Full Reply to Burchenal et al.'s Commentary in the NAEA News, April 2008

Ellen Winner and Lois Hetland co-authored an article that was published in the Boston Globe on September 2, 2007, entitled, "Art for Our Sake." The National Art Education Association requested permission to republish the article in the NAEA News and did so on the front page in December, 2007. In April, 2008, the News published a Commentary, also on the front page, by four authors (Burchenal, Housen, Rawlinson, and Yenawine). The authors criticized Winner and Hetland's article and their recently published book (Hetland, Winner, Veenema, & Sheridan, 2007. Studio thinking: The real benefits of visual arts education. Teachers College Press). Hetland and Winner replied to the critique, but the NAEA News only printed a 400 word response, and not our detailed rebuttal of the false accusations leveled at us and our work. The article posted here is our complete response to that critique.

Ellen Winner is Professor of Psychology at Boston College, and Senior Research Associate at Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education. She received her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from Harvard University in 1978. Her work focuses on development in the arts--in particular, the visual arts and the literary arts. Her work in the visual arts has focused on children's sensitivity to aesthetic aspects of works of art, such as line quality, expression, and composition. She has also worked in the area of education in the visual arts, and was the principal editor of the Arts PROPEL handbooks which describe an innovative arts education program developed by Project Zero and the Educational Testing Service. Her work in the literary arts has focused on children's understanding and use of metaphor and irony. She is the author of numerous scholarly articles as well as three books: Invented Worlds: The Psychology of the Arts (Harvard University Press, 1982); The Point of Words: Children's Understanding of Metaphor and Irony (Harvard University Press, 1988; paperback 1997); and Gifted Children: Myths and Realities (Basic Books, 1996). Her most recent book explores misconceptions about children who are extremely gifted either in art, music, or in an academic area, and makes a set of recommendations about how such children should be educated.

Ellen Winner is currently co-principal investigator of the Teaching and Learning in the Visual Arts Project. She has been Principal Investigator for REAP (Reviewing Education and the Arts Project), funded by the Bauman Foundation from 1997-2000. REAP's work is summarized in an Executive Summary. Ten meta-analyses on the non-arts cognitive and learning effects of arts instruction were conducted and are published in a special issue of the Journal of Aesthetic Education, Fall/Winter 2000. For ordering information, see the Project Zero eBookstore. Tables and figures for the paper on the verbal effects of drama are available in PDF format.

For more information about Ellen Winner's publications, please see her CV.

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