Abstract
Interdisciplinary Portfolio is a unique set of courses taught within the education department of the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. The authors discuss the ways in which these courses model interdisciplinarity by bridging the gap between studio art and non-arts classes. Drawing on examples from student work, the authors describe the ways in which students generatively integrate knowledge from a variety of disciplines into their art-making and teaching. In sum, the authors discuss the gains and challenges of this purposeful model and cite its important implications for both higher education and K-12 settings.
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Notes
- 1.
The instructors and courses taught at the Massachusetts Normal Art School were listed in the Massachusetts Department of Education’s Annual Report (1893, p. 41).
- 2.
We would like to acknowledge the chapter written by our colleagues Paul Dobbs and Lois Hetland on the Massachusetts Normal Art School (Dobbs & Hetland, 2014), which led us to primary sources on the history of MassArt.
- 3.
Currently called the Department of Secondary and Elementary Education.
- 4.
We would like to acknowledge our colleagues John Crowe, who had the vision to invent the Interdisciplinary Portfolios, and Steve Locke, who crafted them rigorously. We would also like to acknowledge our many colleagues who have taught the “Portfolio” courses, bringing in their own perspective and expertise.
- 5.
These questions were developed by the faculty teaching the Portfolio courses in 2011 as a guide for all portfolio courses and instructors.
- 6.
The Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities examines models for the curricular integration of arts practice (Kolenic & Mackh, 2013) and the benefits that interdisciplinary collaborations have on arts practices and practitioners (Mackh, 2014). Boix Mansilla (2006) has identified different approaches for interdisciplinary inquiry, yet they do not apply to interdisciplinarity with the visual arts disciplines per se. In this chapter, however, we examine models in which non-arts disciplines integrate into arts practices.
- 7.
We have used pseudonyms for students’ names.
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Katzew, A., Archambault, A. (2016). Approaching Interdisciplinarity in a School of Art and Design. In: Hoffmann Davis, J. (eds) Discourse and Disjuncture between the Arts and Higher Education. The Arts in Higher Education. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55243-3_6
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