National Art Education Association

Training the Environmental Design EducatorAuthor(s): Anne TaylorSource: Art Education, Vol. 31, No. 4, Environmental Design (Apr., 1978), p. 16Published by: National Art Education AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3192266 .

Accessed: 16/06/2014 16:51

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

National Art Education Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to ArtEducation.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.223 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 16:51:33 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Training the Environmental Design Eduoaor

Anne Taylor

For several years a group of art educators within the NAEA have met to discuss issues and programs centering around environmental education and en- vironmental aesthetics. We have run the gamut from Dick Whittacker's and June King McFee's use of the built environ- ment to teach design and sociological awareness, to Ron MacGregor's use of the environment as an unobstrusive data-gathering instrument which helps the viewer to become deeply aware of subtle ecological balances and cyclical patterns. Anne Taylor has been con- cerned about the aesthetic environment of the classroom and playgrounds in which art educators may be trying to teach aesthetics but find that the envi- ronmental message supercedes the ver- bal message because the school is sterile, repugnant, and host to vandalism and hate from its occupants. As yet, this NAEA environmental group has not found a sole definition of "environmental design education," but finds indeed a common thread and concern for extend- ing the range of what is considered to be art and art education. It certainly is a justi- fiable interdisciplinary thrust for a field which has too long concentrated on the training of art teachers, who now find themselves unemployable.

A few of us have done research on the effects of the physical environment on learning and behavior and are convinced enough that a well and richly provisioned educational setting will and does provide better learning experiences, fosters per- ception, and stimulates creativity, chil- dren's interest in and liking for school, and other benefits derived from descrip- tive data collected.

Most of us know that the schools in this country, and in other parts of the world for that matter, are years behind in design and technology available to them. New schools are built with old ideas; and the design determinant of square footage and stereotyped traditional needs (cafeteria, gyms, classrooms) persists. We place more value on the needs of janitors and administrators than we do on the needs of children, who, indeed, are the users and the clients.

Playgrounds are barren and in many cases un-landscaped, while inside the school a science teacher may be ham- mering away at ecological principles in abstraction when he could be turning the school grounds into a living microcosm of hands-on experiences which have aesthetic and enviornmental meaning for children allowing them viable responsibil- ity for their surroundings.

A new law, Public Law #93-638, is giv-

ing Indian communities an opportunity to comprehensively plan for and determine the configuration of their own schools-a very democratic step away from Bureau of Indian Affairs domination. Many new schools will be built and old ones remod- eled, the design of which will largely be determined by Indian communities. With very few Indian architects available, the communities may again fall prey to aesthetic decision-making and intro- jected value systems of others. The need exists to overcome the trend of coercive assimilation of sub-cultural groups into one mainstream American way of life. A congruence between sub-cultural life styles, belief systems, and requirements for school environments needs to be achieved.

Many old schools have not been touched, renovated, or remodeled since they were built. With a zero population approaching, it is not necessary to build more new buildings when old spaces could be converted into new and dynamic educational/community used settings.

The need for new change agents in the schools is necessary to their very survi- val. One such agent is an environmental design educator who can assist students and teachers in humanizing our highly in- stitutionalized learning environments or "factories of knowledge".

The architect-in-the-schools project, a federally funded project sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts and pat- terned after the artist-in-residence prog- ram, is enjoying its second yearof success. Fortunately Aase Erikson, the national coordinator, who facilitated implementa- tion of the program, has arranged for an initial training session for architects in order that they might more capably enter the schools to work with teachers and students. Unlike the artist-in-the-schools programs, architects are being prepared to work with children and teachers and to respond to their needs.

Need for Training Centers Through a small grant, each from the

National Endowment for the Arts and the National Science Foundation, Wolfgang Preiser and Anne Taylor from the Univer- sity of New Mexico have established the Institute for Environmental Education. This Institute will combine architecture, art education aesthetics, and man/envi- ronment relations subject matter to train environmental design educators to work in the field of environmental education and design of the built environment.

For instance, in order to provide envi- ronmental education in secondary schools, persons need to be trained who will be able to perform this function

competently and with new holistic perspectives of man/environment rela- tionships. Therefore, curricular elements including the study of human growth and development, ethnology and anthropol- ogy including observation methods, the ambience of the environment, landscape design, arts awareness and appreciation (with a study toward the making of critical aesthetic judgements), environmental psychology, and educational theory and practice, have been planned. Besides university coursework which will lead to a Master's Degree, inservice training and internships for student teachers in envi- ronmental design education and envi- ronmental education will be available in the public schools near the university. Hopefully, internships will grow, move toward and include rural and multi-cultur- al areas in "outer" regions of New Mexico, including Indian reservations. The in-context experiences in the schools will be designed and resemble student teaching experiences in art edu- cation except that this model sees the environmental design educator as a pivotal force for facilitating change in the school.

S/he will act as liaison to sculptors, ar- tists, and landscape architects and be chief coordinator of useable materials for construction. Humane skills of compas- sion and the excitement of motivation will be borrowed from the field of art educa- tion to help the designer become facilitator. At the same time, the educator-designer may be asked to produce curriculum materials, be a mas- ter at devising instructional methodology, and be able to document, collect data, evaluate and report research findings.

Though prototype in nature, this prog- ram is a first attempt at training personnel for new roles in the school. At a time when graduate schools are cutting out programs because there are no jobs (in- cluding the art education field), it makes sense for a university to begin to devise educational programs for new roles within and across disciplines that will bet- ter serve the needs of society, which by no means have been fully met.

Further, the environmental design educator can facilitate the entry of the arts community into the school, and in so doing, help the schools to be dynamically aesthetic. The arts and visual landscap- ing reserved for banks, offices, galleries, or museums can now enter the schools to become a national and integral part of the lives of future arts audiences.

Anne Taylor is associate dean of the Graduate School, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico.

16 Art Education, April 1978

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.223 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 16:51:33 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions