PRAISE OF THE CLASS - experience, fruition and esthesia in the training of art theachers

• Grant number: 24/14532-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research
• Start date: March 12, 2025
• End date: September 11, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Arts - Arts Education
• Principal Investigator: Veronica Goncalves Veloso
• Grantee: Veronica Goncalves Veloso
• Host Investigator: Christophe Triau
• Host Institution: Escola de Comunicações e Artes (ECA). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense (Paris 10), France

Abstract

The Brazilian public schools are marked by fragility. There is a recurring questioning of the school, a discrediting by the population, a devaluation of the figure of the teacher and an emptying of its original form (free time from production, according to the notion of skolé). Perhaps as a reflection of this process, in the last 20 years there have been few dissertations and theses defended in the line of research Education and Performing Arts at the University of São Paulo dedicated to teaching arts in basic school, specifically facing the difficulties and ambivalences of Brazilian public education. Given the urgency of such issues, this project seeks alternatives for training art teachers who are willing to reimagine the school, reflect on the current state of art and investigate the extent to which the artistic experience can sensitize children and adolescents to deal with poignant issues at school and the world. Proposing a praise of the class is a way of legitimizing the art class as a privileged territory for the agency of time and space outside the utilitarian cycles of production. From this perspective, the question is: what ways of operating in contemporary art can inspire pedagogical paths that invite students to participate and, consequently, contribute to their aesthetic education? Considering that the artistic experience as transformative (Larrosa, 2014), significant in the constitution of people's subjectivity, the aim is to organize a series of inventories for initial and continuing teacher training, based on contemporary art and aimed at a broad aesthetic education (Kerlan, 2015).The theoretical scope of this research lies in the Philosophy of Education, with the defense of the school by Jan Masschelein and Maarten Simons; the praise of the school and the teacher by Jorge Larrosa; the notion of equality of intelligences and the original meaning of the term school (the Greek skholé), by Jacques Rancière, as guiding principles. The contributions of Alain Kerlan on aesthetic education and emancipation, as well as the studies on theater theory and aesthetics by Christophe Triau, the supervisor of this project, guide this research in France. In a complementary way, the dialogues with Triau and Kerlan support this research, offering clues for analyzing the status of the contemporary spectator (a subject with enough autonomy to make choices and, to some extent, be "formed" or "initiated" in the school context) and for inventing pedagogical paths based on experience, fruition, and esthesia (the ability to perceive sensations and the beauty of life). The aim of these exchanges is to define the principles for a project of initial and/or continuing teacher training in Art that invests above all in the training of spectator citizens (Desgranges, 2012; Neveux, 2007) and, in terms of aesthetic education, in the training of people who are sensitive, critical and available to read the world and the various situations (also aesthetic) of everyday life. From a methodological point of view, using the notion of cartography (Deleuze, Guattari, 1995), I will organize a series of inventories of pedagogical practices and reflections aimed at teacher training, which I will name praises, inspired by Larrosa's studies. Each praise will be composed of a series of creative procedures that invite student participation, statements for the composition of class programs, descriptions of situations observed in the classroom, during walks around the school, or even referenced by artistic works taken as reference material. Among the praises to be produced are: the praise of looking; walking; pausing and resting, with room for other praises to emerge. With this project, I hope to be able to contribute theoretically and practically to the training of Art teachers who defend the classroom as a legitimate territory for artistic experience and who, in some way, contribute to reimagining the school.