Elliot Eisner SIG
Email: eisnersig@gmail.com
Website: http://bit.ly/1CTpCVV
Facebook: www.facebook.com/Eisner-SIG-488895484598608
Twitter: @EisnerSIG
Message from the SIG Chair
Greetings Elliot Eisner SIG members!
A quick note to let you know that we are in our third year of interim status and we are under review now as to whether we will achieve a permanent position as an AERA SIG. Here is a note I received from AERA:
"Since this will be the third year the SIG-in-Formation is in existence, it will be reviewed by the SIG EC and the AERA Council to see if it qualifies to be set up as a formal SIG. This review will happen at the Coordinated Committee Meetings at the end of October and at the AERA Council Meeting in early February. If the SIG-in-Formation is approved to be a full SIG, then AERA will hold a special election after the General election has ended for the Elliot Eisner SIG-in-Formation."
The leadership team has submitted our bylaws to AERA, based on recommendations that we received at our annual Business meetings. We have also solicited nominations for Chair, Secretary, and Treasurer.
I want to thank everyone who submitted a proposal to the Elliot Eisner SIG and to encourage everyone to submit next year. We know from discussions and meetings that there is so much good work taking place. Please submit your research to the EE SIG. And thanks to everyone who stepped forward to review and also a special thanks to the Elliot Eisner leadership team who coordinated all of the efforts.
Regarding the 2017 Conference, we are excited to announce that Dr. Stephen Thornton, Professor of Social Science Education at the University of South Florida, will be our speaker at the Business Meeting. Professor Thornton's research centers on "how teachers act as curricular-instructional gatekeepers translating the formal curriculum into instructional programs for their particular classrooms." All are welcome and invited to attend! You can find more information about Professor Thornton and the Elliot Eisner SIG at our website.
Finally, please continue to try to recruit new members. Currently we have approximately 90 members and we would love to hit 100.
Thanks again to all for your participation and service,
Bruce Uhrmacher
Professor of Education and Research Methods
Morgridge College of Education
University of Denver
STEAM Tectonics by Merrie Koester
The times, they are a changin.
If Dylan got it right,
The loser now, later will win.
There was a time when my research and writing in science education bordered on the
heretical. Teach science in way that also honors the practices and traditions of the creative
arts? I nearly failed my master’s thesis defense by proposing such a thing. That was over
twenty-five years ago. In the interim, the boundaries between STEM and Art education have
dramatically converged in a tectonic collision, creating new, uncharted STEAM covered
mountains for students and teachers to climb. Some few have been privileged to carry their
flags to the top—staking their claims in this scramble for new resources, while many more
have been left at the bottom, filled with seismic disappointment.
Meanwhile, New Earth is ever being formed, even as old is destroyed. Earthquakes happen!
This year, the editors of the forthcoming book, Toward Inclusion of all Learners through
Science Teacher Education (Sense Publishing) welcomed my proposal to write, of all things, a performance narrative about the dyslexic science learner. Dare we imagine that arts-based
research in science education may—unlike magma squeezing up through surrounding
rock—be regarded as inclusive rather than intrusive? I have dared hope, and have written the following in this new work:
In her lyrical text, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard (1974) describes how, as a
child, she watched in horror as her teacher placed the pulsating cocoon of a
Polyphemus moth into a too-small Mason jar just as it was about to emerge. Like
cocoons trapped in a too-small jar, dyslexic learners can start to believe there is no way
out. Without intervention, the less likely it will be that their future potential will unfurl.
During the critical developmental period, stuck in that jar (think resource room being told
to “practice” reading and fill out worksheets when you may also have dysgraphia), the
future butterfly/moth’s wings may harden in place against their backs, and thus, land-
bound, the individual is more in peril than ever of meeting the bottom of an oncoming
shoe or predator’s stomach.
My brief ethnography then spreads out, lava-like, through poetry, through which I endeavor (via my art) to crystallize the struggles of these learners, each at once fractured and brilliant. What they have lost has marked them forever, but their victories are the stuff of heroes’ tales. Super-powered by tectonic imaginations, they have moved entire mountains.
For more on Dr. Koester, please click here
Professor by Valerie Janesick
I wrote this poem in bits and pieces over the past year. I was inspired by the current changes occurring within the professoriate. I write this with apologies to T.S. Elliot.
Professor
The work of the professor is a contemplative matter
Its not merely one of your everyday games.
You may think at first I am mad as a hatter,
When I say a professor lives in three different lanes.
Teaching is first, then research and service.
All require commitment, some passion and love.
Take on this role, no need to be nervous,
And a lifetime of ideas will fit like a glove.
To teach is a journey
Filled with potholes and peaks
Transformations and knowledge
All the result of critiques.
Yet research has called us
To all sorts of levels.
And we open new vistas
For artistic and scientific revels.
Competing explanations looking at the same data
Make academia stronger
Despite market place commandos
Wanting to corporatize the public good so much longer.
We accept adaptations
Unlike some other professions,
We check every molecule
To avoid all transgressions.
Service defines us in every which way
Community partnership once again is the prequel.
No corporate giant can steal this away
As Academia convulses, stay tuned for the sequel.
The path of the scholar
Metaphysical and practical
Strengthens colleague to colleague and
All three lanes become tactical.
So stay with your history
Learn every component and part.
Then with colleagues most gracious
The professor’s work becomes a work of art.
For more on Dr. Janesick, please click here
The Form and the Formless by Michelle Garcia-Olp
Created at the Institute for Creative Teaching Denver, Colorado
The Form and the Formless
Created from clay, this form we take,
Holds our formless selves.
How could the “I” of my formless self
Possibly fit into the “me” of my body?
How could a body, made from mud, hold the formless of “I?”
“But it does.” Mother Earth assures
And so I am squished into this mold of a body.
Just as Mother Earth pushes me from the ground, I ask, “Won’t I forget that from which I
come?”
“You will.” Mother Earth confirms, “You will forget.
But, every now and then, you’ll remember to return to me. Remember, return to the earth
and to nature and I will remind you, that which you are made of.
Not in the language of people, but I’ll remind you through the whispers of the breeze,
through the blades of green grass at your feet. Through the chirps of the bird in a tree.
When you come to me, I’ll remind you where you come from and where you were made.”
“Will I be in this body long?” I ask.
“That’s not for us to know.” Mother Earth says, “But know when the time comes you will
come back to me. You will return to the earth from which you originate. We will be one
once again.”
And from Mother Earth I transpire.
Made from creation we come.
From the clay we emerge.
The formless to the form.
From Mother Earth’s arms thrust into a body.
Up from the ground we surface.
For more on Michelle Garcia-Olp, please click here
