Art Education at the Turn of the Tide: The Utility of Narrative in Curriculum-Making and Education Research

Abstract

This article relates a story of art education advocacy in the midst of a bureaucracy that misunderstood the purpose of art education at the launch of a new elementary school. It further argues that in 2010, art education continues to be practiced in the throes of a scientific knowledge paradigm that misunderstands the greater potential of the arts in education, imposing a ceiling ill-fitted for arts education practices and arts-based research. The author surmises some of the possibilities when the imposed ceiling is removed and we rethink art education, concluding with several schematic counter-discourses that lay out an art classroom without ceilings.