The formative power of art in education: a Foucauldian perspective

Abstract

This article proposes to analyze, under a Foucauldian perspective, discourses present in the educational field around art and, in this case, specifically, in the interrelationship forged between art and teacher education. 55 prominent journals in the educational field in the last 24 years (1996-2019) were scrutinized around the theme of the meeting of art and education. Taken as the object of an analysis anchored in the notion of archive proposed by Michel Foucault throughout his work, the discourses present in the analyzed articles point to several serializations, rarefactions and discontinuities that, among other topics, show us how the assumption of a kind of formative gift of art in teacher training seems to operate, whether for art teachers or in other areas. There are a series of statements and watchwords that seek to legitimize and reiterate attributes that derive from art as a beneficial effect in itself, consubstantiating in a kind of proselytism of the artistic-pedagogical type urged, especially, by the discourses around teacher training.