Teaching Visual Culture

An updated edition of the first book to focus on teaching the visual arts from a cultural standpoint.

Teaching Visual Culture provides the theoretical and practical basis for developing a curriculum that lays the groundwork for art education at all levels (K–12 and higher education) and across school subjects.

Drawing on material, social, cognitive, aesthetic, and curricular theories, Freedman offers a framework for teaching the visual arts from a cultural standpoint. Chapters discuss visual culture in a democracy; aesthetics in curriculum; philosophical and historical considerations; recent changes in the field of art history; connections between art, student development, and cognition; art inside and outside of school; the role of fine arts in curriculum; visual technologies; television as the national curriculum; student artistic production and assessment; and much more.

Additional content for the Second Edition includes applications of new materialism, ways to document and assess tacit knowledge in students, and uses of AI image generation.

Book Features:

• 17 full-color images new to the second edition.
• Both documents and challenges past and current practices of art education for teacher educators, K–12 teachers, undergraduate and graduate students, school administrators, and community educators.
• Provides a foundation for art education with ways to update curriculum, an exploration of why newer technologies are making visual literacy essential for all learners, and new ideas about the impact of aesthetics on learning.
• Covers contemporary issues essential to addressing the increased impact of visual culture across school subjects, including new brain research, visual culture and the environment, the relationship between the diversity of visual culture and identities, and the visual culture of politics.

Kerry Freedman is a professor of art and design education at Northern Illinois University.

"Teaching Visual Culture by Kerry Freedman is an essential resource for educators and art practitioners. It highlights the transformative role of visual culture in shaping identities, promoting critical thinking, and fostering democratic education. This second edition masterfully combines theoretical knowledge with practical strategies, empowering educators to integrate visual literacy and interdisciplinary learning in an increasingly image-driven society."
—Ami Kantawala, assistant adjunct professor, Teachers College, Columbia University

“This book is an outstanding resource for art education scholars and students seeking to comprehend and implement contemporary art education curricula. It presents a well-researched theoretical framework that serves as a solid foundation for engaging with visual art forms, aesthetics, and the complexities of cultural production. This book not only enhances the understanding of art education but also empowers educators to innovate and elevate their teaching practices. It is an essential read for anyone dedicated to advancing the field of art education and inspiring the next generation of artists and thinkers.”
—Ryan Shin, professor, College of Fine Arts, The University of Arizona

“The first edition of this important book saw the field of art education in a state of reconceptualization. The question then involved what should be taught about visual culture in a contemporary democracy and globalized society. Over 20 years later, this question remains more important than ever. This second edition, then, is timely, with new reflections on culturally sustaining pedagogy, new materialism, metamodernism, and situated learning, as well as color images and examples from students and practicing artists. All the while, Freedman focuses on what made the original edition so valuable to art education through the updated application of these theories to practice in multiple contexts and at all levels.”
-- Jeffrey L. Broome, professor and director of PhD Program in Art Education, Florida State University

Contents

Acknowledgments  xi

Introduction  1

1.  Visual Culture Theory and Practice in Education  7

Visual Culture, Learning, and Identities  8

Theorizing the Professional Field  13

Remnants of Social Theory That Shape Practice: Lessons From the History of Art in School  16

Sliding Off the Foundations of Curriculum  20

Challenging Boundaries  21

Conclusion  26

2.  Visual Aesthetics: Form, Feeling, and Knowing  31

Aesthetics and a Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy  33

Multiple Types of Aesthetic Experience  35

Foundations of Modernist Aesthetics  38

Modernist Aesthetics in Curriculum  40

Making Connections Through Associated Knowledge  44

Neopragmatist Aesthetics  51

Conclusion  54

3.  The Social Life of Art: Past/Present/Future  57

The Old and the New Art Histories  57

Contexts and Quality  63

Back and Forth: Juxtapositions in Spacetimemattering  69

Conclusion  77

4.  Art and Cognition: Knowing Visual Culture  79

The Relationship of Form, Feeling, and Knowing to Learning  81

Psychobiological Conceptions of Artistic Development  87

Sociological Perspectives of Artistic Development  91

Four Social Ways of Knowing: The Social Dialectic, Construction of Knowledge, Distributed Cognition, and Situated Learning  95

Situated Knowledge  100

Conclusion  101

5.  Interpreting Visual Culture: Constructing Concepts for Curriculum  103

Learning Critical Interpretation in Making and Viewing  104

Postmodernism, Metamodernism, and New Materialism in Curriculum  113

Difficult Knowledge: Critiquing Visual Culture as a Didactic Form  117

Conclusion  123

6.  Curriculum as Process: Visual Culture and Democratic Education  127

A Contemporary Approach to Curriculum  129

Visual Culture in Curriculum Structures  132

Creating Agency: Tacit Knowledge and Intergraphicality in Curriculum  140

Changing Curriculum  143

Cultural Fragments in Curriculum  147

Themes for Teaching Visual Culture  150

Conclusion  155

7.  Art.edu: Digital Artifacts, Artificial Intelligence, and Communities of Making  157

Technology as Experience and Phenomena  158

Student Uses of Art and Technology  164

Student Computer Production  168

Making/Watching Visual Culture: Students as Artists/Audience  171

Conclusion  176

8.  Contributing to Visual Culture: Student Artistic Production, Assessment  177

Assessment: Seeing Tacit Knowledge  178

Critique and Community  184

Group Cognition and Assessment in the Arts  189

Student Group Assessment  195

Conclusion  198

References  201

Index  215

About the Author  225