Connecting Classrooms and Communities Through Chicano Mural Art

摘要

Teacher educators can use community art and arts learning strategies to help secondary preservice teachers gain insight into disciplinary understanding that is important to the humanities and relevant to the communities in which they teach. Such insight can then inform teachers' rationales for why and how they teach principles of social justice. It is a given in teaching at the secondary level that disciplinary knowledge matters and should be relevant to the lives of students. When state curriculum frameworks for disciplines such as art, English, and social studies fill thick binders and list hundreds of standards for student learning, how do preservice teachers entering the profession make decisions about what matters and why? Interacting with public art can ground teachers in educational philosophies and practices connected to teaching for social justice. In particular, carefully observing and interacting with public art can help preservice teachers see the big picture reasons for teaching these disciplines and how the community is an important touchstone for exploring the relevance of the humanities. In turn, this knowledge from public art can lead to insights about standards and their potential relevance to the lives of students.