The Meaning of Storytelling as Pedagogy

Abstract

ings were rich with stories about her young nephews and niece and the meanings Marilyn made of their perceptual experi ence and their art-making processes. She created similar stories about us, her stu dents (and our stories). I am indebted to Marilyn for many things, but in particular for the understanding of the great impor tance of stories in our teaching. Of particular interest to me was her en dorsement of stories that were autobio graphical, for it was stories about her neph ews and niece that I experienced as signi fying more than the meanings she deci phered. Through these stories she was celebrating her relationship as their aunt, as well as the significance and meaning of aesthetic experience. I recall how these stories became modern-day parables for me for the insights into the teaching of art that they gave to me. This was Marilyn's gift; she celebrated the human experience and made meaning of it through her cel ebration. Similarly, when she related sto ries about her favorite authors (Walker Percy, Annie Dillard, and Martin Buber, to name a few) it was a celebration of their lives and their aesthetic experiences while she, simultaneously, made connections to pedagogical praxis. In the same manner in which Walker Percy used his tales of fic tion to engage his readers in philosophy, Marilyn used storytelling to engage us in thinking about aesthetic experience. Grounding this practice in scholarly re search, Marilyn left a legacy for all art edu cators, a legacy that is critical, particularly now as sociopolitical trends threaten to di minish reflective teaching practice. Unlike Marilyn's uses of storytelling, the literature of the field highlights storytelling as associated with the narratives contained within particular paintings and the lives of particular artists. In this paper, I will focus on the follow ing thesis: The aesthetic experience of those we teach must be a major resource for our teaching of aesthetics, and we dis cover that aesthetic experience through stories about it.

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