Casting the Conceptual Net: Cognitive Possibilities for Embracing the Social and Emotional Richness of Art Education

Abstract

Although the argument for art as cognition has gained significant momentum since the cognitive revolution, recent scientific investigations of cognition have revealed the import of social and emotional thinking for meaningful, contextualized learning, thereby highlighting the inherent social and emotional properties of artmaking as inevitably cognitive attributes with educational value. Synthesizing the perspectives of an array of disciplines, this theoretical investigation seeks to balance the empirical strengths and the theoretical richness of both the sciences and the humanities to achieve a more profound understanding of the role of artmaking in human experience and learning. Exploring the links that bind culture and cognition, the distinctly social nature of the human brain and the role art plays in satisfying this nature, this article aims to explicate the viability of arts education as a social and emotional form of cognition, if only we cast the conceptual net wide enough.

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