Reflections from the Heart of Educational Inquiry

Understanding Curriculum & Teaching through the Arts

edited by

George Willis & William H. Schubert

“A fascinating book not only for curricularists but also for ‘liberal artists,’ i.e. those teaching in humanities. It celebrates a connectedness rarely seen between theory and practice.”

—Mary A. Doll, Holy Cross College, New Orleans

This unique book discusses and illustrates the way the arts have influenced curriculum inquiry and the teaching and learning process. It is divided into two parts. The first part focuses on aesthetic, epistemological, ethical, ontological, and political explanations of the influence of the arts on curricula. The second part offers personal accounts by well-known scholars who have been influenced by works of art and have translated those influences into their classroom curricula and teaching.

“This book demonstrates the great diversity of human experience and that within the diversity there is a clear, common orientation—education is not separate from life, and life is influenced by the arts.”

—Bernice J. Wolfson, University of Alabama, Birmingham

“The book is highly evocative. In reading it, I was led to track down a reproduction of Jackson Pollock’s The White Cockatoo, a copy of Wallace Stevens’ The Man with the Blue Guitar, a videotape of the Bolshoi Ballet dancing Spartacus, and even a compact disk of Mozart’s The Magic Flute. In short, the essays are powerful. They whet the appetite and spur the reader to inquiries of her own.”

—Geneva D. Haertel, Educational Consultant, Palo Alto, CA

George Willis is Professor of Education at the University of Rhode Island. William H. Schubert is Professor of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

2000/ 396 pp./paper $33.95/ISBN 1-891928-09-0