Dr. K. Kratochvil, Aesthetic Valuing
Aesthetic Valuing in the Arts
What is the Question?
The key to aesthetic valuing is the question! The challenge that educators in the arts
face is what question to ask at what time in order to forward our student’s curiosity,
imagination, understanding and cognitive development. The following is a compilation of
questions and question asking strategies for use with students from a variety of sources.
I. Essential Questions about Art: Maxine Green
A. What did you see?
B. What did you hear?
C. What did you feel?
II. Finding, Posing and Exploring Problems in Works of Art:
Thoughts from Project Zero, Harvard University
A. Problem Finding:
Noticing problems or puzzles involves adopting a question-asking
and wondering stance and developing alertness to anomalies, puzzles, surprises, and
mysteries. Problem finding activities encourage participants to think flexibly, to use their
imagination, to probe the surface of things, to look beyond the obvious, to explore the
unknown, and to take charge of their own learning. If participants are engaging in problem
finding, we would expect to hear three kinds of questions (as characterized by the
prototypical examples here):
A. Getting Clear Questions or Questions of Clarification: What is that object in the left corner?
What is the title of the piece? Is that a face in the background? Feelings of
puzzlement and confusion are often signs that indicate where to ask getting clear
questions.
B. Finding Out More Questions: Do we know anything about the time frame in which this
was painted? What is the setting of the play?
C. Puzzle-Finding Questions: Why might the artist have chosen to paint the houses upside
down? Why didn’t the playwright tell us what happened to a particular character as
the play ended?
B. Problem Posing:
After identifying an area of intrigue or puzzlement, problem
posing involves playing with how the problem is posed in order to come up with
additional or alternative interesting formulations of the question. This includes revising
questions with an obvious or straightforward answer in order to fin more intriguing
questions, questions with many possible answers, and questions that elude answering
such as:
“Why” questions
“What if” questions
“How does it change things” questions
“What if we knew more” questions
“What is the significance” questions
“What if it were so for everyone” questions
1
