ELLIOT EISNER ­ BACKGROUND

Elliot Eisner is a professor of Art and Education at the Stanford University School of Education.His research interests include arts education, curriculum reform, qualitative research methods,among others. He grew up in Chicago, and from an early age, had his mind set on becoming aprofessional artist. This was an ambition that was supported by his parents. While studying Artat the University of Chicago, he began working with students in Urban Chicago school, and hisfocus shifted from commercial art, to art education. From here, he went onto to receive twomasters degrees in Art and Education, and PhD from the University of Chicago. While obtaininghis degrees, he worked as a high school art teacher, a university art instructor, and various otheracademic jobs before he landed at Stanford, where he has been ever since.

With his art background, Eisner became worried that the current model of education in Americawas unbalanced and placed art on a lesser level of importance. He was particularly worried thatthe cognitive skills behind art were not fostered, and with Howard Gardner, developed cognitivetheories of learning that were grounded in the arts.

Another aspect of Eisner’s view of education, was the idea that education itself is an artisticactivity. From the perspective of education as art, Eisner argued that this would allow us tomove beyond the technical know how and instructive reliance, and instead open our minds tomore creative ways of knowing and being.

His history of art appreciation and artistic exploration, his focus on the arts in school, and hisview of education as a distinct art; led him to create his view of evaluation, which is centered onthe artistic ideas of Connoisseurship and Criticism.

EISNER’S MODEL

Eisner’s model for educational evaluation of Connoisseurship and Criticism is essentially apairing of two sensibilities drawn from the arts. He draws from the arts intentionally because hebelieves that “the features of classroom life are not likely to be explained or controlled bybehavioral laws,” (Eisner, 1976, p.140) and that “the major contribution of evaluation is to be aheightened awareness of the qualities of life so that teachers and students can become moreintelligent within it,” (Eisner, 1976, p.140).

The pairing of Connoisseurship and Criticism for Eisner is essential. In broadest terms,Connoisseurship is defined by Eisner (2002) as the art of appreciation (p. 215) however he iscareful to make the distinction that appreciation does not exclusively mean to like something.Rather, it is consisting of “recognizing and appreciating the qualities of a particular,” (p. 215). Itis essentially a private act, not requiring “public judgment or a public description of thosequalities,” (p. 215)

Criticism is the public act. It is “the art of disclosing the qualities of events or objects that theconnoisseurship perceives,” (Eisner, 2002, p. 219). Eisner suggests that one can be aconnoisseur without being a critic but that cannot engage in authentic critical activities withoutbeing a connoisseur, (p. 219).

EISNER AND CONNOISSEURSHIP

Eisner frequently relates connoisseurship to wine connoisseurship (Eisner 1976, 1998, 2002).He notes that for the wine connoisseur, it is not enough simply to be able to distinguish betweena red and a white or even between a variety of whites. Being a connoisseur means being able“to make fine­grained discriminations among complex and subtle qualities,” (Eisner, 1998, p.63)of that which we are evaluating.

Eisner describes this ability as epistemic seeing (Eisner, 1998) or acquiring knowledge throughsight (although he goes on to comment that he means sight in a much broader sense thatencapsulates all sensory experiences) and goes on to discuss both primary epistemic seeing,awareness of the particulars, and secondary epistemic seeing, awareness of particulars as partof a larger system or set (p. 68). Once seen, connoisseurship “requires the appropriateapplication of criteria to the instance,” (p. 70) and within the field of education, such criteria arefar more complex than evaluating a wine.

Eisner (1998) identifies five dimensions of educational connoisseurship that contribute to whathe refers to as the “ecology of schooling,” (p. 72). Each of these dimensions can both beexamined from the perspective of connoisseurship and be useful as dimensions to beconsidered in a greater educational evaluation.

The Intentional Dimension: “The intentional dimension deals with goals or aims that areformulated for the school or classroom,” (Eisner, 1998, p.73). These are the goals that areexplicit, publicized in the he classroom or community (system goals, school aims) or in explicitpractices taking place in the classroom. These intentions can be specific or general and maycome from explicit goals of the teacher, the school or even the district or system. However,given the number of individuals or systems at play, it is not uncommon for there to be tensionsbetween these intentions on those different levels. Eisner (1998) suggests that there are anumber of ways to think about these intentions including to what extent are they achieved and towhat extent are they of value. (p. 74).

The Structural Dimension: The structural dimension refers to the organizations structures ofthe school such as how the time in a school day is broken up into chunks, the graded levelsystem, or the organizational layout of the school or classroom. As Eisner (1998) suggests,“Unlike the topics that students study, which can change within days or weeks, the school’sorganizational structure is encountered daily for years,” (p.74). As such, these structures canhave profound effects on the way that learning and teaching is encountered. An educationalconnoisseur would look at how and to what extent these structures achieve the goals or virtues

they seek.

The Curricular Dimension: The curricular dimension “focuses upon the quality of thecurriculum content and goal and the activities employed to engage students in it,” (Eisner, 1998,p. 75). The connoisseur might look at how current the content is, how relevant it is to thediscipline, and how well it is being “interpreted by the teacher and students,” (p.75). On the otherside of the coin, Eisner (1998) also suggests that the curricular dimension also looks at the howthe curriculum is being engaged with by the students in terms of higher order thinking, engagingtasks, applicability, and relevance to their lives. Are the curriculum studies ranked (do the threer’s rank higher than art and phys ed) and how is that ranking communicated through gradingpractices or formal evaluations? Are children engaging individually with the curriculum,cooperatively, or as complex systems? Each of these provide insight for the connoisseur intothe curricular dimension.

The Pedagogical Dimension: The pedagogical dimension is one of the most complex of thedimensions in educational connoisseurship. It looks at how the teacher mediates the curriculumfor his or her students. It is based on the idea that each teacher teaches in very different waysand even the same teacher in a different context or with different students will take up their art ina variety of ways and that comparisons to an ideal or single approach are unreasonable.Instead, Eisner (1998) suggests that if “we take a leaf from the arts and apply what we can learnfrom them to the study of teaching, we would expect excellence in teaching , as in art, to be ofmany kinds. That is we would expect to find excellence rooted in different genres of teaching,”(p.78). Eisner also suggested the same would be true for genres of performance like lecturing,dialogue or discussion. It is the role of the connoisseur “to recognize the pervasive qualities ofteaching as they are displayed in some form and a judgement...of how the teaching might beenhanced,” (p.79).

The Evaluative Dimension: The evaluative dimension looks at the practices within a school orclassroom or system for assessment and evaluation. An example of this is when and howstudents are tested on curricular knowledge. Testing times, formats, practices and proceduresall become part of this one aspect of this dimension. However, evaluation “occurs everywhere:when teachers listen to children read, when children hand in what they have written, whenstudents responds to teachers questions, and so forth,” (Eisner, 1998, p. 81). Evaluationpractices inform about what is important and what it not; what counts, and what is neglected. Asa result, this dimension is of critical importance in educational connoisseurship.

Eisner would suggest that to be a connoisseur in any of these, let alone all of these dimensions,requires significant expertise and a deep understanding of a variety of classroom contexts,practices, curriculum, structures, social and historical contexts, and intentions. And as Eisnerstipulates (2002, p. 219), this significant expertise and understanding is essential prior toengaging in the educational criticism, the other half of his dynamic evaluation model.

EISNER AND CRITICISM

Criticism is essentially the process of enabling others to the see the qualities of something. AsEisner says (1998), “effective criticism functions as the midwife to perception. It helps it comeinto being, then later refines it and helps it to become more acute.” In an educational context,this relates to the collective values, experiences, stories and embodied histories of the entireprofession. It is our sharing of knowledge. It consists of three major dimensions;

Descriptive Dimension: The first element in Eisner’s criticism model of evaluation is the firststep that an art critic would take in evaluating a work; describe the current state. As Eisnerexplained (1985), this should be sharp in descriptive detail. Like in art criticism, language andfigurative speech are used as emphasis while describing the aesthetic dimension of theprogram. During this process, an evaluator may look at elements such as number and type ofquestions in class, the discussion time and the impression of the class on the students within.All of these create a general aesthetic picture of what the program looks and feels like.

Interpretative Dimension: In the next portion of the evaluation, the evaluator takes theirdescription and attempts to understand the meaning and deeper significance to the program asa whole. In this phase, the evaluator is drawing on multiple theories of knowing, variousviewpoints, and a variety of models to interpret the activities in the educational environment(Koetting, 1988). From the point of view of the evaluator, in this dimension there should be adeveloped sense of theoretical knowledge, and a wide series of criterion.

Evaluative Dimension: The final dimension of educational criticism in the evaluativedimension. Here, the first two dimensions are merged into a final evaluation, where thesignificance of the description and the effects of the interpretation are evaluated (Koetting, 1988).As with connoisseurship, the private practice of evaluation, educational criticism also takes onan evaluative dimension. During this stage, an educational criteria is necessary to judge theexperience, and this is where the expertise of connoisseur becomes essential in Eisner’sopinion to the process.

Through these three steps, a strong qualitative evaluation can produce a evaluation thatencompasses and embodies a large spectrum of possibilities and interpretations, from diverseperspectives.

REFERENCES

Eisner, E.W. (1976). Educational Connoisseurship and Criticism: Their Form and Functions inEducation Evaluation. Journal of Aesthetic Education, 10 (3/4), 135 ­ 150.

Eisner, E. W. (1985). The Art of educational evaluation: A Personal view. Philadelphia: TheFalmer Press, Taylor & Francis Inc.

Eisner, E. W. (1998) The enlightened eye: qualitative inquiry and the enhancement of

educational practice. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Merrill, 1998.

Eisner, E. W. (2002) The educational imagination: on the design and evaluation of schoolprograms. (3rd ed.) Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice­Hall

Eisner, Elliot W. (2002) 'What can education learn from the arts about the practice ofeducation?', the encyclopedia of informal education, retreived May 20, 2012 from:www.infed.org/biblio/eisner_arts_ and_the_practice_or_education.htm.

Fitzpatrick, J., Sanders, J. R., & Worthen, B. R. (2010). Program Evaluation: AlternativeApproaches and Practical Guidelines. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice­Hall.

Koetting, J. R. (1988). Educational connoisseurship and educational criticism: Pushing beyondinformation and effectiveness. Fifth Annual Open Forum: The Foundational Issues of the Field(pp. 442­457). Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for EducationalCommunications and Technology. New Orleans, LA.

Lloyd­Zannini, L. P. (1998) 'A review of Elliot Eisner's Cognition and curriculum reconsidered',Gifted Child Quarterly, 42 (1), 63­64. DOI: 10.1177/001698629804200108

Smith, M. K. (2005) 'Elliot W. Eisner, connoisseurship, criticism and the art of education', theencyclopaedia of informal education, retreived May 20, 2012 from:www.infed.org/thinkers/eisner.htm.