The Foundations of Aesthetics, Art, and Art Education

addresses the need for a single reference that will provide educators and educational psychologists with fundamental information and an appraisal of current research in this challenging area. The contributors to this informative volume assert that aesthetics is a basic human response and that attendant educational issues are best understood from the perspective of the social and behavioral sciences—pyschology, sociology, and biology. They present the latest theoretical and empirical knowledge of the biological, social, cognitive, and philosophical bases of aesthetics as it relates to the teaching of the arts. The introductory chapters review psycho-biological and sociological perspectives of aesthetics. These are followed by chapters discussing the psychological dimensions of aesthetics, including creativity, personality, visual thinking, problem finding, and developmental processes.