Reading Reflection #5

The two chapters this week from Eisner and Freedman, both on curriculum development, were helpful to me in terms of defining what curriculum truly is, what purpose it serves (or ought to serve), and how we use it to draw broad concepts, information, and values together into meaningful, digestible experiences for the students. Clearly, there are numerous ways in which we can shape the experiences of our students by creatively shaping curriculum and re-conceiving the experience and purpose of arts education in a whole new way. For example, Freedman calls into question the single medium approach, a practical paradigm within most secondary level arts education programs. She suggests that "thematic courses can often enrich student learning of visual culture better than single media-based courses" and that "Rather [than start with the object] instruction can start with the people or context in which and for which it was produced and extend far beyond the work itself.  In this way, students can develop an understanding of the conditions (cultural, social, political, economic, environmental, etc.) that made the production of the object possible and the study of it worthwhile." (p. 119) An approach such as this which focuses on meaning, context, and significance of work presents broad opportunities for subject integration and would seem to have relevance for a wide audience of students, even those who will not pursue the arts specifically as a career path. As is consistent with the overall thesis of her book, visual literacy is a skill that will benefit all students, not just those on a path to professionalism in the arts. Furthermore, a curriculum which clarifies the meaning of the work the students are participating in tends to be more inspiring and effective.

Eisner would agree that an integrated art curriculum, and a more integrated curriculum in general, would be beneficial, but he is unsure how to perfect this model without compromising the integrity of any particular subject. Even attempting to do so requires a certain amount of artistry in teaching, meanwhile the liberty to utilize intuition and cultivate such artistry becomes ever more incumbered by rigorous curriculum standards.

“What we do know is that political, economic, and social events do affect schools, and that student interests develop that provide teachers with teachable opportunities, opportunities during which sticking to the lesson plan is the surest road to a pedagogical Waterloo. What is needed in such circumstances is pedagogical improvisation in the service of meaningful teaching and learning. It is here, especially, that teachers' professional judgment must come into play so that they can exploit those moments in the classroom. The ethos of much of what flies under the flag of standards-based reform flies in the face of such improvisation.

In the arts, as in many other fields, surprise is a friend, not a foe. During the course of their work, students and teacher alike encounter the unexpected, students in images and qualities that they could not have foreseen but that beckon in one direction rather than another, and teachers in surprises that unscripted students create. The joys of teaching are often found in these unpredictable events. Just what do such events have to do with standards? Only this: to the extent that standards dampen the desire to treat the content and aims of teaching flexibly, they impede artistry in teaching and therefore impede moments in learning that can be among the most meaningful for students. Planning and teaching profit from flexibility, from attention to the changing colors of the context. Assumptions and concepts that seek predictability of routine and the security of conformity militate against it.” (p. 164)

Amen! I realize this is a rather long passage to quote, but I absolutely could NOT have said it better myself. I actually had to stop and re-read this out loud to my husband. (He's a very tolerant man.)

Eisner is not saying that there is no place for standards or a well constructed curriculum to support them. Rather he is saying that although a little planning goes a long way, without flexibility, a rigid plan will crumble. Moreover, the the value of genuine excellence, artistry, and intuition in teaching cannot be overstated. I for one, second that.

But how to get others on board?  I think, in part, the answer may lie with individual communities.  I am absolutely in love with the idea of “educationally interpretive exhibitions” mentioned near the end of the chapter which “explain to the viewers the features of the work on display and describe the forms of thinking that the child had to engage in to create such work.”(p. 176) Albeit challenging, if we can effectively communicate the value of students experiences, then we have a much better chance of building trust, community, and dialogue between parents, teachers, administrators, and students.

Reading Reflection 4

This week my reflections focus primarily on Eisner. Perhaps because all of this is still so new to me, I really sunk my teeth into How Children Draw and Why, exploring the different stages of child development and how they manifest themselves in student's artwork. For many of you who have a great deal more classroom experience than myself, this may have all seemed a bit elementary, but for me it was a relief to plant my feet on what felt like some solid, grounded basics.

I found particularly interesting the observation an “action pleasure” motive for young children, between ages two and four and it's relationship to adult abstract expressionism. Although it may be observed that expressionist painters attend to formalist qualities and the expression of complex concepts that are not present in the goals of young children, it is obvious that a core part of their process involves stripping away years of layers of social conditioning and self awareness, as well as overcoming the tendency toward representation and illusion that pervades the western artistic paradigm, in order to uncover “the sheer enjoyment of movement with the material and noticing the visual consequences of those movements”(p. 115)  More and more, I am finding myself drawn to the possibilities of working with younger children, which is something I never would have guessed about myself in a million years.  However, I'm very intrigued by the roles of environment, intuition, and rhythm that are so essential to working with this group.

I was struck by Eisner's reference to Jessica Davis's work and her observation of a “U” curve in the aesthetic interest of children over the course of development.

“According to Davis, middle-school aged children's preoccupation with realism and narrative redirect their attention in ways that thwart the brilliance and spontaneity of preschool children's artwork. She believes that the images preschoolers create suggest that they are making aesthetic decisions and are closer in spirit to adult artists than they are to children nine to twelve years of age.....For Davis the bottom of the 'U' represents the low level of aesthetic interest in middle childhood, while preschoolers and adolescents have a keen interest in aesthetic matters.”(p. 120)

Perhaps this dip in aesthetic interest presents a good time for teachers to focus more on a technical mastery of skills and materials.

As children grow, they naturally progress in the direction of more and more literal and representational images and begin to desire the ability to produce convincing renderings of objects and people. I wonder, however, if the degree to which this is true differs in non-western culture where realistic imagery is not, historically, the ultimate goal of its high art. Furthermore, as conceptions of what art is and should be about transform here in the West, will the aims of children follow suit and broaden, or is this progression hard wired?

According to Eisner, it seems the “stages through which works of art are realized” are directed by a mix of outside influences and internal or biological development.

“The argument I intend to develop here is that the ways in which children express themselves in the visual arts depend upon the cognitive abilities they have acquired and that the cognitive abilities they have acquired are related to both their biologically conferred and their learned abilities as these human features interact with the situation in which they work. Human performance in the arts is the offspring of a dynamic medley of interacting features: development, situation, and the cognitive abilities the child has acquired as a result of this interaction. The process of education, whether in the arts or elsewhere, is promoted by teachers as they design the situations in and through which the growth of such abilities is advanced.”(p. 107)

For all of you digital media and technology lovers out there....Even I have to admit that this is pretty neat.

http://vimeo.com/36466564

Reading Reflection 3

As I made my way through the readings this week, amidst the peaks and valley's of comprehension I have come to associate with Freedman's challenging, but occasionally transcendent text, I kept coming back to last week's riveting class discussion on defining art. One of the more memorable summits of clarity came when I reached the section on Judgments of Quality which seemed to be a determining factor for some of my classmates in their process of classification. Freedman points out that “Even the term art has traditionally signified a judgment of quality” and that “the term carries with it assumptions of quality, value, and enrichment ”(p. 53). She goes on to explain the importance of context especially when assessing the quality of pop culture or multicultural objects, stating that “To contextualize learning is to help students understand that many conditions influence judgments of goodness and that those judgments are made based on the relationship of those conditions.”(p. 54)

Essentially, what this means to me is that “art'' that may not widely be considered good might still have very important things to teach us about cultures, history, and perhaps most importantly, ourselves. Personally, I see arts education as having great potential as a vehicle for exploring a wide range of subject areas, which is largely why I chose it as an area of emphasis.

Regardless of our subjective and mercurial judgments about the quality of certain artistic objects, the debate over what defines art will never be won or lost. Nor should it be. It is that very question that drives modern movements and experimentation. It is the act of pushing those parameters that has shaped the progression of art, especially over the last century, and arguably for much longer. Therefore, in our role as educators “we must ask, What art is worth teaching? (which is not the same as, What art is good?) and ask, What about art is most important to learn? From an educational standpoint, we can conceptualize quality not as great (inherent) value, but as powerful (social) influence.”(Freedman p. 54).

As I continue with my classes during my first semester here, it becomes ever more apparent to me that, as arts educators, one of our most crucial responsibilities to our students is to help them to make meaning from the chaos of today's densely saturated visual/media/material culture. Achieving this will require us to go beyond formalist skills training and critique, beyond the exemplars bestowed on us by western institutions of art history, using the kinds of transmedial techniques described in the article by Judith Fueyo and Ladislaus M. Semali, to help students “capture the postmodern reality of multiple texts, multiple meanings, and multiple interpretation.

On that note, I finally wanted to touch briefly on Micheal Kimmelman's review of the Richard Serra retrospective. Among a number of compelling observations about the work, Kimmelman notes that “What matters in the end are your own reactions while moving through the sculptures, at a given moment, the works being Rorschachs of indeterminate meaning.” When it comes to what art is, what always matters in the end are our own reactions, our own meaning.