AHTR Releases White Paper
Summary
While art historians in higher education devote extensive amounts of time, effort, and energy to the job of teaching, the attitude persists that this role is separate, or even a distraction, from the primary responsibility to contribute as scholars in the field. Maintaining the duality of teaching and scholarly activity devalues the crucial relationship of pedagogical practice to art historical study, and precludes the potential for research in teaching and learning to have significant impact on the discipline itself. In order to realize this potential, the scholarship of teaching and learning in art history (SOTL-AH) must be acknowledged as a legitimate area of intellectual inquiry by the institutions and communities encompassing academic art history. A peer-reviewed journal devoted to SOTL-AH would facilitate this process by providing scholars a space to share research on pedagogical topics, and encourage further academic investigation and discourse around teaching and learning in art history.
This white paper identifies the need for SOTL-AH based on a recent survey of art historians in higher education and a review of current literature addressing pedagogical topics. It considers the impact an academic journal devoted to this topic would have on the art history and related fields that include study of visual and material culture. As a solution to the lack of SOTL-AH, ArtHistoryTeachingResources.org (AHTR) began Art History Pedagogy and Practice (AHPP), a peer-reviewed e-journal, that will advance and disseminate academic research on art history’s pedagogy. This initiative builds on the community and pedagogical inquiry AHTR has developed since its launch in 2011. AHPP will be housed on Academic Works, CUNY’s Digital Commons repository as an open-access publication that will impose no subscription or contributor fees.