El objetivo de este ensayo es examinar aquello que los psicologos han descubierto acerca de los principios que rigen el desarrollo de los seres humanos, prestando especial atencion a los estudios que sugieren principios que operan en el area artistica y a los que abrigan lecciones para los educadores en artes. Howard Gardner, catedratico de la Harvard Graduate School of Education, es tambien el autor de libros como Arte, mente y cerebro, La nueva ciencia de la mente o La mente no escolarizada, todos ellos igualmente publicados por Paidos.
Howard Gardner is the John H. and Elisabeth A. Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He also holds positions as Adjunct Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and Senior Director of Harvard Project Zero. Among numerous honors, Gardner received a MacArthur Prize Fellowship in 1981. He has received honorary degrees from 26 colleges and universities, including institutions in Bulgaria, Chile, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Italy, and South Korea. In 2005 and again in 2008, he was selected by Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines as one of the 100 most influential public intellectuals in the world. The author of 25 books translated into 28 languages, and several hundred articles, Gardner is best known in educational circles for his theory of multiple intelligences, a critique of the notion that there exists but a single human intelligence that can be adequately assessed by standard psychometric instruments.
During the past two decades, Gardner and colleagues at Project Zero have been involved in the design of performance-based assessments; education for understanding; the use of multiple intelligences to achieve more personalized curriculum, instruction, and pedagogy; and the quality of interdisciplinary efforts in education. Since the middle 1990s, in collaboration with psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and William Damon, Gardner has directed the GoodWork Project-- a study of work that is excellent, engaging, and ethical. More recently, with long time Project Zero colleagues Lynn Barendsen and Wendy Fischman, he has conducted reflection sessions designed to enhance the understanding and incidence of good work among young people. With Carrie James and other colleagues at Project Zero, he is also investigating the nature of trust in contemporary society and ethical dimensions entailed in the use of the new digital media. Among new research undertakings are a study of effective collaboration among non-profit institutions in education and a study of conceptions of quality, nationally and internationally, in the contemporary era. In 2008 he delivered a set of three lectures at New York's Museum of Modern Art on the topic "The True, The Beautiful, and The Good: econsiderations in a post-modern, digital era."
I will just share a quote from this text: "Individuals who wish to participate meaningfully in artistic perception must learn to decode, to 'read', the various symbolic vehicles in their culture; individuals who wish to participate in artistic creation must learn how to manipulate, how to 'write with' the various symbolic forms present in their culture; and, finally, individuals who wish to engage fully in the artistic realm must also gain mastery of certain central artistic concepts. Just as one cannot assume that individuals will - in the absence of support - learn to read and write in their natural languages, so, too, it seems reasonable to assume that individuals can benefit from assistance in learning to 'read' and 'write' in the various languages of art."
It's some heavy lifting for a 50 page essay, but it has some interesting thoughts inside it.