Judith Burton

Professor

Professor Burton’s research interests have, until recently, focused on attempts to understand the cognitive, affective and socio-cultural underpinning of artistic-aesthetic development in young people from birth to early adulthood. She argues that artistic-aesthetic development is a natural proclivity of the human mind intimately connected to the construction and representation of personal and cultural meaning. Her work has led her to challenge some of the narrower claims of stage theory, arguing instead for a conception of development that moves forward into early adulthood in smaller overlapping phases forming a kind of non-linear continuum within which individuals moved back and forth according to the challenges offered by their environments and their experiences with materials. Recently, Dr. Burton’s interests set this continuum within a more complex “ecological” conception of artistic-aesthetic development within which mediators such as teachers, school environments, cultural spaces, peers and parents move in and out of the developmental continuum intervening as shapers of individual interests, skills and narrative journeys. Currently Dr. Burton is exploring new ways of thinking about digital materials and their role in artistic-aesthetic development and the impact this has not only on children and adolescents but also on the education of artists and art educators in higher education. In 1995 she co-founded the Center for Research in Arts Education at Teachers College, and in 1996 founded the Heritage School – a comprehensive high school featuring the arts – located in Harlem, NYC.

Dr. Judith M. Burton is Professor and Director of Art & Art Education at Columbia University Teachers College. Dr, Burton is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts in Great Britain, a Distinguished Fellow of the NAEA, and serves as Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts Beijing, and the South China Normal University, Guangzhou. She was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Beaconhouse University, Lahore, Pakistan. She is a trustee of the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, MD, USA and a former trustee of the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Maine, USA. She is the NAEA Eisner Lifetime Achievement honoree for 2015, in recognition of her services to the profession both nationally and globally.