Meet The Authors
Barbara Clark, EdD
Barbara Clark, Ed.D is an Artist and Professor of Elementary Education. Her research explores how the moral imagination of children is awakened and released via arts-based and aesthetic education methods. Dr. Clark’s latest book titled, Echoes from a Child’s Soul: Awakening the Moral Imagination of Children (2020) presents the critical urgency in America’s public education system to utilize and integrate the arts and aesthetic practices within all curriculum initiatives. Dr. Barbara A. Clark explains in her new book:
In a time of much uncertainty, fear and anxiety, Echoes from a Child’s Soul: Awakening the Moral Imagination of Children, presents remarkable poetry inspired by aesthetic education methodology created by children that were labeled academically, socially, and/or emotionally at-risk. Many children deemed average or below-grade level composed poetry beyond their years revealing moral imagination. Art psychology and aesthetic methodology merge to portray the power of awakening children’s voices once silenced and ignored in America’s public schools. The children’s poetry heralds critical and empathic messages for our future. This book proposes an overwhelming need for change in America’s public-school education system so that no child is ignored, silenced, deemed less than, or marginalized.
Dr. Clark’s research on aesthetic education has contributed to the New Britain University, Museum, Community Collaborative, numerous community engagement events at local schools and the Colaiste O Direain, Irish Language School for Teacher Trainees on the Aran Islands, County Galway. Dr. Clark received the CSCU Board of Regents 2016-2017 Teaching Award for Higher Education, and was a Finalist in 2009 and Semi-Finalist in 2016, for the CCSU Excellence in Teaching Award. She received the CCSU Epsilon Mu Chapter of Kappa Delta Pi International Honor an Educator Award in 2009 and 2016 and has received New Britain Board of Education Awards including; Contribution to District Fine Arts Program in 2016, 2015, 2012 and 2009 and Service to Youth by an Organization in 2010 and 2009. For the past five years Dr. Clark has been working with her colleague, Dr. James Joss French on the Aran island of Inis Mòr, County Galway, Ireland, implementing with children and the community, the Hearts and Minds Without Fear, creative and compassionate, arts and aesthetics K.I.V.A paradigm (Kindness, Innovation, Voice and Action), based on their 2014 book publication titled, Hearts and Minds Without Fear: Unmasking the Sacred in Teacher Preparation (The Center for PAINT Series on Arts-integrated Education). Dr. Clark has exhibited her paintings in many galleries and museums both local and national including the Wadsworth Atheneum and the Slater Museum in Norwalk, CT.
Baraba Clark can be contacted at clarkb@ccsu.edu
Publications by Barbara Clark
James Joss French, PhD
Joss French, Ph.D is a Musician and Associate Professor in Elementary Education. Providing a timely and dynamic framework challenging pervasive social and ecological exploitative mindsets through balanced ways of learning and living, Dr. French’s research and teaching focuses on the power of social ecojustice and aesthetic education to compassionately confront the 21st century problems we all face and advance educators’ cultural competence, pedagogy and practice as change agents in their classrooms and communities.
Co-designed with Dr. Barbara Clark, teacher education events with university students, community artists, school staff and children have addressed such issues as the homeless initiative in the city of New Britain, the dolphin slaughter for profit in Taiji, Japan, social identity exploration with children of incarcerated parents, and sustainable mindset development through indigenous and intergenerational knowledge exploration. These and other creative compassionate community engagements are further illuminated within their book, Hearts and Minds Without Fear: Unmasking the Sacred in Teacher Preparation (2014), the Inaugural Selection for the Center of Partnerships for Arts-Integrated Teaching series.
Prioritizing human connection, kindness, innovation, voice and action through the arts, the Hearts and Minds Without Fear paradigm has had profound impact upon local Connecticut school children and educators’ ways of learning and teaching. Extending this aesthetic education paradigm, as illuminated in two recent international documentaries and the epilogue in the new book by Dr. Clark, Echoes from a Child’s Soul: Awakening the Moral Imagination of Children (2020). Drs. French and Clark are exploring ways in which arts and aesthetics are part of daily life for Aran Island Irish children, revealing the critical global collective need to preserve sustainable compassionate communities, imagination identities, and freedom of expression everywhere.
Dr. French’s teaching has been recognized by consecutive Excellence in Teaching Honors at CCSU including the 2017 and 2012 Semi-Finalist Excellence in Teaching awards; the 2014 CCSU Epsilon Mu Chapter of Kappa Delta Pi International Educators Make a Difference award, multiple Friend of the School awards from the New Britain District’s Board of Education; the 2019-2020 Connecticut Board of Regent’s State Wide University System Teaching Award and the Board of Regents CCSU Teaching Award for Higher Education. Joss is a father, puppeteer and actor and brings these varied and multidimensional ways of perceiving the world into his teaching and scholarship.
Joss French can be contacted at frenchjaj@mail.ccsu.edu