Creating Life-Long Relationships with the Arts: A Caring Philosophical Approach

It is important to understand how performing and visual arts teachers make their classes personally relevant for students. This study examines what the intentions of elementary performing and visual arts teachers who chose to teach with additional affective content. Four research questions were addressed in this study: 1) What are the instructional intentions of care-oriented elementary arts teachers? 2) What are the affective intentions of care-oriented elementary arts teachers? 3) How are these intentions actualized (or not actualized) within elementary arts classrooms? 4) What is the significance of these findings for elementary schools throughout the country? To respond to these questions, this qualitative study adopts educational criticism and connoisseurship, a method developed by Eliot Eisner. The participating teachers established caring relationships with their students as understood through Noddings’ ethic of care and demonstrated teaching methodologies aligned with Dewey’s views of holistic relationships. The findings suggest that teachers who introduce additional affective materials are looking to make performing and visual arts classes relevant to their students’ lives. The findings of this study reach beyond elementary performing and visual arts education. The recognition of this augmentation led to the researcher developing the term “augmented curriculum,” a new addition to the curriculum lexicon.