ART 325: CONCEPTS IN ART EDUCATION

             Concepts in art education was a very thought-provoking class. It incorporated theory and practice which helped to solidify and better understand the ideas discussed during class. During this class we did a lot of investigations into our own art experiences and reflected upon those through the readings we did and discussions we had. We also completed a few short essays that reflected upon the multiple ideas presented in our readings. There were a few ideas that really resonated with me; these ideas consisted of the importance of communication in the classroom, how it all starts, the importance of an inclusive environment and how to teach art.

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          “Negotiating Fit” by Mary Hefeli was an article that we read that showed the importance of talking with students and have constrictive conversations about their ideas with them. Often times our perception of the assignment is different that our students and being able to have that conversation that seeks to understand their view of the assignment and how they plan on approaching it is key. These conversations are also necessary to ensure student success. Talking with students about their ideas and projects help to make sure that they are on the right track, and to encourage certain ideas or to deter certain ideas, or even to encourage them to push their ideas further. In my opinion this is where the real teaching comes in as these conversations have always been the most helpful in my own schooling. It was also something that was helpful through our service learning. We always had our students sketch their ideas out first before they would start creating. During this time, we walked around and talked with each student about what their ideas were. A lot of times I noticed that many students hadn’t fully thought their ideas out or missed a few key details, sitting down and helping talk through ideas with our students really helped us to understand how they approach projects and think, and for them to push their ideas and abilities with their projects. Having these conversations with my students really helped me to understand them and how they approach projects.

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                “Responding to Young Artists” was another article that we read that talked about how to talk to students and young artists about their work. It stressed the importance of positive feedback and constructive comments when talking to a young artist about their work. It is important to choose your words wisely when talking about their work as what adults say to students about their work can have a profound effect on how they view art for the rest of their lives. It is a common habit for adults to glance at a child’s art work and simply say “I like it!” or “That looks great!”, but these comments are false praises and students will quickly learn that the teacher is not really looking at their work. The more those comments are said, the less meaning they retain as well. It is much more constructive to focus the child’s attention on behavior, artists decisions, and art concepts rather than if their work is likeable. When “I like it” comments are made too often, students learn to make work that pleases the teacher rather than self-expression and they begin to make work that they know will win them an “I like it” comment. This is something that I find much easier said than done. It is hard to reprogram your brain to use positive feedback rather than the generic “I like it” especially when a student is showing you their work asking if you like it. During service learning this is something that I really tried to practice. I would use comments such as, “I noticed that you chose to use cardboard and newspaper to make your ears and horns” and “this mask represents a lot of effort and attention to detail.” I noticed that after a while our students responded well to these types of comments and I could see the shift in their art making from attempting to copy our examples and the pictures shown, to work that truly represented them. I’m not perfect at this yet and sometimes I slip up and say the wrong thing, but with enough practice it will become second nature to me.

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                The second idea that really stuck with me was learning about how it all begins and how to foster artistic growth in students. Joan Bouza Koster talks about the beginning of art for a child in her chapter titled “How Young Artists Grow.” She talks about how the evolution of children’s drawing directly correlates with their physical and mental growth. She also talked about the work of Rhonda Kellog and Lowenfeld. Kellog collected over one million child drawings and identified several patterns that are similar in all children. She identified the basic scribbles, placement patterns, diagrams and combines, and mandalas, suns and people. Lowenfeld built upon her work and continued it into adolescence. He warned against outside interference and suggested not to teach children to draw to early on as this can hinder their growth. It is the job of the teacher to provide the time and materials for students to explore on their own as they will naturally move though the stages. These ideas were also represented in “Young in Art”. This article talked about how child art begins with scribbling and they enjoy the movement and mark making associated with it. At this time teachers and adults should comment on their movements rather than attempt to associate them with anything. They will transition into pre-symbolism where they will start combining circles with lines to create figures resulting in “tadpoles”. The next stage is symbolism which will be highly individualized as children’s drawings evolve according to their environment. At this stage children will develop a schema and begin to repeat them. The next stage is the crisis of realism, this is the point where many children will give up on art when they can’t make their drawings look realistic enough. They want their work to look “right” and will get very frustrated if they do not. This is something that I noticed in one student in particular from our service learning. There were a few times that she would attempt to create something and if she could not get it right straight away, she would get very frustrated, throw it and say, “I give up, I can’t do it”. I took a lot of encouragement and coaching to get her the confidence to keep trying and to understand that it does not have to look prefect or “real” it just needs to represent her in some way. Another thing that I noticed is in a lot of our students sketches they used many symbols from Kellogs collection of drawings. When Kellog said that all children go through the same stages and patterns everywhere in the world I did not believe that at first, but after seeing those same familiar symbols in our student’s sketches, I was surprised, it is true. All this led me back to the first article we read “Studio Art” by Marilyn Zurmuehlen. In this article she states that everyone has an originator instinct and that there is great joy in creating something that did not exist before. While I have always felt this, I truly saw it in our students, the excitement they would get when they finished a project was wonderful to see and helped me to really understand this originator instinct, we all have. Another thing that I noticed in our students that this article also talked about was how the artist is the imaginer, producer, and critic. I would hear students get upset when something did not turn out how they wanted and also get really excited when it looked just as they imagined. There is also another aspect that I witnessed and that is embracing the mistakes and changing ideas as the work progresses. This is another concept that Zurmuehlen talked about and I saw with in many students throughout our class. It was always great to hear “well that wasn’t supposed to do that… Oh well! I like it and now I can do this!” Sometimes it is hard for me to embrace mistakes and changes within my own art and these students gave me the courage and inspiration to work on that with in my own practice.

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                Another concept that Zurmuehlen talked about is that art making precedes our concept of art. I found this to be interesting because we are taught that art is about the final product, but after everything we have done this semester and watching our students work, I have finally realized, it is the process of making art that truly matters. That’s when the self-expression, experimentation and creativity all happen. This is a concept that as teachers we need to remember because while the final product is important, the process is where all the learning happens.

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                The third idea that I found to be important is creating an inclusive environment. There are many ways of going about this, but I think a major one is teaching to the needs of all learners. The abilities of our students varied greatly, and this was something that we tried to keep in mind when writing our lessons. This was difficult at first when we did not know our students very well but as the classes progressed, we could identify certain things that certain students would respond well to and how to make adjustments for those students who may have needed assistance. We tried our best to create a learning environment that would be inclusive of all out students. One major thing that we incorporated in our classes comes from the article “When is Creativity?” by Diane B. Jaquith. In this article one of the first things she talks about is intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. While there were some extrinsic motivators that could not be avoided such as limits of scheduled time, there were many intrinsic motivators that we did incorporate. The biggest intrinsic motivator that we always used was personal relevancy. All of our lessons pertained to one’s self and personal likes and dislikes. Also, while we were a 3D class and we were focused on recycled materials, paper Mache, and plaster gauze, we tried to always keep a variety of materials out for students to use and we found that they had a preference for cardboard so we always made sure to use that. I believe that our use of intrinsic motivators and our attempt to keep all students abilities and preferences in mind helped to create an inclusive environment. By the end of our service learning we had a classroom full of students that were focused, supported each other and were curious about what others were doing, and were comfortable talking about their work and ideas with the class.

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                The last idea that I think is one of the most important that I never would have learned if not for this class, is the importance of choice and how to teach art in a choice-based classroom. Through the article “Value, Beliefs, Behaviors, and Artmaking in the Middle Grades” by Doris M. Guay and the story of Mr. Miller I have learned a lot about how to incorporate choice into my teaching. Mr. Miller runs a classroom where he spends a lot of time getting to know his students and helping them to get comfortable expressing their personal interests. He wants his students to get as personal as possible and spends a few days having his students share stories, and when there was a potentially embarrassing story, he would ask how they felt about it. None of his students felt embarrassed or intimidated, his body language set the tone of thoughtfulness, acceptance and caring. He then empowered his students to make a variety of choices. First, he had them speculate about how to get started and they created a formulation of “rules to produce good art”, after that they were shown the materials and they voted on which to be used first. Once his students had gotten started on their ideas, he would talk with each one and ask them questions to further their thinking or give them a new perspective. He encouraged his students not to be to tame with their idea and to let their imagination go. When students would resist certain suggestions, he would assure them that they held responsibility for the decision and the choice was theirs. Mr. Miller demonstrated how to create a choice-based classroom were students feel comfortable exploring personal interests and challenging themselves. Mr. Miller is my inspiration for creating a choice-based classroom and some of these ideas we incorporated into our service learning. We always had our students explore their personal interests and stories and we took the time to get to know our students as well. We often spent our class working next to our students helping when they needed and talking to each other. We got to know our students well and what their interests were. We encouraged each student to incorporate their personalities and interests in all their artwork and we made sure to give them a fair amount of choice. The first few lessons we provided a large variety of materials for them to choose as they pleased and gave a semi open ended prompt that allowed for a lot of choice such as favorite foods and animals. While creating a choice-based class can be a lot of work and difficult at times, in the end it is worth it to see how the students respond positively to creating art when they are allowed choice and can relate their work to their personal lives.

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                Overall, I have learned a lot this semester through the readings, class discussions and service learning. It was wonderful to be able to connect the ideas from class to our service learning and see them play out. That aspect of this class really helped me to understand these ideas and be able to retain the information. It was also great getting to work with a group of my peers and the service-learning students as well.

 

 

Bibliography:

Guay, Doris M. “Values, Beliefs, Behaviors, and Art Making in the Middle Grades: A Teaching Story.” Illinois: Board of Trustees of university of Illinois, 2000. 38-51

Hafeli, Mary. “Negotiating Fit.” Studies in Art Education 41, No. 2 (2000): 130-145

Jaquith, Diane B. “When is Creativity?” Journal of the National Art Education Association 64, No. 1 (January 2011):14-19.

Koster, Joan Bouza. “How Young Artists Grow.” In Growing Artists, 71-95. Delmar Publishers.

“Responding to Student Art.” In The Artist Inside, 43-53

Roland, Craig. “Young in Art.” 1-15. 1990, 2006.

Zurmuehlen, Marilyn. Studio Art. Virginia: The National Art Education Association, 1990.