reductions of Complexity: The Reductive Bias 91 The Complexity Riddle and the Application of Curriculum Models 99 The Integrated Curriculum 103 Implications of Cognitive Flexibility Theory for Art Education 104 5 Obstacles to Art Learning and Their Assessment 107 Misconceptions in Learning About Art—The Koroscik Analysis 107 The Lifeworld and Cultural Cognitive Mapping 120 Implications for Instruction and Assessment 130 Instructional Prompts in Instruction and Assessment 130 Designing Curriculum Contexts for Improving Art Understanding 131 6 Imagination in Cognition 133 Imagination in Philosophy 134 Psychological Studies of Mental Imagery 136 Categorization in Cognition 138 Some Implications—Experience, Abstraction, and Metaphor 142 Toward a Theory of Imagination—Categorization, Schemata, and Narratives 150 Relevance to Art Education 152 Implications for General Education 154 7 The Arts and Cognition: A Cognitive Argument for the Arts 156 Cognitive Flexibility 159 Integration of Knowledge Through the Arts 164 The Imaginative in Cognition 167 CONTENTS ix The Aesthetic Experience 168 In Summary: The Purpose of the Arts 171 Notes 173 References 179 Index 189 About the Author 201 Acknowledgments THIS BOOK TOOK ROOT in a particular social environment—my academic home, the Department of Art Education at Ohio State University. The references listed in this book attest to this, as they include numerous works by my colleagues Judith Koroscik, Michael Parsons, and Georgianna Short, and the works of graduate students too numerous to mention here. To- gether these provided a research base to help me search for a more ade- quate account of learning in the arts as seen from a cognitive perspective. Other influences also have contributed to this foundation, namely, the work on cognition undertaken by Howard Gardner, David Perkins, and Rebecca Simmons at Harvard’s Project Zero for more than a quarter- century. In my effort to find a view that can accommodate the sociocultural perspective in cognition, I have strayed from the symbol-systems view of cognition they have advanced, yet without the foundation their work has provided, the integrated view put forth in this book would not have been possible. The work on cognitive flexibility theory by Rand Spiro, Paul Feltovich, Richard Coulson, and Daniel Anderson, although initially developed for medical education, offered a set of conceptual tools for clarifying the nature of problems occurring in learning the arts. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s work on metaphor and imagination enabled me to revisit the landscape of the imaginative in learning and the arts. I also acknowledge my debt to theoretical work occurring in other subject fields such as science and mathematics education as providing a basis for dealing with similar educational problems in the arts. xi xii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS During the spring quarters of 1998 and 1999, early drafts of the manuscript were tried as texts in graduate seminars on cognition in the arts, presented by Michael Parsons and myself. Our students ranged from art teachers in local school districts working on graduate degrees to international students pursuing doctorates. On several occasions the questions posed by these students challenged me to clarify ideas, to fill gaps in the arguments, and to render intelligible what may have been unclear in initial formulations. This resulted in burning the midnight oil as whole chapters and sections underwent repeated revision. Michael, in particular, helped me see the strengths, weaknesses, and gaps in the early drafts and offered numerous suggestions. Without his trenchant and thoroughgoing critique, this book would not have been possible. Finally, I owe much to my son David, who taught me that city plans, like curriculum plans, embody the aspirations and hopes of communities for a better life, and that maps like curricula embody metaphoric visions of human potential and possibility. Lastly, I can never acknowledge completely the fullness of my debt to my wife Jenny, whose art and life personify the belief that true understanding emerges when thinking, feeling, and willing are in balance. 1 The Uneasy Connection Between Art and Psychology THE BELIEF THAT THE ARTS are intellectually undemanding occupations, suit- able for amusement and diversion, is deeply ingrained in the Western psyche. When asked to list the intellectual giants in Western cultural his- tory, most people will list Einstein or Newton before Rembrandt or Picasso. Artistic genius is the stuff of legend—an extrahuman gift, not a measur- able mental trait. In ranking the fields demanding brain power, the physi- cist is placed before the painter, the molecular biologist before the poet, the mathematician above the composer of symphonies. But are these judgments grounded in actual assessments of the intellectual requirements of these fields? And more to the point, what is the conception of mind that leads so many to think of the arts as “lightsome vocations” (Snedden, 1917, p. 805)? These are psychological questions concerning the nature of intelli- gence. However, the assumption that the arts are intellectually inferior as modes of knowing and understanding antedates psychology by at least 2,000 years, reaching back to Plato. In favoring the “ideal forms” as the supreme source of true knowledge, Plato argued for the lesser status of the arts. The archetypes that the rational mind can grasp in their cold purity, he presumed to be free of the distortions of the senses and hence superior to the knowledge given in perception. Sensory knowledge based on the actuality of nature was made up of imperfect copies or imitations of these ideals. Furthermore, the objects appearing in works of art were “imitations of imitations,” hence doubly inferior.1 Platonic ideals are highly abstract, beyond the reach of average minds. Pure, sense-free thinking is hard. For this reason we enlist sensory aids 1 2 ART AND COGNITION for assistance: maps, diagrams, pictures, statues, and the instruments of science. Teachers and parents stimulate the minds of the young by providing models of the good and the true, often with songs, stories, or pictures—all because the realm of the abstract is difficult to grasp! Yet, there are occasions when the image of a work of art is itself a source of puzzlement, mystery, or bewilderment. For example, in looking at Rene Magritte’s 1963 painting The Telescope [La lunette d’approache], we see a casement window with two panels of glass, and looking through the glass we see a field and a serene blue sky with fleecy clouds (Figure 1.1). One of the panels is shut; the other is slightly ajar, opening into the room. But, there is a problem here, which appears in the opening between the two halves of the window. If the artist’s representation of the window is right, we should see a continuation of the scene in the space between the window panes, but instead we see darkness—total darkness! Did the artist make a mistake? Did he forget to finish this work? If not, is there a logical explanation for this illusion? What could Magritte have had in mind when he painted this picture? I can’t answer these questions, except to illustrate the point that works of art often make heavy cognitive demands on thinking. Such works, in my view, awaken intellectual inquiry, for thought does not begin in the abstract, but with images directly sensed or recalled in memory. Abstrac- tion is an “achievement of the imagination” (Brown, cited in Lakoff, 1987, pp. 32–33), and the meanings derived from this effort may bear on our lives in the social and cultural worlds we inhabit.

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