UW–Madison’s John Baldacchino, a professor in the School of Education’s Art Department and an affiliate in the Department of Educational Policy Studies, has recently published two papers that explore the influence of curriculum design and form on pedagogy.
“Before Oedipus and the Sphinx: Embracing samhandling beyond the school”
This paper, a chapter in the book “Samfunn og samhandling under press: Betydning for pedagogisk praksis og teori,” focuses on the ways educational practices are shaped by curriculum design. In Baldacchino’s chapter, he critiques the circularity inherent in curriculum design when it is based on a presumed taxonomy of needs. He argues that this approach alienates students from knowledge, just as it estranges actors from their actions and interactions.
As Baldacchino writes, “students are trained to consume their own reality, while this same reality becomes objectified by the curriculum.”
Read the full chapter here.
“Form’s Pedagogical Seduction”
In this essay, published in “Uttrykk som gjør inntrykk 14,” Baldacchino draws on bell hooks’s discussion of “the images of Blackness” and the Black body in Lorna Simpson’s work to discuss the influence of theories of form on arts pedagogy. He invites readers to reflect on their direct experience of form by considering what Herner Saeverot calls, “an existential seduction without coercion.”
Including a series of visual sketches, Baldacchino’s objective is to engage with form’s indirect pedagogical possibilities and extensive potentials, through which we begin to regard arts education as a horizon of endless possibilities.
Read the full paper here.