ABSTRACT
Explicitly or not, every state of the field essay offers a definition of the field it reviews. By the simple act of including some studies and excluding others, by choosing what to emphasize and how to assess it, the reviewer offers an implicit argument for how the field is best understood. Even in established and unified fields, this task of self-definition is complex, contentious, and ongoing. In this particular case, the matter is even more complex since we are dealing with a relatively loose federation of distinct, if overlapping, sub-fields. To get a sense of the range of what I am including under the umbrella term “educational aesthetics,” let us begin by considering a number of distinctions.
