Bridging photography and learning

Pondering the bridge between graphic design and education last week had to do with process, organization, and attention. More specifically, the interaction between the work and the audience. This week, examining the link between photography and education, I'm more apt to consider the work and experience of the the creator. The process of choosing a subject, capturing it, and improving upon it certainly has an analog in the core of sound pedagogy: choosing a topic (or group of content standards), creating a whole lesson, and then improving upon it for the following year (or semester). I believe that some of the aesthetic concerns of the photographer are also shared with a talented teacher: framing information and assignments in ways that are interesting and accessible for students to engage. Students in a classroom are as fickle as the audience at a photography show: taste in art can be as varied as complex (and layered) personality types and learning styles. This means that not every piece/lesson will appeal to every person/student. Our goals then as educators must be to make our lessons (and the experiences they create) as accessible as possible to the widest field of students, allowing us to give more attention to support those who require it.

Photography Module Project

Click the link below to see the original/first shot.

On Graphic Design...

On the surface, graphic design is about grabbing the attention of the audience and guiding its focus to specific images or information. While some graphic design is meant to inspire thought, more often we see it used in more utilitarian ways: advertising and branding. However, if we contemplate the elements and essential aims of graphic design rather than its more mundane uses, it is easy to draw parallels to the classroom.

To be sure, consider this description of the intent of graphic design: "Designers develop images to represent the ideas their clients want to communicate," (Poggenpohl, 1993). We could easily reformulate this statement: "Teachers develop lessons to represent ideas they want to communicate (to students)." It could be said that both pursuits (commercialism and education) intend to deliver content which will inspire thought (or opinion), and move the audience to action. Perhaps that is overly reductive. Nonetheless, there are several overarching commonalities: grabbing attention, guiding focus, maintaining attention, delivery of information, inspiring thought, and (hopefully) response of the audience.



Poggenpohl, Sharon Helmer. (1993). Graphic Design: A Career Guide and Education Directory.  Retrieved from: http://www.aiga.org/guide-whatisgraphicdesign/ 

Eisner, forms, and teaching

The link between aesthetic design and the classroom becomes readily evident after having read Eliot Eisner's Aesthetic Modes of Knowing (1985). In this chapter, Eisner asserts that compositional aesthetics are important to all fields, not just those thought of as specifically oriented to sensory perception like the Arts. There is a craft and aesthetic to all things whether or not we consciously apply it in the creation process. Indeed, we may not even consciously perceive the aesthetics, but the fact that we perceive a thing necessitates that it has some aesthetic qualities.

This issue of conscious design and perception (and lack thereof) certainly applies to the classroom. There are many aesthetic forms within and produced by the craft of teaching including (but certainly not limited to) design of instructional materials and delivery of content (lecturing, leading discussions, guiding research, etc.). On the learning side too, processing information, forming opinions, creating artifacts to demonstrate their understanding, and ultimately transferring knowledge to other areas can all be recognized as aesthetic forms in one way or another.

Both teachers and students can be oblivious to the aesthetic of their respective work; the results are similar and linked: uninspired teaching will beget uninspired learning. It is our job as teachers, learners, designers, and technologists to catalyze strong teaching and learning, and attention to aesthetics is without a doubt a central concern.