Educational Connoisseurship and Educational Criticism: An Arts-Based Approach to Educational Evaluation

Abstract

Educational connoisseurship and educational criticism are two evaluative processes that are rooted in the arts. Connoisseurship pertains to what I have referred to in previous writing as ``the art of appreciation'' (Eisner, 1991). The aim of connoisseurship is to engender an awareness of the qualities that constitute some process or object and to grasp their significance. Connoisseurship pertains to matters of awareness and therefore to the creation of consciousness. Consciousness of the qualities that constitute novels, symphonies, visual works of art, and dance performances is not an automatic consequence of maturation. In the arts, as in the connoisseurship of teaching, for example, awareness is the product of cultivated attention. Awareness is also the product of the frames of reference that one brings to the process or object addressed. To appreciate the significance of Stravinsky's music one needs to know what preceded it and what followed it. One also, of course, needs to be aware of its particular qualitative complexities and its subtleties.