%0 Journal Article
%T Releasing the Social Imagination: Art, the Aesthetic Experience, and Citizenship in Education
%A Seungho Moon
%A Shawn Rose
%A Alison Black
%A James Black
%A Yeorim Hwang
%A Lisa Lynn
%A Jason Memoli
%J Creative Education
%P 223-233
%@ 2151-4771
%D 2013
%I Scientific Research Publishing
%R 10.4236/ce.2013.43033
%X This paper is about releasing the social
imagination through art in education. This research examines possibilities to
use the aesthetic experience as a means to awaken students¡¯ consciousness for
advancing democratic values, including multiple perspectives, freedom, and
responsibility. Drawing from Maxine Greene¡¯s (1995, 2001) philosophy of social
imagination and aesthetic education, this inquiry aims to enrich discourse in
the field of curriculum studies, creativity, and citizenship education. Six
educators initiated a social imagination project separately. They designed,
implemented, and assessed a semester-long project founded in Greene¡¯s
philosophy of social imagination. The participants challenged habitual ways of
thinking about self/other, culture, and community through active engagement
between art and the subject. The aesthetic encounters with art (a) fostered the
participants¡¯ wide-awakeness about the society and (b) engaged participants to
imagining ¡°things as if they could be otherwise¡± (Greene, 1995:p. 16). An emphasis on the aesthetic
experience through art contributes to advancing democratic values in a pluralistic
society.
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%K Maxine Greene
%K the Aesthetic Experience
%K Social Imagination
%K Arts
%K Citizenship
%U http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=28944