Reading One: What’s Worth Teaching in Art?
Brenda McCullers
August 30, 2014
Summary
Art curriculum can no longer be filled with lessons primarily focusing on the elements and principles of old. A new way of teaching art has evolved. Gude, Lampert, Bolin and Wiggins address how art educators must now consider ways to promote in-depth understanding and critical thinking skills, ways to instill a thirst for inquiry, and ways to stimulate and increase creativity, while connecting the student to the world around them. The authors provide insight into the application of questions and critical thinking within art curriculum and offer vision into the importance of re-visiting what is being taught and how it is being taught.
Key Points
In the article “Principles of Possibility”, Gude presents the idea that “by its nature art is an open concept that is always evolving and changing…incorporating new artistic practices and important contemporary discourses such as cultural studies, visual culture, material culture, critical theory, and psychoanalysis” (Gude, 2007, p. 7). She believes the current elements and principles are not “sufficient to understand contemporary art or to guide students in learning contemporary meaning making strategies” (Gude, 2007, p. 7). Gude provides the art educator with a new list of principles developed “from the students’ point of view, imagining what important ideas about the uses and making of art” that she considers relevant (Gude, 2007, p. 7). Her list includes Playing, Forming Self, Investigating Community Themes, Encountering Difference, Attentive Living, Empowering Experiencing, Empowered Making, Deconstructing Culture, Reconstructing Social Spaces, Not Knowing, and Believing. She holds that these new curriculum categories “give central places to the diversity of creative thought and action possible in postmodern times” (Gude, 2007, p. 15).
To further explain her position, Gude provides examples of projects that require students to investigate questions that help connect art with the world around them. In one such example, students are asked to design a trophy for labels that have been assigned to them by families or schools. This gives the students insight into themselves rather than limiting them to symbols or images cut from magazines as incorporated by lessons of the past.
Lampert complements this by explaining art programs must include inquiry and critical thinking. Lampert (2013) includes research by Alison King that indicates questions “facilitate higher-order critical thinking by requiring students to reflect upon and reconcile various perspectives and solutions for open-ended problems” (p.6). Lampert set out to investigate this further by putting variables in place at an after-school art program. The program included inquiry-based artmaking, discussions about art, and a friendly and kind classroom atmosphere. To begin each lesson, artwork by several artists was shown to the students. Questions were presented to guide students to interpret what they saw and explain it. During artmaking, instructors talked to each student about what they are making. At the end of the session they would discuss the artwork as a group, allowing students to explain their work. Through assessment testing at the beginning and end of the program, a “significant increase in the children’s average critical thinking skills scores was evident” (Lampert, 2013, p. 10) indicating the success of using questions before, during, and after artmaking.
Bolin (2013) states, “Our lives are directed by the questions we ask” (p. 6) and that art educators “must recognize the importance of questions in the lives of those we work to educate…It is with the formation of questions and pursuit of answers that we should initiate and carry out our essential investigations into the visual arts” (Bolin, 2013, p. 10). The lesson example he provides by McFee and Degge reinforces this. After looking at works of art by various artists, the instructors led students through a series of carefully developed questions that helped “students grapple with meanings and significance of art, both personally and socially” (Bolin, 2013, p. 9).
Wiggins (1989) believes “the test for a modern curriculum is whether it enables students…to see how knowledge grows out of, resolves, and produces questions” (p. 46). He thinks, “The aim of curriculum is to awaken, not ‘stock’ or ‘train’ the mind.” (Wiggins, 1989, p. 46) and it is to “establish clear inquiry priorities within a course, around which facts are learned” (Wiggins, 1989, p. 47). Wiggins further explains that when content is organized to address questions as at Central Park East Secondary School in East Harlem where all courses are designed around a set of five questions, “knowledge becomes a means to the end of mastering the standards—the discipline—of scholarship” (Wiggins, 1989, p. 57).
Personal Reflection
After reading through this material, I realize I have been neglecting a very important piece of the art lesson. I am doing the thinking rather than encouraging my students to think for themselves. I am in such a hurry to get to the artmaking that I give instructions and I do not take time to present questions allowing the students to think through the process. I plan to change this by incorporating more discussion time at the beginning, during, and at the end of lessons. Instead of presenting examples of art by only one artist for a lesson, I will add examples by others. I will also include thought provoking questions throughout the lesson.
References
Bolin, P. (1996). We are what we ask. Art Education, 49(5).
Gude, O. (2007). Principles of possibility: Considerations for a 21st-century art & culture curriculum. Art Education, 60(1).
Gude, O. (2004). Postmodern principles: In search of a 21st century art education. Art Education, 57(1), 6-14.
Lampert, N. (2013). Inquiry and critical thinking in the elementary art program. Art Education, 66(6), 6-17.
Wiggins,G. (1989). The futility of trying to teach everything of importance. Educational Leadership, 47(3), 44-48, 57-59.
Brenda McCullers
August 30, 2014
Summary
Art curriculum can no longer be filled with lessons primarily focusing on the elements and principles of old. A new way of teaching art has evolved. Gude, Lampert, Bolin and Wiggins address how art educators must now consider ways to promote in-depth understanding and critical thinking skills, ways to instill a thirst for inquiry, and ways to stimulate and increase creativity, while connecting the student to the world around them. The authors provide insight into the application of questions and critical thinking within art curriculum and offer vision into the importance of re-visiting what is being taught and how it is being taught.
Key Points
In the article “Principles of Possibility”, Gude presents the idea that “by its nature art is an open concept that is always evolving and changing…incorporating new artistic practices and important contemporary discourses such as cultural studies, visual culture, material culture, critical theory, and psychoanalysis” (Gude, 2007, p. 7). She believes the current elements and principles are not “sufficient to understand contemporary art or to guide students in learning contemporary meaning making strategies” (Gude, 2007, p. 7). Gude provides the art educator with a new list of principles developed “from the students’ point of view, imagining what important ideas about the uses and making of art” that she considers relevant (Gude, 2007, p. 7). Her list includes Playing, Forming Self, Investigating Community Themes, Encountering Difference, Attentive Living, Empowering Experiencing, Empowered Making, Deconstructing Culture, Reconstructing Social Spaces, Not Knowing, and Believing. She holds that these new curriculum categories “give central places to the diversity of creative thought and action possible in postmodern times” (Gude, 2007, p. 15).
To further explain her position, Gude provides examples of projects that require students to investigate questions that help connect art with the world around them. In one such example, students are asked to design a trophy for labels that have been assigned to them by families or schools. This gives the students insight into themselves rather than limiting them to symbols or images cut from magazines as incorporated by lessons of the past.
Lampert complements this by explaining art programs must include inquiry and critical thinking. Lampert (2013) includes research by Alison King that indicates questions “facilitate higher-order critical thinking by requiring students to reflect upon and reconcile various perspectives and solutions for open-ended problems” (p.6). Lampert set out to investigate this further by putting variables in place at an after-school art program. The program included inquiry-based artmaking, discussions about art, and a friendly and kind classroom atmosphere. To begin each lesson, artwork by several artists was shown to the students. Questions were presented to guide students to interpret what they saw and explain it. During artmaking, instructors talked to each student about what they are making. At the end of the session they would discuss the artwork as a group, allowing students to explain their work. Through assessment testing at the beginning and end of the program, a “significant increase in the children’s average critical thinking skills scores was evident” (Lampert, 2013, p. 10) indicating the success of using questions before, during, and after artmaking.
Bolin (2013) states, “Our lives are directed by the questions we ask” (p. 6) and that art educators “must recognize the importance of questions in the lives of those we work to educate…It is with the formation of questions and pursuit of answers that we should initiate and carry out our essential investigations into the visual arts” (Bolin, 2013, p. 10). The lesson example he provides by McFee and Degge reinforces this. After looking at works of art by various artists, the instructors led students through a series of carefully developed questions that helped “students grapple with meanings and significance of art, both personally and socially” (Bolin, 2013, p. 9).
Wiggins (1989) believes “the test for a modern curriculum is whether it enables students…to see how knowledge grows out of, resolves, and produces questions” (p. 46). He thinks, “The aim of curriculum is to awaken, not ‘stock’ or ‘train’ the mind.” (Wiggins, 1989, p. 46) and it is to “establish clear inquiry priorities within a course, around which facts are learned” (Wiggins, 1989, p. 47). Wiggins further explains that when content is organized to address questions as at Central Park East Secondary School in East Harlem where all courses are designed around a set of five questions, “knowledge becomes a means to the end of mastering the standards—the discipline—of scholarship” (Wiggins, 1989, p. 57).
Personal Reflection
After reading through this material, I realize I have been neglecting a very important piece of the art lesson. I am doing the thinking rather than encouraging my students to think for themselves. I am in such a hurry to get to the artmaking that I give instructions and I do not take time to present questions allowing the students to think through the process. I plan to change this by incorporating more discussion time at the beginning, during, and at the end of lessons. Instead of presenting examples of art by only one artist for a lesson, I will add examples by others. I will also include thought provoking questions throughout the lesson.
References
Bolin, P. (1996). We are what we ask. Art Education, 49(5).
Gude, O. (2007). Principles of possibility: Considerations for a 21st-century art & culture curriculum. Art Education, 60(1).
Gude, O. (2004). Postmodern principles: In search of a 21st century art education. Art Education, 57(1), 6-14.
Lampert, N. (2013). Inquiry and critical thinking in the elementary art program. Art Education, 66(6), 6-17.
Wiggins,G. (1989). The futility of trying to teach everything of importance. Educational Leadership, 47(3), 44-48, 57-59.
