Extreme Theory and Liminal Practice in Art Education

• In Event: 72.064 - Roundtable Session 29
  In Roundtable Session: 72.064-2 - Do Something With It: Extreme Theory and Methodological Innovation

Abstract

The utility of research in art education and the disjunction between theory and practice has been lamented by scholars for generations. Many art teachers are skeptical about research and theory, seeing them as irrelevant and esoteric. Prescriptive theorists argue that there is a best way to do the things that should be done and that there is a set of principles on which practice should be based. Prescriptive theorists like to talk about best practices in education. But the idea of best practices is illusory, limiting, reductive, and limiting. Instead of best practices, a vibrantly sufficient practice might be found within the ranges of competing ideals, somewhere between the poles of profound, yet oppositional ideals.

Author

• Mark A. Graham, Brigham Young University