On Art and Inquiry

Art making often requires responding to the world, all its beauties, obscenities and puzzles. Wonderfully, art teachers must meet the unique challenge of not only incorporating a huge variety of disciplines, interests, issues, and content in their instruction, but also teaching students to ask and answer any number of unpredictable questions and inquiries. In order to effectively meet this challenge, art teachers must develop and maintain understanding of range of historical and contemporary art making processes and modes of thinking, as well as develop their own skills and the skills of their students needed to conduct research in their field. Essentially, if an art instructor does not already know the answer, they must be able to quickly obtain it or provide direction for students to do the same. Art teachers must possess the fundamental abilities to conduct research in the field, synthesize and analyze information in context, synthesize and analyze information in context, and draw conclusions or make meaning. Moreover, they must demonstrate the ability to pass this knowledge onto students. Art is inquiry. Art educators and art students alike participate in their own inquiries.