Untangling art and school: Art and schools in adults' and young people's lives.

摘要

What do we mean when we talk about art and arts education? How do we draw the boundaries of art in and out of schools? What are the consequences that flow from this boundary-making? And how do art and schooling fit into the lives of youth and adults?;This study explores these questions by drawing on three years of ethnographic fieldwork at Arts High, an arts-focused charter school in Northem California. Theoretically situated within cultural studies and sociological approaches to art and schooling, this study investigates how art, culture, race, class, gender, politics, schooling, teaching, and identity intersect within the everyday lives of youth and adults. Specifically, it examines how youth and adults thought about and "did" art in and out of Arts High and how they negotiated, contested, and reinvented meanings of "art" and "arts education" that alternately nourished or threatened key dimensions of their identities.;My findings challenge conventional notions that arts learning takes place primarily in formal settings and that issues of art and identity are solely the province of the young. Both youth and adults were engaged in arts practices that extended into and beyond Arts High. Both drew upon the arts, and each other, to construct their identities. And both championed ideas about what art was that were neglected, trivialized, or challenged by others. These intersecting dynamics defined an arena of continuing conflict, negotiation, and accommodation where different ways of thinking about and doing art lead some youth and adults further into school, and led others away. Within this arena, "teachable" students played a significant role in affirming the professional and artistic identities of teachers. And yet, my study reveals that educators who are willing to broaden their conceptions of "art" and artistic expertise could play a powerful role in helping marginalized students become more deeply engaged in school.;Ultimately, this study speaks to the ways in which works get legitimated as art and people get legitimated as artists, in and out of schools, as well as the social, cultural, and educational consequences that flow from such legitimation, or the failure to achieve it.