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Other-Than-Ego Consciousness: Approaching The “Spiritual” In Secular Art Education, Nico Roenpagel

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

Alternative worldviews bring forth alternative visions of education. This article sheds light on one contemporary approach to a spiritual worldview and its implications for secular art education. It proposes that high school visual art is a particularly conducive environment to engaging teenagers with existential and spiritual questions. An approach to spirituality grounded in a worldview of “profound interconnectedness” and “other-than-ego consciousness,” rather than religious systems, offers a timely basis for renegotiating the spiritual in secular art education settings. Through five concepts, the article bridges broader discussions on spirituality with concrete learning and teaching in the art classroom. For example, it …