International Handbook of Research in Arts Education

• From the contentsIntroduction: Liora Bresler.- Book One: Section 1: History Section Editor: Gordon Cox.- Section 2: Curriculum Section Editor: Curriculum.- Section 3: Evaluation Section Editor: Regina Murphy and Magne Espeland.- Section 4: Composition Section Editor: Sarah McCarthey.- Section 5: Appreciation Section Editor: Margaret Barrett.- Section 6: Museums and Cultural Centers Section Editor: Elizabeth Vallance.- Book Two: Section 7: Informal Leaning Section Editor: Minette Mans.- Section 8: Child Culture Section Editor: Christine Marme Thompson.- Section 9: Social and Cultural Issues Section Editor: Douglas Risner and Tracie Costantino.- Section 10: The Body Section Editor: Kimberley Powell.- Section 11: Creativity Section Editor Pamela Burnard.- Section 12: Technology Section Editor Peter R. Webster.- Section 13: Spirituality Section Editor: Rita L. Irwin.

Review in Arts and Learning Research Vol 23:1The International Handbook of Research inArts EducationBresler, L. (Ed.). (2007)Dordrecht, NL: Springer. 1627 pp.ISBN 978-1-4020-2998-1$549 HardcoverReviewed by Jessica Hoffmann DavisIndependent ScholarIf you’ve ever observed a two-year old child drawing withcolorful markers on an endless stretch of paper (the blank sideof wrapping or wallpaper will do), you may decide that it’s verydif.cult to pinpoint exactly what she is doing. For sure she ismaking marks (exploring the boundaries of media) like a visualartist, but when the rhythm of the tapping of the mark-making onpaper inspires her to jump a little as she sits or now to hop/crawlacross the paper, she seems more like a dancer exploring somehaiku-like choreography; and when the words tumble like musicalnotes in chant-like accompaniment to the motion—"Bbbbbbb,up!"— you are not sure if what you are witnessing is drawing,modern dance or music, spoken word poetry, performance or evenritual art. The International Handbook of Research in Arts Education isa lot like that. But don’t worry, it sets out to be.From the start, editor Liora Bresler points to the soft edges ofdisciplines and the boundary crossing that invites, setting the stagefor a research tome that spans the artistic disciplines of music, dance,visual arts, and writing, including voices from different academicand geographical locations that travel on their own or intertwinedwithin and across a variety of themes. But don’t be misled by theplayful tone of my opening metaphor. The International Handbook ofResearch in Arts Education marks a substantive contribution to theliterature on the arts in education and it is chock full of thoughtful,well documented reviews anddiscussions of past and currentresearch—research that spans scholarship in aesthetics and artsin education as well as anthropology, cultural psychology, andcurriculum theory. Beyond its reach in terms of artistic disciplinesand scholarly realms, however, the Handbook is in itself a boundarybreaker defying expectation in both content and form.In comparison with the Handbook of Research and Policy inArt Education, edited by Elliot Eisner and Michael Day in 2004, amilestone in advancing the .eld of visual art education as informedby serious research and re.ection, Bresler’s International Handbookexpands the landscape by: 1) taking a multi-arts perspective, andcounting creative writing in the mix; 2) inviting contributors toengage openly in dialogue; 3) including contributions of unexpectedformat; and 4) attempting if not overtly then at least implicitly tofunction in itself as a work of art. While Eisner and Day play bythe rules producing an impressive compendium of scholarship fora .eld that may have been thought unscholarly, Bresler breaks therules by challenging the standard constraints of such a volume.While Eisner and Day conscientiously frame the .eld of visual arteducation with the expected fences of history, policy, learning,teaching, assessment, and a view of a future in the making, Breslerand her team of 15 section editors honor these hurdles even as theycross them and brave the unexpected beyond.The thirteen sections of the book, comprised of contributionsfrom 116 authors, are organized within and across the porousterritorial boundaries of context (history; technology; museumsand cultural centers; informal learning; child culture; social andcultural issues) and content (curriculum; evaluation; composition;appreciation; the body; creativity; and spirituality).Section editorsbegin their segments with a prelude that explicates the topic andthe themes that emerge from the writings of individual or pairsof authors who focus on particular art disciplines. InternationalHandbook Advisory Board members add commentaries relatedto these individual contributions from the perspectives of the 35countries they represent. Unexpected in a compendium of thiskind are the "expressive" interludes that punctuate the pace withartful personal re.ection, provocative ruminations, poetry, and/or individual authors’ responses to other authors’ contributions.Visual renderings of what appear to be montages of stone addmetaphoric cadence to the section breaks, challenging theirdeliberately porous division.The contributors are an exciting group of scholars andpractitioners, representing a range of disciplines and destinations.As examples from the international cast, there’s Peter Abbs from theUnited Kingdom (writing); Rita L. Irwin and F. Graeme Chalmersfrom British Columbia (visual arts); Shifra Schonmann fromIsrael (drama); Regina Murphy from Ireland (music); and MinetteMans from Namibia (performing arts). On the North Americanfront there are the "giants" in the .eld such as Elliot Eisner andArthur Elfand (visual arts), Bennett Reimer (music), and ElizabethVallance (museums); veteran arts education scholars who challengetraditions including Elizabeth Garber; newer voices forgingthe future such as Kim Powell and Lissa Soep; and well-knownscholars across academic disciplines including Ellen Dissanayakeand Nel Noddings. Editor Liora Bresler was so intent on .llingout her star-studded troupe (what she calls her "dream team" forthe Handbook) that she even included (at his suggestion) personallyrecorded arts encounter snippets from her e-mailcorrespondencewith Professor Jerome S. Bruner, who was otherwise unavailableto make a contribution.As a thread woven through all sorts and many of the pieces ofthe whole of this work, the resonant voice of philosopher MaxineGreene serves as inspiration and ballast to author contributionswhether she is speaking to issues of the arts as agents to awakeningimagination or to exciting social justice. Just as Tom Barone dedicateshis curriculum essay to his second and third grade teacher: "In thebeginning there was Light and she was named Mrs. Eddy"(p. 239).Robert Stake constructs his interlude as an admiring response toGreene’s powerful Handbook re.ection on appreciation (p.665).Evoking Harry Broudy’s notions of "enlightened cherishing," Stakeconsiders the challenge of translating into classroom practice thetranscendence of the "taken for granted" that Greene sees as an"end-in-view for aesthetic education"(p. 665).In experiencing the cross-referencing that persists throughthe Handbook, we are aware, as we are with a work of art, of theprocess that went into the creation of this product. Stake takesfellow contributor Greene as inspiration; Arthur E.and defends".ne art" from the limitations of political neutrality placed upon itby fellow contributor Paul Duncum. Interludes speak across voices;preludes speak across themes. The International Advisory Boardmembers use as touchstones for their descriptions of arts educationin their respective countries the domain speci.c research presentedmainly, but with notable exceptions, by scholars from NorthAmerican universities. This lively discourse across contributor andcontribution lends coherence to the broad range of treatises andperspectives included in the work, even as a lack of clear boundariesamong topics challenges theinternal cohesiveness of some of thedifferent sections.Artistic symbols are distinguished by the ambiguity that opensthem to multiple interpretations. The ambiguity of the edges of itsvarious sections may be another way in which the Handbook is like awork of art, but it adds considerable challenge to the work of sectioneditors and contributors. Section editor Susan Stinson in her preludeto the section on curriculum explains: "… determining boundarieshas been a challenge for all authors of the Handbook…[as] re.ectedin many of the questions that circulated through the cyber-processof this project: ‘What counts as research?’ ‘What educationalresearch is not about curriculum?’ ‘How can one adequatelycontextualize this research without describing its history, which is aseparate section of the Handbook?’"(p. 143). In part as a consequenceof this "boundary bleeding" (and of course because many of thecontributors to this text are artists themselves) we .nd the authors,like artists, braving hard fundamental questions: "What is the realquestion?" "What gets included and what gets left out?" "Howdo I create an aesthetic whole that usefully embraces but does notpretend to de.nitively contain the topic at hand?" The behindthe-scene view of authors in conversation, sharing challenges inthe framing of their individual contributions or being inspired intheir writing by each other’s work increases the immediacy of thisdynamic presentation of scholarship.In his interlude in the section on evaluation, Chris Higginstakes issue with the assertion that "Research is objective; art issubjective. Research discovers; imagination invents" (p. 393).Alternatively, drawing on Dewey’s claim that the arts teach usto see more, Higgins proposes that, "like the best artists, thebestresearchers use their imagination to move past the cardboardversions of things. The question for educational evaluation is notwhich method to choose or how to employ it, but how to notice…thedimensions of classrooms that are hiding in plain view" (p. 393).Like other contributions in the Handbook there is no apology herefor the arts not being up to the clear edge-cutting of scienti.cresearch; no attempt to limit the knowledge of the .eld to the crispcompartments that arguably serve other areas well. The focushere is on seeing more clearly, as artists do, "beyond the taken forgranted" to what the arts in education in particular provide, thoseinvaluable variables that may be "hiding in plain view."While the authors I’ve mentioned point to the dif.culty ofadhering to established boundaries even in the most straight forwardsection topics (history, curriculum, evaluation, appreciation,technology, museums and cultural centers) those topics moreovertly open to idiosyncratic interpretation (informal learning,child culture, social and cultural issues, creativity, the body, andspirituality) invite even broader brush strokes. Minette Mansattempts to clarify the spectrum of learning experiences that canbe included in the category of informal learning: "The spectrumof learning experiences can range from accidental, unintentional,or reluctant forms of learning to active, intentional, involved andhighly valued forms of learning" (p. 779). Introducing their sectionon social and cultural perspectives in arts education, DouglasRisner and Tracie Costantino speak to the breadth of their topic:"the enormity of social issues in arts education spans tremendousglobal research terrain" and to its overlap with other sections inthe Handbook, "social issues permeate the educational fabricofcurriculum, history, evaluation, the body, and technology" (p. 941).This section, which addresses fascinating recent research studies,.nds a measure of uni.cation, Risner and Costantino tell us, in afocus on justice and freedom (here again after Maxine Greene).But within the bristles of broad brush strokes lie issues that easilycould each have had their own sections: gender, identity, diversity,social justice, critical pedagogy.Adopting the two-year-old’s haiku choreography, let me piecetogether a collage of points of interest. The section on compositionmost interestingly addresses both the issues of how artists composein different domains and how we teach students to compose. Thetheme of metaphor features large in that section and is gracefullyaddressed in interludes by Keith Swanwick and Michael Parsons.The section on museums and cultural centers rightly includes aninterlude by David Carr on the role of libraries. The section onchild culture attends to the voice, vision, and values that childrenbring into class and that can be recognized, honored, ignored, oreven exploited. The section on body is heavy on mind, repletewith philosophical overtone and reference, addressing learningand art making through the senses, the extent to which the bodyis represented in art, and the challenge of resolving the mind bodyproblem with concepts like "embodied minds."The last section of the Handbook is on spirituality and it isperhaps the bravest section of all. Conversations of how we educateour soul are conspicuously absent in mainstream educationaldiscourse and they feel rare and strange in a .nal chapter thatwould have been expected to hold no new surprise. Section editorRita L. Irwin speaks of "a longing for the spiritual" that holds steadyamidst moving educational trends.She describes the education ofsoul: "An education of the soul is an education .lled with feelingcompletely alive, being at one with the universe while experiencingjoy, compassion, mindfulness, and a sense of awe for the mysterythat abounds" (p. 1401). But discussions of "feeling completelyalive" like the idea of a curriculum that "moves beyond rationaland analytic ways of understanding to intuitive and emotionalways of knowing" (p. 1401) do not lend themselves to standardacademic discourse. The problem one is convinced at this juncture isnot with the scope of the topic, but with the limitations of academicdiscourse. Broader vocabularies and multiple modes of expression(like the story telling and poetry these authors employ) are neededto facilitate conversations about what matters most. Regrettingthat there is painfully little if any research literature around anart education that is grounded in spirituality, in this grand .nalecontributors declare its importance and launch a call for attention.As London puts it, "Then, be it resolved, something ought to bedone about this. Soon" (p. 1492).I was privileged to work for years in my teaching with a diversegroup of students—non-arts classroom teachers, arts teachers,museum educators, program of.cers, community arts educatorsand administrators—most of them sharing a predisposition forand/or training in artistic activity and all of them uni.ed by abelief in the importance of the arts in education. Actors, musicians,painters, sculptors, poets, writers—all together in my classroom,confronting common themes from their different perspectives.And it would happen every fall. The drama or dance or visual artsteacher would stand up and say, "Well, I can’t speak for musicor writing—I wouldn’t dare—but in my classes, I.nd…." And Iwould ask, "if you wouldn’t dare to speak across artistic domainsto another teacher of the arts, how on earth are you going to dareto speak to a science teacher about what it is you do?"Discourse across artistic domains is essential to our forgingeducational conversations across arts and non-arts domains. Wemust cross boundaries; and we must make sense of the boundarycrossing. If I wanted more from the International Handbook of Researchin Arts Education, it was in this regard. I wanted more about thesimilarities and differences in metaphor’s structure in language,dance, visual arts or music; more about what music education inIndiana can learn from music education in Ireland. I wanted thescholars in this volume to move like spidermen and women anddo more web weaving out of the bounty of diverse artistic andinternational perspectives. But I am impatient and I also realizethat like any work of art, the Handbook asks much of the reader byway of interpretation and sense making. Had I had this volume inmy classes, I could have asked my students to use it as a source inthe spidering they will need to do.Bresler’s International Handbook of Research in Arts Education isa sprawling and ambitious enterprise, rightly called by Bresler a"huge mosaic." By bringing together scholars from different artisticdisciplines and locations, it initiates a conversation that speaks ofand to a burgeoning promising modern and timeless conceptionof a .eld called the arts in education. That conversation, as I havetried to describe and demonstrate, is made up of voice and inquiry,struggle and triumph, diversity and direction, scholarship andcommunication, artistry and rigor, blurred boundaries, overarchingthemes, and sharp tips of icebergs tweaking complacency andinvitingfurther research and discourse. I congratulate LioraBresler and her star-studded dream team. The territories to whichthey take us (even those we thought we knew) are complex andcompelling.Like the two year old’s multifaceted activity, the Handbookis not about visual arts, dance, drama, or music; it is aboutall of them because those activities, as they do in the vibrantactivity of the young child as artist, overlap, inform, enrich andrede.ne each other. And as it is with the two year-old’s drawing,doubters will look to this multifaceted Handbook and question theintegrity of the activity, liken my admiration for the work to theromantic’s cross-disciplinary interpretation of what is only theaimless scribbling of the young child. Doubters will fault Breslerfor not pulling in the reigns and making her compilation of artseducation scholarship look more like what is done in handbooks formainstream disciplines. But I applaud this work as precisely the sortof uncompromising high holding of the head that arts educationdeserves and I will cite the International Handbook of Research in ArtsEducation as a model of what the arts do of which other disciplinesneed to do more. I recommend this text to any student of the artsin education and I suggest for their journeying forth they hold onto their hats in readiness for the boundary leaping and explorationof emotion this rigorous treatise daringly pursues.ReferenceEisner, E. & Day. M. (Eds.). (2004). Handbook of research and policy in arteducation. A Project of the National Art Education Association.New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum.Jessica Hoffmann Davis is the author of Framing Education as Art:The Octopus has a Good Day (2005). At Harvard University, Dr. Davisfounded and was the .rst director of the Graduate School ofEducation’sArts in Education Program and held the university’s .rst chair in the artsin education. Her new book, on advocating for the arts in schools, will bepublished in 2007 by Teachers College Press.From the reviews:“International Handbook of Research in Arts Education, editor Liora Bresler set out to identify research agendas and issues across the arts and to define a new relationship among disciplines that are naturally related outside of the academy. … Bresler and her section editors and authors have given the arts professions and academies an astounding work of high artistic and intellectual merit.” (Marie McCarthy, British Journal of Music Education, Vol. 26 (3), 2009)