Elliot W. Eisner, 2004 Laureate

Elliot W. Eisner, Lee Jacks Professor of Education and Professor of Art at Stanford University was named as the 2004 recipient of the Brock International Prize in Education.

The Brock Prize consists of $40,000 cash and a sculpted bust of Sequoyah, the only person known to have created an alphabet. It was awarded to Eisner during the Brock Symposium on Excellence in Education to be held April 2, 2004, at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, Oklahoma. The award is presented through the combined effort of The University of Oklahoma, The University of Tulsa, and Oklahoma State University.

Eisner has held professorships at the University of Chicago and Ohio State University before coming to Stanford University in 1965. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and honorary doctoral degrees from the University of Oslo (Norway), Hofstra University, Maryland Institute, Doane College, and De Montfort University (England). He has authored 15 books and over 200 chapters or professional articles related to the profession of education and art.

One of Eisner’s early books The Educational Imagination (selected as one of the books of the century by The Museum of Education at the University of North Carolina) espoused his idea of “forms of representation”, which are the symbol systems through which meaning is created and conveyed. Thus, visual and auditory systems form meaning through the brain in a context so that different people may gain a common understanding of the same picture or concept. His book Cognition and Curriculum Reconsidered expresses best his ideas on forms of representation and modes of cognition. Each form of representation emphasizes different modes of thinking and since the development of mind depends on ways in which thinking can be mediated, the selection of forms of representation is a way of developing the mind. Eisner describes the mind as a cultural form of achievement. In his most recent book The Arts and The Creation of Mind, he encourages educators and everyone to regard education itself as a process concerned with the preparation of artists—by this he means people who make something beautiful. This requires imagination, the exercise of sensibility, the application of skills, and the ability to exploit the unexpected. Every career can be a form of art!

Dr. David C. Berliner, Professor of Education at Arizona State University and winner of the Brock Laureate in 2003 states: “Our world is filled with linguistic and mathematical understandings, but less well understood in our age is that the arts—paintings, plays, movies, dance—also provide understandings, some of which are so complicated and subtle that words and numbers cannot be applied to them. This is where the sensibilities of the knowledgeable art connoisseur come in, the critic of art, drama, or movies. Eisner’s insight is that the qualities that matter in art and the qualities that matter to us in education are often discerned only by the connoisseur or critic of art or education. Professor Eisner has convincingly made this argument.”

Eisner, a renowned educator and researcher for change in education, has received many prestigious awards for his work, among them a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, a Senior Fulbright Fellowship, the Jose Vasconcelos Award from the World Cultural Council, and, most recently, the Harold McGraw Prize in Education. Professor Eisner was President of the National Art Education Association, the International Society for Education Through Art, the American Educational Research Association, and the John Dewey Society.