Vintage Connoisseurship

The argument can be made that the concepts of educational criticism and connoiseurship as formulated by Elliot Eisner (1976, 1979) are neither so new nor so foreign to educators as some might imagine. To art educators in particular, the perspectives and evaluation tools argued by Eisner are (or should be) familiar, though practitioners have rarely used his theoretical arguments or special nomenclature. The concepts of connoisseurship and educational criticism are important and illuminative for educational inquiry, and it may add to our context and to our historical perspective if we can reveal them to be less peculiar to the past decade than we usually claim. In this article I shall argue that part of Eisner's contribution has been to give a name and a systematic formulation-not to mention a sense of innovation and commitment-to an established but curiously unrecognized practice. Art educators are accustomed to skeptical reactions to their work. They encounter skepticism in future teachers assigned to art methods courses; they sense it in discussions with school administrators about the value of art and art education; and it can color their thinking about the claims advanced by their colleagues. It is not surprising, then, that Eisner's recent arguments for using connoisseurship and educational criticism in evaluation have been received skeptically by various of my art educator colleagues. Both the usefulness and the feasibility of the ends and means that Eisner advocates in his approach to qualitative evaluation have been doubted by colleagues addressing the issue at professional meetings, in teacher's lounges, and elsewhere. The skepticism is somewhat ironic, but the doubts persist-and not only among art educators, I'm sure. In the pages that follow I shall address and counter this skepticism through two types of review. First, I shall summarize briefly the key points in Eisner's concept of connoisseurship and criticism, and then follow this summary with a review of several sets of practical educational criticism

Argument (complex analysis · Art · Art criticism · Context (archaeology · Criticism · Epistemology · Pedagogy · Political science · Skepticism · Sociology · Art Education and Development · Diverse Music Education Insights · Law · Medicine · Philosophy · Teacher Education and Leadership Studies

• The person in the curriculum

  Open Access•James B Macdonald•The Urban Review•1975

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• Educational Connoisseurship and Criticism

  Elliot W Eisner•Journal of Aesthetic Education•1976

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