Aesthetic Teaching: Seeking a Balance between Teaching Arts and Teaching through the Arts

This article aims to examine the kinds of teaching practices that correspond to the various educational roles ascribed to the arts within school curricula. Three teaching approaches are analyzed: (1) teaching the arts, in which the arts are treated as distinct cognitive teaching subjects; (2) teaching through the arts, in which the arts are used as teaching tools in the curriculum; and (3) aesthetic teaching, in which the arts are treated as alternative ways of approaching and processing other academic subjects. The first two approaches are used regularly in elementary education settings, while the third, which could be considered a combination of the other two, is a potential future development that could constitute the basis of a revitalized arts education policy. This article illustrates the theoretical underpinnings of these approaches with examples of activities used in a pilot program in public elementary schools in Greece.