Published Monday, April 26, 2004
Project Zero’s Seidel Assumes AIE Helm
By Andrew K. Mandel
APPIAN STAFF WRITER

Earlier this year, Project Zero, the famed research group that investigates critical and creative thinking, began discussions about how its ideas and scholars could be better integrated into the academic life of the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE).

Little did Project Zero Director Steve Seidel know that, a few months later, HGSE Dean Ellen Condliffe Lagemann would ask him to become the faculty director of the Arts in Education Program (AIE).

Seidel, a 15-year GSE veteran, steps into the shoes of outgoing AIE founding director Jessica Hoffmann Davis, who began the masters program in 1996 with 15 students and now welcomes nearly 50 each year.

“He’s what Jessica Davis would call an octopus—with each tentacle representing one of the multiple intelligences, maybe,” said Scott Ruescher, AIE program coordinator. “Jessica’s shoes will be very hard to fill—especially given the wide variety of styles she wears—not as many as Imelda, maybe, but roughly as many as her metaphorical octopus would wear, if an octopus could wear shoes.”

Seidel will continue in his role as director of Project Zero, though he said his colleagues have already begun to shift responsibilities so that he can devote time to leading the masters program. He has already decided not to offer his current course, “Close Examination of Student Work,” in order to teach Davis’s full-year core course, “The Arts in Education.”

Seidel has said he does not anticipate making major changes to AIE and, if the funding continues, wants to continue the Landrum Bryant lecture series, which brings noted scholars and artists to campus for presentations that are free and open to the public.

“ He told a large group of newly accepted AIE students that he's a firm believer in not fixing what's not broken,” Davis said. “I think that's great.”

Davis, who worked at Project Zero herself before founding the AIE program, said she is pleased with the choice.

“We share an abiding belief in the importance of the arts to education,” Davis said. “He has done wonderful research in the field and is revered and genuinely liked by everyone who has had the pleasure of working with him.”

Rhoda Bernard, a fifth-year doctoral student in Learning and Teaching and a former AIE student, agreed.

“Having taken a course with Steve, and having worked with him as a member of my dissertation committee, I believe he is the ideal person to take over at the helm of the AIE program,” said Bernard, who graduates in June. “I was only concerned about Jessica's departure when I was not informed as to who would take over the reins of the program. Now that Steve Seidel has been announced as the new faculty leader of the AIE Program, I am no longer concerned.”

Bernard said the AIE program can become stronger through a greater emphasis on research, a perspective she believes Seidel brings as a result of his work at Project Zero.

Indeed, when asked about the critical issues facing arts educators today, Seidel asserted that the field must better define standards for high-quality research, as well as for pedagogy and assessment.

“We need to create a generation that can think well and hard about research,” he said, adding that he imagines incorporating colleagues from Project Zero into the AIE core course. He finds one example in Veronica Boix-Mansilla’s work on interdisciplinarity, an important idea for arts educators who must partner with other teachers to avoid marginality in schools.

“I’m not looking to create a requirement, but I am looking to create a dialogue,” Seidel added. “[AIE] students should be able to converse in research, in policy, in practice and in theory. Here, you have [faculty] who are extraordinary in all of these areas.”

Davis suggests this is an opportune time for the AIE program to welcome new leadership.

“[Seidel] faces the exciting challenge of moving forward in a School of Education that is at a particularly self-reflective moment,” Davis said. “He will be challenged to strike a balance between finding new relevance for the program and maintaining the integrity of its best traditions.”

When asked to compare themselves to one another, the effervescent Davis and the mild-mannered Seidel apparently share a sense of humor.

“Well, he's mature, dedicated, patient, wise -- I guess we're exactly alike,” she quipped.

“I don’t dress nearly as well as Jessica,” he said.

Seidel pointed out that the pair differs in their personal experiences before Harvard – Davis as a teacher, administrator and practitioner in the visual arts, and Seidel as a South Boston High School drama teacher, coordinator of the Theater Company of Boston’s collaboration with Boston Public Schools, and arts coordinator at the Group School in Cambridge.

But the two practitioners converged at Project Zero, where Davis and an Arts Task Force tabulated all of the arts-related theses in Gutman Library in order to make a case for a special masters program in Arts in Education years ago.

This shared background bears great meaning for Davis, even as others tout a new relationship between AIE and the research group.

“While that's a great new frontier for the program,” she said, “from where I sit, it's like coming home.”

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To read about Jessica Hoffmann Davis's decision to retire from HGSE, please visit:
Arts Education Pioneer to Step Down

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Andrew K. Mandel, an Ed.M. candidate in the Technology in Education program, is a member of the Appian Board of Editors.