The American educator and philosopher of education Elliot W. Eisner is an ideal theorist to examine when determining the best ways, means, and measures to set standards for an elementary math school curriculum. Eisner was unapologetic in his demand for what he called the exercise of standards-based artistry and the development of connoisseurship in education, and for what some of his critics have called elitism in approaching the educational process. However, Eisner"s called for standards, although Eisner is particularly known for his work in arts education, makes his hands-on theories of education both useful and inspiring to elementary school math teachers. .

             Eisner"s examination of process and the artistry of education in The Enlightened Eye proved that he was attempting extension of his thinking to qualitative research into education and to the sciences as well as humanities. "To conceive of students as artists who do their art in science, in the arts, or the humanities, is, after all, both a daunting and a profound aspiration," he wrote later on, but education is not an assembly line, rather "the field of education has much to learn from the arts about the practice of education. It is time to embrace a new model for improving our schools," where the school functions as a laboratory of innovation and experimentation. (Eisner 2004) For Eisner, "knowledge is an intensely variable and personal "event", something acquired via a combination of one's senses - visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, gustatory - assembled according to a personal schema, and then made public - expressed, typically, by the same sensory modalities utilized in the initial acquisition."(Lloyd-Zannini, 1998, cited by Smith, 2005) Again, this is an inspiration in particular for an elementary math school class for it stresses that learning must be experiential, exciting, yet still convey something beyond pure fun or feeling.