Week 14 Reading & Reflection

"Designing & Implementing Exemplary Content, Curriculum & Assessment"

In the Visual Literacy class which I am taking this semester, while looking at colleagues’ various lesson plans, I realized again that how broadly and effectively VTS can be utilized in various educational fields. There are not only Art teachers but also ESL teachers, Performance Art teachers and English teachers. They all used VTS according to their educational objectives. I believe that interdisciplinary integration mentioned by Karen Popovich would be successfully fulfilled by VTS because VTS could be applied to any subject and field which deal with images and effectively interact with various concepts. In my opinion, VTS has too many possibilities and potentials to remain inside the visual art curriculum.  

Interdisciplinary integration is a student-centered pedagogical approach to education that helps students understand concepts and ideas across multiple-discipline. (Karen Popovich)

VTS could also satisfy phenomenology required by contemporary art curriculum which deals with consciousness, thought, and experience. As Eisner advocates a curricular structure that encourages multiple forms of representation in the construction of meaning, VTS also supports multiple perspectives in the meaning making process. It certainly not only enables students to reflect their perspectives, thoughts and experiences in order to understand concepts which are frequently ambiguous and abstract but also helps them to personalize and give shape to meanings. Interaction with participants also provides an opportunity for students to develop one’s perspective and to make deeper meanings. This process absolutely fulfills another requirement of contemporary art curriculum, autobiographical text.    

How about postmodernism? As proponents of postmodernism agree that there is no absolute truth and advocate forms of knowledge characterized by multiple perspectives and cultural diversity, VTS also supports the educational philosophy that students learn more and think more deeply when they recognize there are no answers and any multiple perspectives and interpretations are worth to be respective in the process.