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A study surveyed 99 teacher education students from the Instituto de Educacao de Nova Friburgo (Brazil) by asking open-ended and private questions to know the number and/or the access of students to existing artistic and cultural languages. The research was divided into two stages: (1) an investigation about the information brought by the students from several teaching institutions so that their realities could be known; and (2) a research project conducted by the students themselves about the artistic and cultural languages with the key focal point occurring when each student group presented their results to the class. There were seven languages (music, plastic arts, dance, theater, film, television, and literature) identified for stage two so each class was divided into seven groups to research the languages with different themes. In part two of stage two, the essence of part 1 was maintained, by trying to encircle the country's regional or folkloric knowledge. The general knowledge was limited to the specific one, according to the area or region, changing from the macro to the micro. In part 2, the folkloric languages that permeate Brazilian popular art were emphasized. Results note the difficulties, limitations, and deficiencies of the school and the educational structure of the state and the country. The study noted that students had difficulties in their development of knowledge, with the cultural codes interpretation, and especially with the decentralization of the class over the teacher who knows everything and teaches everything. Includes two graphs with the study's results. (Contains 11 references.) (BT)

This paper reports on the introduction of an exploratory program on emotional development, "Drawing Emotions," through which instructors try to: (1) help the child learn how to deal with feelings; (2) ascertain relational difficulties; (3) apprehend their own questions which were not answered; and (4) interfere in the presence of risks and development crises. To change the conceptions of teaching and learning, the first step was a collaboration among university teachers, elementary teachers, and 8- and 9-year-old students, in which the students made some drawings about emotional subjects that revealed the "difficulty" of social and emotional processes related to daily family experiences. A qualifying analysis of those drawings was made according to the thematic contents of Marge Heegaard (1988) related to family difficulties (traumatic situation, serious disease, death of a family member, separation and divorce, etc.). The "Drawing Emotions" program was organized into 10 modules that were subdivided into large themes, and the paper details the use of those modules and themes. Three hundred drawings showed frequently the use of family models and media, in which were identifiable emotional expressions and normal attitudes in occidental societies. These common figurative drawings could be distinguished according to aspects such as sex and socio-cultural system. Contains 29 references. "Drawing Emotions" program material is attached. (BT)

This paper considers the artistic and literary movement called "Postmodernism." Noting that postmodernism is intellectually grounded in the premise that its discourse must expose positions of privilege and power relations in society, the paper asks of art education, How much has the postmodern condition, a thesis of cultural relativism that denies that we can step outside of custom to judge custom, affected our domain? The paper first discusses the early 20th-century movement called "Dada" as a precursor to the postmodern condition. It explores Marcel Duchamp's "art making," when he abandoned painting and began to work with industrial or commercially produced materials that suited the expression of his ideas and his iconoclasm. Duchamp attempted to escape the realm of aesthetics, but in doing so he created a new aesthetic field. The paper then discusses the ideas of several postmodern theorists, including Pierre Bourdieu, Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Derrida, Arthur Danto, Fredric Jameson, and Robert Dixon. It contends that the notion of postmodernism as it applies to visual arts needs to be clearly defined and that the greatest danger art education faces is the inability of many educators to unravel the complexities of postmodern discourse and put into perspective its role in artistic discourse. (Contains 20 references.) (BT)

This paper focuses on some of the issues from a study that questioned the validity of the proposal advanced by the influential North American curriculum movement referred to as "Discipline-Based Art Education" (DBAE); that the methods and understanding of artists, art critics, aestheticians, and art historians can be represented in a model of artistic knowledge that is framed as a coherent and integrated system of naive to sophisticated performances. The interpretation of data focused on the pedagogical dialogue about the authentic representation of artistic practice, specifically the role of the journal, or process diary, as an example of the way in which answers to empirical questions are more often than not counterintuitive. It reports that the study's two respondents are at best intuitive in their meta-representations of their performances and at worst misrepresent what they do, albeit in an unconscious and therefore concealed way. It finds that the manner in which the two produce their works, including process diary use, is sophisticated in ways that do not align with the characteristics and categorizations set out in DBAE. The paper elaborates on these findings and on the two respondents' methods of producing art works. Contains 18 references. (BT)

While creating an art form which is foreign to an artist's cultural expression may seem like taking a risk in today's world, it may provide a way to successfully negotiate a fulfilling living and working space on this diverse planet. Movement into a foreign space, often referred to as a border crossing, can be understood as a central meeting space. This paper discusses the 1998 exhibition at the Maitland Art Center in Florida, "Ofrendas/Border Crossings," where 20 Latino and non-Latino artists made ofrendas, or Day of the Dead altars. The exhibition can serve as a model for multicultural education beyond the code signifying the inclusion of non-white races and ethnicities, which negatively reinforces a white/other binary dynamic. The paper tells the stories of many of the artists who made and exhibited ofrendas, finding that all of the artists felt they had traveled to a new space and had negotiated the territory for their benefit. It suggests that this new space can act as a "contact zone" that dissolves bigotry based on simplistic cultural conceptions. Contains 14 references. (BT)

This paper explains the method and value of critical aesthetic inquiry when researching the teaching of art. The paper contends that teaching is an art, and the only appropriate way to research art practice is through an artistic approach to critical inquiry. The paper explains how art education research is distinctive from scientific research. It then explains the framework of critical aesthetic inquiry, including the basic theory, data gathering instruments, and methods of analysis. It addresses the methodology's limitations and realms of effective application. (Contains 27 references.) (BT)