Puppet Pedagogy: An Inquiry into Animated Educational Objects

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Friday 1:45 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Parenting, Painting, and Puppetry: Innovative Pedagogies for Art Education in a Changing World

Abstract

This paper investigates puppets as aesthetic objects that animate complex ways of knowing. It draws on archival materials from a teachers college that coincide with the emergence of puppetry in education in the US. (1920s-1950s), just before it explosively leapt into educational television. The study employs multi-modal methodology including a collaborative reading group, interactive exhibition curation, a movement workshop, and an experimental symposium and flash book writing project. The research explores the "the puppet effect": how animated objects simultaneously show and hide their aesthetic and technical context. Puppets are proposed as a useful way to understand productive tensions in both art and education, as well as situating debates around automation and AI in education within a longer critical tradition.

Authors

• Chris Moffett, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Lucius Von Joo, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Emmy Semprun, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Danielle Tulchinsky, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Kevin Klein-Cardena, Teachers College, Columbia University