The Unvisited Repository

Intuition in Teaching and Learning

Rohini Sen

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The world is a place where everything is connected. The recog-nition of these connections through the lens of one’s personal experience is the purpose of education. Cultivating one’s intui-tive faculty is a way to access personal experience and synthesize new experience. This thesis o!ers an understanding of intuition as an interplay between experience, expertise and feeling (sens-ing). Citing examples of several alternative schooling systems that accommodate intuitive learning in their pedagogies; The Reggio Emillia Schools, The Krishnamurti Foundation Schools, the Waldorf Schools and Rabindranath Tagore’s school at Shantiniketan, I have explored variegated approaches to learn-ing. The book presents the cultivation of intuition as a process that must be internalized by both facilitator and student. This process leads the learner to an evolved understanding of his/her environment, facilitating a space of appreciation of the world as a pattern that represents unity in diversity. This thesis lays out a route to the nurturing of the intuitive in realm of teaching and learning through a value system that comprises of the signifi-cance of description/describing, the self-exploratory zone of discovery and the building of trust in oneself as well as between learner and educator.

Abstract

When Patterns Speak 77

Re-imagining Craft: Making as a Means for Economic, Cultural, and

Communal Sustainability in the 21st Century

By: Ruthie Scarpino

MA Candidate in Art + Design + Community Learning

Academic Year: Fall 2012-Spring 2013

At the core of every artist is an understanding of why we make.

Unlike many artists, I did not grow up believing that the work I did was art

or that I made for any other reason than need and function. I was out of

undergraduate school before I realized that my working was the same as

many others! making or art. My thesis began with looking at the community

in which I was raised, full of builders, workers, crafters and highly skilled

artisans. Boat building, wood, metal and textiles were part of my childhood,

and I learned skills that were functional which I later identified as art. As I

entered and began exploring the professional art world, I began identifying

the rift between art and craft not fully understanding or agreeing with

delineations I was told existed.

While researching and exploring these divisions between cultural

producers, I discovered that the artists and academics defining these

practices while "conducting research" were failing to open their discussion

to current practitioners whom they sought to define. The grandiose

academic hypotheses on craft were never being attached to current

makers or communities and I sought to bridge that gap. Through

interviews with current practitioners, I wished to gain a gestalt view of

cultural producers outside of academia who are living and grappling with

issues of sustainability, technology, and making, and its effect on their

business, creative process, and artistic lives.

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A Rendered Generation

Exploring the intersection of Arts, Technology and Community

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for

The Degree Master of Arts (MA) Art + Design Education

Community Development Track

in the

Department of Teaching + Learning in Art + Design Education of the Rhode Island School of Design

By

Nicole Van Slyke B.A. Rhode Island School of Design

2013

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ABSTRACT

This thesis explores the intersection of art, technology and community through the eyes of three high school students engaged in community arts programs in Providence. The film and accompanying book delve into conversations with these youths who have started to find their paths through their respected community art programs. The film, Rendered Generation, displays how youth are gaining access to resources, their various achievements in the practice of their art forms and the doors that are opening for them as they master real twenty-first century skills. The cultural transition from analog to digital is evident as the youth discuss the opportunities, challenges and programs that their parents’ generation never encountered. The youth also describe the paucity of the arts in public schools in Providence, RI and how they continue to pursue the arts and media-making through non-profit programs. These community art programs combined with emerging technologies are creating confident college ready youth who have an impressive set of technical and artistic skills, knowledge of modern practices and an insightfulness of community structure.

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Liam at Community Music Work Media Lab Still frame from Rendered Generation by Nicole Van Slyke

© 2013 Nicole Van Slyke

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