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Interdisciplinary, intercultural, travels:A spectrum of experience

Liora Bresler

A Pig and a Chicken are strolling down the road on a fine morning. The chicken notices a

restaurant and suggests they go in. The pig seems doubtful. Looking cautiously at the Eggs and

Bacon sign, he says: For you it’s only partial donation; for me it’s a full commitment”.1

There is potential, promise and peril, in all travels, as fairy-

tales and other types of travel narratives illustrate well (e.g.,

Hearne, 2011). One way to conceptualize interdisciplinary and

intercultural travels, I suggest, centers on the spectrum of

commitment, from partial donation to full commitment, and what it

means for travelers’ experiences and their identity. Full commitment

travels may result in transformation for the traveler (in the case of

the pig, a transformation of who he is as a pig). Another kind of

travel involves collaboration within a liminal space for interchange

and absorption of perspectives, an “interpretive zone” (Bresler et al,

1996), towards an expanded identity. My goal here is not to create a

hierarchy of the “goldilocks model” (too little, too much, just right)

but to consider the distinct style of each kind of intercultural

travel, the social interactions and practices it involves, and,

drawing on my own experiences, the outer and inner journeys it

engenders. Given the positionality of this Handbook as an academic

1 A story that I heard from Vipassana teacher Jack Kornfield.

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artifact, I focus on academic interculturality, addressing the

cultural aspects of interdisciplinarity within, across and beyond the

arts.

Excursions, Habitats, and Zones

The culture of modern universities and arts academies organizes

intellectual and artistic work within disciplinary structures. The

centrality of specialization2 as a fundamental value means that only

fellow specialists can judge the merit of work being done. There are

important reasons why expertise within a discipline is highly valued.

Academic ethos is characterized by sophisticated skills, rigor and

meticulousness, and is expected to stand up for posterity at best,

(or, in a version of the scientific model (Popper, 1963/2004) a

trustworthy stepping-stone for the next refutation). Accordingly, the

processes of enculturation within a discipline and the incubation of

research and artistic output are lengthy. Scholarly and artistic

contributions are typically created after years of immersion in a

field3.

Interdisciplinarity assumes interculturality. Disciplines are

cultures of their own, some more homogenous than others, complete with

their value systems, languages, etiquette, and customs. Academic2 The pursuit of a highly focused line of study.3 Fields vary, with dance, music and math typically at an earlier age; visual art, literature and history later.

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interculturality is manifested in the increasing crossing of artistic

genres, media, and institutional boundaries (Bresler, 2003).

Complicating these dynamics are social and national issues, examples

of which will surface as I describe my own journey.

In his discussion of academia and interdisciplinarity,

philosopher Walter Kaufmann, distinguishes between scholastics and

visionaries4. Scholastics, writes Kaufmann, “travel in schools, take

pride in their rigor and professionalism, and rely heavily on their

consensus or their “common-how.” (Kaufmann, 1977, p. 9) Originally the

term scholastics referred to medieval philosophers who taught at

universities, prized subtlety and rigor, and depended heavily on

consensus that they did not question (ibid). Most professors, Kaufmann

claims, are scholastics. Both scholastics and visionaries have their

good and not so good specimens. Still, Kaufmann makes a case that

academia is limited by the over-riding culture of scholastics (ibid).5

“Those who work on the frontiers of knowledge must cross the frontiers

of their departments,” he declares (Kaufmann, 1977, p. 43).

This distinction--essentially between those working within an

existing framework or paradigm versus those who create a paradigm

4 His taxonomy of academics also includes Socratics and journalists. 5 Kaufmann claims that a visionary could hardly feel at home in academia,presenting the cases of Spinosa, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein (Kaufmann, 1977,p. 11).

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shift--“incommensurable ways of seeing the world” (Kuhn, 1962/1970, p.

4)-- has been articulated by Thomas Kuhn, himself a traveler across

disciplines. Kuhn considers how both visionaries and “normal”

scientists, whom he defines as puzzle-solving within an accepted

framework, have operated in the history of science.6 In the realm of

the arts, Harry Broudy draws a similar distinction among anticipatory,

summarizing, and seminal works of art as organizers of curriculum

(Broudy, Burnett and Smith, 1964). Anticipatory artworks are

pioneering; summarizing artworks operate within established

traditions; seminal works combine both in that they are catalysts for

change. Kaufmann, Kuhn, and Broudy convey a range of attitudes towards

the cutting edge versus the traditional, with Kaufmann enthused by the

former, and Broudy by the latter (a view that is related, it seems, to

how each sees himself. Broudy is ever the realist, the neo-

Aristotelian (1958); Kaufmann regards himself as the heretic (1959).7

Given the structures and ethos of academia, the ability to

create impact in several different domains is uncommon. Occasionally,

we encounter a scholar who initiates a voyage across domains, making a

6 Though, as Imre Lakatos has pointed out, paradigm shift is often initiated within the discipline (Lakatos, 1976).7 Crossing disciplinary boundaries is a feature of entrepreneurship andinnovation, an important aspect of artistic practice. Bresler, (2009) refersto crossing disciplines in the context of intellectual entrepreneurship.Griffin, Price & Vojak (2012) discuss serial innovators as able to reframeproblems, a consequence of branching beyond one’s discipline.

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mark on each of them and moving on to the next. One well-known example

is psychologist Jerome Bruner. Bruner made significant contributions

to cognitive learning and theory, then language development, later

focusing his thinking on narrative construction of reality, and most

recently on legal psychology. Examining his oeuvre, we can note the

connections among these contributions. Yet, the disciplinary

contributions are distinct.

Artists’ journeys can manifest a similar trajectory. While for

most, the artistic evolution has been gradual and stays within one

style, there are also those, like Picasso, who went through several

noticeable styles--from realism, through modernism, to different types

of cubism--to conceive new ways of representing and seeing in each.

Some intercultural artists’ work evolves to incorporate new genres and

styles, for example, YoYo Ma and Daniel Barenboim. Others, like

Osvaldo Golijov and Meredith Monk, have consistently drawn on their

broad foundation of multiple artistic genres and forms. Another issue

concerns the impact of the intercultural work. The juxtaposition of

diverse cultural traditions practiced, for example, by Golijov and Ma

opened up possibilities within classical music. Impact can also reach

across multiple artistic communities, evidenced by Monk’s impact on

music, dance, and the visual arts worlds.

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A close examination of intercultural work unravels complex

relationships among disciplines. Some disciplines and artistic styles

are closer to each other in worldviews, traditions and methods than

others. Some intercultural work involves diverging from established

practices whereas others require the application of disciplinary

skills to specific problems. In the former, the discipline itself

might undergo change as it absorbs the insight of other disciplines;

in the latter the discipline is largely unaffected by the focus of its

inquiry. Just like the contributions of the chicken and pig, each kind

of intercultural encounter can have its merits.

Obviously, traditional disciplines and domains, like artistic and

cultural styles, are far from static. They have a flow of their own.

Most contemporary disciplines have evolved from a mother discipline,

as psychology and physics once did from philosophy when issues shifted

and methods expanded to the empirical. Sometimes, new disciplines are

created, in the style of Venn diagrams, by the convergence of

territories that were traditionally part of two separate disciplines,

as in biochemistry or social psychology. Sub-disciplines, initially

part of disciplines, often acquire a culture and ethos of their own,

as, for example, did ethnomusicology, a branch of musicology (e.g.,

Nettl, 2014). These shifts have ramifications for the positionality of

scientists in the field – mainstream, periphery, or outside.

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We now recognize the crucial role of positionality in knowledge.

Where we are positioned, as the ancient story about the six blind men

and the elephant illustrates vividly, shapes what we perceive.8

Interdisciplinarity can enable awareness of a larger picture and

bigger connections, solving problems most important for humanity

(e.g., Leavy, 2011). For example, the area of informal learning was

generally considered beyond the scope of music education research when

Eve Harwood conducted her study of children’s musical learning in the

playground (1987). She drew on research by children’s folklorists and

cognitive theorists in her analysis (Harwood, 1998). Along with work

by Kathryn Marsh and Patricia Campbell, this approach expanded the

focus of music education to informal learning, now a thriving domain

(Campbell & Wiggins, 2013; Marsh, 2008). The evolution of a discipline

depends on what borders we cross: the discipline of music education

research emerged in early 20th century as an interaction of music and

experimental psychology, emphasizing musical aptitude and experimental

work. It’s incorporation of anthropological and phenomenological

worldviews in the past 25 years has generated naturalistic,

experience-oriented scholarship.

8 Each blind man positioned at a different spot--leg, tusk, head, ear, trunk, tail-- provides a different description of the elephant.

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Research topics go in and out of fashion. Knowledge does not come

neatly packaged within boxes even when the views of the disciplinary

community make it seem so. Institutionalization of disciplines

supports the creation of knowledge through forming communities of

members/audiences and venues for conversation, and these very actions

confine knowledge by constructing boundaries around disciplines.

Claire Detels laments the existing “hard boundaries” of music,

advocating for a softening (Detels, 1999). Hard boundaries prevent us

from grasping a larger picture (Leavy, 2011), and protect us from an

encounter with the other. Opening boundaries expand artistic and

scholarly possibilities for creation.

Hindrances to interdisciplinarity and interculturality are

external, institutional and structural, but also internal—our

resistances and fears: fear of looking/being ignorant within a culture

of experts. Socrates’ claimed that his wisdom consisted of his

awareness of not knowing, his unknowing. Clearly, ignorance, unknowing

without awareness and openness, can be damaging and self-perpetuating.

My use of unknowing is similar to Suzuki Roshi’s notion of beginner’s mind

(Suzuki, 1970). A full head, as a Buddhist story shows, prohibits

learning: the Zen Master continues pouring tea into his visitor’s full

cup to the visitor’s alarm, alerting him that until he empties his

head, there is no space for new knowledge. We academics tend indeed to

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have full heads and stay within our comfort zone. Admittedly the

feeling of an empty head is unsettling. However, in my own research I

have found again and again that it is when I am lost, when the hold of

familiar conceptualizations and assumptions is weakened and I am

confronted with not knowing, that there is space for new understanding

and ways of seeing. While acknowledging the purpose and judiciousness

of the academic and artistic ethos of rigor and specialization, I

worry that a culture of experts is in danger of losing the importance

of recognizing “beginner’s mind”.

It took Socrates forceful and persistent encounters with his

fellows to shake their full headedness (and look where it got him!).

Intellectual journeys that aspire to significant learning are

typically facilitated by sustained encounters with others. Just as the

social aspect has been identified in philosophy of science in the past

50 years9, the role of the social in intercultural and

interdisciplinary interactions deserves systematic examination, for

example, in the encounters of indigenous and classical community

members, or those of different artistic genres.

Experiences of tourists, habitat dwellers, and zone members

9 see, for example, Kuhn, 1962/1970, and Latour, 1987 .

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Just as most tourists see the other through limited and

prescribed interactions or the lens of a camera, what I refer to as

donation-based, touristic interdisciplinary and intercultural work is

conducted through the lens of one’s original discipline. Locationf

shapes encounters. Edward Bruner’s notion of the diurnal rhythm of touring

provides a fitting metaphor regarding residence and social interaction:

sightseeing during the day, hotel accommodations at night (Bruner,

2005, p. 17). The ethos and structures of organized tourism are

constructed to minimize culture shock. Bruner coined the notion of a

touristic border zone, a point of conjuncture, a behavior field that is a

distinct meeting place between the tourists who come forth from their

hotels and the locals, the “natives” who leave their homes to engage

the tourists in structured, prescribed ways (ibid). The concept of the

touristic border zone focuses on a localized event, limited in space

and time, as an encounter between foreign visitors and locals.

Tourists are mobile, and they rarely return. Locals remain in the area

(ibid). Likewise, cultural and disciplinary tourists stay grounded

within their own domains, in conceptualizations, vocabulary, and

contributions.

While the tourist excursion can be achieved through surface

encounters with natives, a shift in habitat requires being replanted

in new soil, becoming part of a new culture, resembling the experience

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of anthropologists. Tourist travels are typically marked by packed,

hurried schedules on a path from one attraction to another. In

contrast, shifting a habitat takes time and requires immersion.

Surrounded by natives, habitat dwellers acquire their language, ways

of being, doing and interacting. The kind of knowledge and

understanding these travelers/scholars absorb is not only cognitive

but also visceral, becoming a part of who they are10.

A third kind of journey involves the sustained exchange of

perspectives among travellers who aspire to mutual learning across

disciplines and cultures. Working in the context of an

interdisciplinary project, Judy Davidson Wasser and I proposed the

concept of the “interpretive zone” as an intellectual collaborative

realm (Bresler et al, 1996; Wasser & Bresler, 1996). While scientists

take working in teams for granted as the way to make progress in a

field, in the humanities and in education, including arts education,

the model of the lone researcher is still prevalent. In the

interpretive zone, researchers bring together their various areas of

knowledge, cultural background and beliefs, to forge new meanings

through the process of joint inquiry in which they are engaged. In our

conception of the interpretive zone, we combined two important and

10 The difference between anthropologists and immigrants is that anthropologists are motivated by the quest for knowledge and understanding, whereas immigrants’ quest is typically driven by practical concerns.

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closely linked hermeneutical traditions: the philosophical, as

represented by such thinkers as Dewey, Dilthey, and Rorty; and that

which stems from interpretive anthropology and the work of Geertz,

Turner, and Myerhoff.

The concept of zone assumes two or more parties contributing,

negotiating, and interacting from different perspectives. The

characterization of zones differs according to the context and the

aspects of the collaborative interactions that are emphasized. Zones

range from the neutral (information), through the conflictual (wars)

to the amicable (alliances). In our reference to zone, we draw upon

diverse scholarly uses of the term as well as nonacademic uses. Among

these we noted Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development (1986), Bakhtin’s

character zones (1986), and Giroux’s (1992) border zones. Non-academic uses

include “speeding zone,” “demilitarized zone,” “comfort zone” and

“intertidal zone.” What is similar about these notions of zones is

that they refer to unsettled locations, areas of overlap or

contestation. It is in a zone that unexpected forces meet, new

challenges arise, and solutions have to be devised with the resources

at hand (Wasser & Bresler, 1996). Navigating cultural zones suggests

dynamic processes—exchange, transaction, intensity, and absorption.

Absorption indicates incorporation of new understandings rather than

merely the accumulation of experiences. Unlike tourists who stay on

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familiar routes, and the habitat dwellers who gradually make the

strange territory their own, zone members keep the strange and the

familiar in dialectical tension.

Within an intercultural framework, a zone is a place of

interchange for scholars and artists from diverse disciplinary and

cultural traditions who are committed to collaborate. As important to

interculturality as the afore-mentioned “beginner’s mind” is an

inquiring, thoughtful, critical mind--the same qualities that

characterize all academic and artistic travels--juxtaposed with

listening that is tuned to understanding the context and worldview of

the other. Zone-members are attentive to what it is that they don’t

know as a learning opportunity, wishing to share their perspective

with the same awareness of their listeners’ need.

My own intercultural and interdisciplinary journeys discussed in

the next section illustrate the distinctions among the three types of

travel. Each type has proven useful for its respective research goals.

The first, conducted in Israel within the discipline of musicology,

involved a touristic excursion into art history. The cultural,

intellectual and methodological territories were familiar. This

journey deepened, rather than challenged, my identity as an Israeli,

musician and musicologist. The second travel involved shifting to a

new habitat, from Israel to the USA, from music to education. It took

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full commitment (more circumstantial than intentional) and ended up

being transformative in spite of my ambivalence. The third sets of

travels conducted within the territorial continent of education in the

USA, was facilitated by sustained interpretive zones-- some that I

discovered, others that I created as a project director.

My interdisciplinary research journeys

A touristic excursion

My excursions in interdisciplinary research started with my

Master thesis in Musicology at Tel-Aviv University, following years of

performing both folk and classical music on the piano. During a three-

year research project, I explored the Mediterranean Israeli musical

style of the 1930s, 40s and 50s, tracing its characteristics to

historical and sociological contexts (Bresler, 1982). As I was hunting

for and analyzing musical works, I realized that their stylistic and

thematic characteristics were also evident in other artistic (e.g.,

dance, drama, visual arts) and educational media. I ended up

dedicating a whole chapter of the thesis to the analysis of visual

arts of the period.

G. K. Chesterton’s famous adage that “The traveler sees what he

sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see” was apt. The detour

from the familiar musical language and concepts to the visual art

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sphere was brief, with a predictable return to my music home. I was

looking for particular characteristics paralleling those I identified

in the musical style: for example, a thematic focus on landscape and

working the land; stylistic elements that highlighted simplicity and

rejected a heavy romantic European style. My excursions to the art-

world of this time period were through the lenses of my musical

background, attending to artistic elements (e.g., form; color);

subject matter; and type of expression, rather than, for example,

evolution of technique and visual representation. Learning about

Israeli visual art, its ethos and aspirations, I gained a better

appreciation of the meaning of the musical style by perceiving how it

was part of a larger phenomenon of historical aesthetic ideology.

These visual artworks have become part of my own artistic and

intellectual landscapes, much like the Alhambra and the Taj Mahal I

encountered in my travels abroad. Similar to tourists’ visits (Bruner,

2005), my visit to visual arts functioned as a self-development

project, expanding my knowledge, vocabulary, and store of images.

I have occasionally found myself conducting similar explorations

in my academic and cultural travels, meandering to the humanities, to

the arts, to other social sciences, in order to become acquainted with

concepts of interest and import. This is similar to my occasional

visits to different countries, noting new sights, foods, and

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experiences. Still, I remain firmly grounded in my own geographical,

disciplinary, and methodological soil.

A shift in habitat: Culture and discipline

Next came a very different kind of journey, not one that I

initiated or wished for. It entailed an exit from my comfort zone, a

shock, and eventually a change of identity--not unlike the pig--one

that transformed me from a musician to an educator, from an Israeli to

a hyphenated, multi-layered identity that comes with a memory of the

earlier enculturation, a constant (now experienced as heartening)

sense of otherness.

The short version of the story is that I left Israel for Stanford

University to join my husband who had embarked on his doctorate. I was

resigned to do a doctorate in musicology there, the logical

continuation of what I did in Israel but not one that I was excited

about, since the musicology faculty there did not share my enthusiasm

about musical styles as historical and ideological. An unexpected

invitation by Elliot Eisner to be his research assistant in education,

a field that I never considered before (or knew anything about in

terms of scholarship), instigated a change of direction. A devout

musician, I found myself immersed in the foreign territory of

educational research. I became acquainted with new vocabulary and

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bodies of knowledge. Instead of the musical language on which I grew

up--performing, doing harmonic analysis, ear training, solfege, and

counterpoint—I dealt with educational issues and communicated through

writing papers. Beyond academic knowledge, introduced to notions of

individuality and privacy, I grappled with the unfamiliar

understanding of the self as espoused in the US. I learned that

intense eye contact, signifying connection in my familiar Israeli

cultural code, could be interpreted as confrontational; that speaking

counter-punctually (that is, simultaneously), which I associated with

engagement, was rude; that telling colleagues how to improve their

paper/worldview, my sure sign of caring and honesty, was insulting.

The transition to an unknown disciplinary field was facilitated

through courses and learning new content. The real challenge came

through grappling with dissonance: the confrontation of discrepancies

in underlying value systems of the familiar and the new disciplines. I

was startled to be told that Music Theory, a fundamental subject of

all music learning in the Music Academy and Musicology department, was

not considered a theory in the social sciences (Stake, 1987, private

communication)! The most glaring clash of cultural values pertained to

the belief in the collective versus the individual, and its associated

expectation of familiarity versus distance. A disciplinary clash

between music and education concerned its raison d’etre. The Music

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Academy (home of my BA) centered on the texts of the most inspired and

inspiring. There are few geniuses whose music deserves to be listened

to for hundreds of years and could be assumed to last for as long.

Exceptional talent was expected of students in both performance and

composition. The culture of music emphasized excellence, requiring

full dedication to one’s art. In contrast, while the field of

Education has its gifted area, it is a tiny, marginal territory. The

general culture of education is committed to the many rather than the

few, those who are struggling rather than the exceptionally talented.

While I missed the commitment to high achievement, I recognized that

the exceptional high standards come with a price that does not fit

with the goals of public education. The culture of Education was

indeed a new world, and I was not feeling brave in the encounter; I

was just trying to make sense of it.

As I made the strange familiar, the familiar became strange. I

noted for the first time, through the acquisition of a new frame of

reference that my home discipline of music had distinct learning

cultures (Perkins, 2013) and a strong hierarchal system, what

ethnomusicologist Bruno Nettl has called a caste system (Nettl, 1995).

This system applied to the types of music worthy of being listened to.

It also applied to the types of expertise and inborn skills required

to be a credible member of the music discipline. Education was

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considerably more open. A space for immigrants, it was populated by

anthropologists of education, psychologists of education, sociologists

of education, philosophers of education. It so happened that I was (I

thought) the only “musician of education” at least at Stanford in

1983, but even in that outlier position, I felt welcomed warmly and

generously (I later learned that others, like Fred Erickson and Philip

Jackson, had similar backgrounds).

My total commitment to the new habitat meant that I lived in

Stanford, and that all my courses, taught in English, were in

education, as was my professional community. I spoke with professors

and students of education, attended educational conferences, read

educational scholarship, and conducted educational research. I did

retain my immigrant identity, strong accent and equally strong eye

contact (it took me some time to note them), appreciative that it did

not seem to be held against me. Since my entry to education, I have

been methodologically intrigued by the musical sensitivities that

supported my meaning making in educational research, including

attention to musical dimensions as an important part of lived

experience (Bresler, 1983, 2005); improvisation as responsiveness to

what we encounter (2005); embodiment as methodological tool (2006); a

particular kind of listening and attending that I identify with the

aesthetic (2013); and the use of resonance and dissonance to identify

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compelling issues (2013). More broadly, I notice variations across

cultures in the expression and communication of dissonance and

unknowing; in embodiment; and in the use of improvisation in everyday

life.

In traditional ethnography, anthropologists started out “here”

and then went “there” to study “them,” returning to write about “them”

in descriptive studies (Geertz, 1988). I stayed “there,” eventually

becoming an insider. Nonetheless, my culture and discipline of origin

have shaped my current worldview; my identity as Americanized

educational researcher exists on top of the Israeli and the musician.

While I hardly ever make music now, my musical sensitivities and

skills are activated in teaching, lecturing, reading dissertations. I

find my explorations in movement and visuals immensely rewarding, even

if lacking sophistication and skill. Inspired by such artists as

composer-singer Meredith Monk, hip-hop choreographer-dancer Rennie

Harris, the Kronos Quartet, pianist Sarah Rothenberg, and

funk/rock/classical composer-violinist-bandleader Daniel Bernard

Roumain, I find inter-cultural art forms to expand my horizons and

sense of possibilities. I seek intercultural works, (for example,

watched the Ragamala Dance I attended the night before I wrote this

paragraph, and looking forward to Jan Erkert’s new Virtuosic dance,

inspired by Rosalyn Schwartz artwork). I live with the occasional

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clashes of values as part of the recognition of a complex, contextual

self and reality. My earlier sense of unquestioned connection to the

world and value- system of music has loosened and became less of a

dogma now, more of a nurturing home in an ever-evolving journey.

Interpretive zones for joint inquiry

Once I acquired citizenship in the land of Education through

academic degrees, publications, and teaching (and, having dual

citizenship, American and Israeli passports), my taste for “inter”

travels intensified. I appreciate working on projects with colleagues

from different continents, making connections across disciplines and

drawing on multiple worldviews to explore an additional frame of

reference. My courses in arts and aesthetic education draw on readings

from diverse disciplines, and on experiences from music through tea

ceremony to landscape architecture. Guest speakers include artists

from a broad array of disciplines, including such intercultural

artists as choreographer Mark Morris, dancer Ralph Lemon and director

Anne Bogart. My research methodology courses incorporate performances

in different media and genres as sites for observations and

interpretations of micro-cultures, attending to etiquette, embodiment,

and the aesthetic expression of multiple forms of representation.

I regard courses as opportunities to create spaces for

interpretive zone. Assignments and class discussion center on

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students’ cultural and disciplinary lenses and values as shaping

observations and interpretation. The diversity of students, a

representation of multiple ethnicities and cultures in the US as well

as Asian, African, South-American, and European students make a rich

and rewarding arena for learning about other ways of seeing and

expanded understanding. Similarly, the short courses and workshops I

give in different countries are designed to elicit diverse cultural

ways of seeing and understanding (tremendous learning opportunities

for me!). A continuum of periodic and sustained collaborations with

wise and intellectually curious colleagues on projects in many

countries facilitated productive interpretive zones.

Most of my interdisciplinary travels involve anthropology--where I

first became explicitly acquainted with the notion of

interculturality-- and the stepsister disciplines of Music Education,

Visual Arts Education, Dance Education, and Drama Education. I

perceived each of these arts disciplines as a hybrid, with one common

parent– Education—and the other, a specific art discipline. Each arts

education discipline established its distinct community, belonging to

different academic units within the university, in charge of

organizing its bodies of knowledge, conferences, venues for

publications, teacher education program. While sharing in the

underlying concerns and mission of creating curricula and responding

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to the educational institutions where they occurred, each discipline

developed its own practices, pedagogies, evaluation practices, and

ideologies (e.g., within art education: self-expression, Discipline

Based Art Education, and visual culture), and was influenced by the

traditions and cultures of the parent discipline and practice (e.g.,

within music education: choral and instrumental).

Several of my multi-year research projects—case-studies within the

National Arts Education Research Center funded by the NEA; the Arts in

Education project funded by the Bureau of Educational Research at the

University of Illinois; the Arts Integration in Secondary Schools

project, funded by the Getty Center/ College Board– encompassed the

four arts disciplines. These were rich and rewarding opportunities for

intensified learning as I noted the commonalities and differences

between the various arts education subjects, their perceived role in

the curriculum, their deeply held beliefs about education and the

meanings and purposes of children’s artistic engagement.

It was in the three-year, multi-sited Arts in Education project,

aimed to investigate the ways that the arts, as disciplines and human

experience, are translated into a broad range of school settings, that

the interpretive zone emerged as a key aspect of the study. In my

position as a principal investigator I appointed research assistants

with diverse cultural, disciplinary and artistic background and

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expertise. Judy Davidson Wasser served in the role as an ethnographer-

in-residence, skillfully documenting the interchange and contributions

of different members from their disciplinary perspectives in what we

named the interpretive zone (Wasser & Bresler, 1996). In addition to weekly

classroom observations and teacher interviews, we conducted extensive

meetings where multiple disciplinary and experiential viewpoints

mingled in the process of interpretation. This process calls for

heightened attention to individuals’ a-priori and emergent codes.

Judy’s notes from the meetings helped us acquire meta-awareness of the

group as an interpretive tool, unfolding in tandem with the deepening

awareness of our reflexive process, and considering the ethical issues

implied in the various roles we occupied in relationship to each other

(Bresler et al, 1996).

In this process, we developed a more systematic notion of

interpretation in the group. Initially we approached interpretation as

linear. As we shifted from fieldwork to more analytic modes, the

underlying beliefs of the individual researchers rose to the surface

as dissonance, anxiety and conflict about the processes we were

following. Establishing trust was essential. We noted how individual

fieldwork data translated into collective products. We learned that

for an interpretive zone to have methodological value, there must be

time allotted to the collaborative work, time that in other

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circumstances would go to fieldwork or writing activities. We

recognized the parallels and intersections between the role of the

fieldworkers entering the culture of the school, and the role of

researchers entering the interpretive zone team. Seeking, over time, a

position within the group, both deal with the acquisition of a new

knowledge and expansion of understanding.

A less structured but not less important interpretive zone

operated in my other research projects and was supported by active

membership in both music and art education societies, and by

excursions through readings, social interactions, and conferences in

all four arts education communities. These multiple memberships

allowed me to note the culture, ethos and doctrine of disciplines,

manifested, for example, in the role of canon in the curricula, in

underlying goals and beliefs about children’s engagement with the arts

discipline as reflected in pedagogies, and in assessment.

While the notion of interpretive zone was conceptualized in the

context of a research project, it proved a useful frame for curriculum

integration. The Getty Center/College Board study of Arts Integration

in Secondary Schools manifested the existence of practice interpretive

zones for deliberation between various arts specialists (e.g., visual

art, drama) and so-called academic subjects (e.g., history, English,

math, sciences) towards the creation of an innovative curriculum. In

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the process of being integrated, school subjects were reconsidered and

reconceptualized, shaped by the identities, experiences, and beliefs

of the group members as they opened to assimilate others’ perspectives

(Bresler, 2003).

Within intercultural arts contexts, ‘interpretive zone’ can be

observed in rehearsals and in materials (see, for example, YoYo Ma’s

discussion of his work with Mark Morris:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RgW_ljAxTg); or Anne Bogart’s

reflections on her dance background as shaping her practice as a

director (Bogart and Landau, 2005).

Disciplines have generated conferences, journals, and other

venues, face-to-face meetings and printed material that interact with

and support each other. Clearly, interdisciplinarity requires

supportive venues. Towards that end, I co-founded with Tom Barone and

Gene Glass (2000) the International Journal of Education and the Arts, a space for

music, art, dance, and drama educators to read, write, and be read.

Similarly, the International Handbook of Research in Arts Education (Bresler, 2007)

has 13 sections (including Curriculum; Creativity; Informal Learning;

Child Culture; Social Issues; Technology; and Spirituality) where each

features contributions by international scholars from music, art,

dance, drama, and literature; a prelude that provides an overview of

the topic within the different disciplinary cultures; commentaries

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reflecting scholarly and cultural perspectives of research in 35

different countries; and original artwork co-responding to the

respective themes.

Cultivating interculturality: Connecting inner and outer

Recognizing the negative power of dissonance as instigator of

hostilities and disconnection, scholars have suggested dialogical

approaches conducive to understanding the other (e.g., Buber’s “I-

Thou”, Gadamer’s “fusion of horizons”). Indeed, one can say that the

history of disciplines such as anthropology, phenomenology, and

qualitative research is shaped by the quest to understand “the other”.

Yet, academia seems to be as challenged as the outside world by

interculturality. Full commitment to interdisciplinarity and

interculturality requires addressing inner journeys: cultivating

habits of a connected mind and heart, juxtaposing expertise with a

beginner’s mind, bringing to dissonance an inquisitive attitude that

aspires to understand. Inner journeys, I learned, are no less

venturesome than outer.

Unknowing and dissonance pull us from our comfort zone, evoking

judgment of self and others, often triggering an “Us-Them” (Buber,

1971) view, where the “other” is considered wrong in service of one’s

own rightness of worldview. Judgment is a double-edge sword. It is

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useful when we need to make decisions. Given the normative nature of

education, all educational matters require wise judgment for wise

practice. However, the quest for understanding, precursor to practice,

requires different qualities. If not handled with care and curiosity,

judgment triggered by ignorance and dissonance thwarts perception and

understanding. Lingering with dissonance helps expand our

interpretation towards informed judgment, one that comes from

comprehending a broader perspective.11

Assuming as a student that once I had a Ph.D. I would be forever

knowledgeable and secure, I learned as a professor to respect the

“wisdom of insecurity” (Watts, 1951), striving to cultivate a

compassionate appreciation of being off-balance and a periodic

emptying of the head12. Inner journeys, requiring inner tuning, are

fundamental to the arts, humanities, and social sciences. Hearne, a

scholar of children’s stories and folklore, alerts us that “It takes a

story to know/understand one” (in Hearne and Trites, 2007 p. 207).

Philip Graham’s (2009) words on the experience of reading literature

11 An example of a quick judgment that reduced understanding is my own EasterBunny (in Bresler, 1992) where, instead of expanding interpretation of thestereotypical artifacts of school art, I used (implicit, but obvious)disparagement. A masterful example of dealing with dissonance is Gottlieb andGraham’s portrayal of the Beng villagers values clashing with those of theresearchers (Gottlieb & Graham, 1994).

12 Including, as my daughter Ma’ayan has pointed out, emptying it of fear.

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are equally relevant to the process of research: “the external journey

is strengthened by an accompanying, echoing inner journey. . . When

one is able to lean into the strange pull of another country or

culture, one’s inner landscape is correspondingly altered.“ Graham’s

observations come out of his travel experiences and collaborative

writing with his wife, anthropologist Alma Gottlieb, described in

their “Parallel Worlds” (Gottlieb & Graham, 1994): The parallels of

the Beng village in Ivory Coast and the US, and the parallel voices of

an anthropologist and a fiction writer create a richly textured

intercultural understanding, for authors and readers, along with

continued support for the Beng villagers.

To support researchers-in-training in their interdisciplinary and

intercultural travels, I aim to teach students in my qualitative

research courses to stay with both dissonance and unknowing as an

opportunity to investigate beyond their habits and comfort zone. One

regular activity I conduct in art museums is assigning students from a

variety of disciplines to choose two artworks, one that evokes

positive, the other negative responses, and linger with each for 40-50

minutes. Students are often amazed by what transpires through the

prolonged engagement with dissonant artwork. It is not that they

always like it in the end (and liking it, of course, is not the

point!), but their perception and relationship to it are expanded in

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ways that, in their words, are surprising and powerful. Many of them

say that engagement with the artwork they initially disliked is

considerably more meaningful than with one that they liked. Indeed,

dissonance can be a forcefully effective door to learning about our

own subjectivities, values and commitments, including ones that we

have not been fully aware of. (For specific examples and cases, see,

for instance, Bresler, 2013.) This learning is crucial to

intercultural encounters. Articulating in writing and sharing with a

diverse student community, essential to research in the social

sciences supports an exploration process from dissonance through

curiosity to complex interpretations.

In addition to drawing on the power of dissonance as a generative

element towards expanded discernment, I use dissonance in course

materials to develop deeper interpretation. One such use of dissonance

in story telling functions as the main organizer of the classic Akira

Kurasawa’s Rashomon (1950), a movie I often show when I teach

qualitative research. It is the incompatibility of narratives among

the characters – a bandit, a husband, a wife, and a woodcutter – that

enables us to discern the ethos of the time, and how this ethos shapes

perception and self-presentation.

The role of writing as a means to process and communicate has

been widely acknowledged (e.g., Richardson, 1994). The attention to

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actual experience rather than its idealization is key. Kuhn writes

about the distorted image of science as presented in the study of

finished scientific achievements from which each new scientific

generation learns to practice its trade (1962/1970.) The aim of

textbooks is persuasive and pedagogic. However, a concept of science

drawn from them, Kuhn cautions, is no more likely to fit the

enterprise that produced them than “an image of a national culture

drawn from a tourist brochure of a language text” (1962/1970, 1).

Indeed, Kuhn’s work aspires to sketch a different concept of science

that emerges from the record of the research activity itself (ibid).

The Handbook of Intercultural Arts Research promises to advance the field for a

greater understanding of processes and products, offering creative

conceptualizations and impetus to engage in dynamic creation of new

scholarship and practice. The three types of travel experiences

portrayed in this chapter– tourist excursion, change of habitat and

interpretive zone-- are presented as an invitation for others to come

up with their own layered textures of relevant conceptualizations.

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In the spirit of interdisciplinary, intercultural interactions, I am

indebted to Betsy Hearne who has provided insightful, wise

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companionship since the beginning of this chapter. I am grateful to

Kimber Andrews, Sven Bjerstedt, Walter Feinberg, Eve Harwood, Ray

Price, and Sue Stinson and for their reading of this chapter and their

excellent comments. Heartfelt thanks go to Pam Burnard for nudging me,

kindly but firmly, to include those intercultural aspects close to my

heart. Deep Gratitude to Krannert Center for intensifying my inter-

cultural journeys (Mike Ross).

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