by Marvin Bartel, Ed.D. © May 2, 2008 update
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AUTHOR'S Introduction Essay:
WHAT IF WE WOULD STOP THE TEACHING THAT REDUCES LEARNING?
Based on tallies done by my college students while visiting art classes, I find that it is very common for art teachers to offer suggestions to students who come for assistance on their artwork. (this statement is coninued below the table of contents ....)
- Table of Contents - links to essays & lessons -
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Goshen College Credits
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AUTHOR'S STATEMENT: When students ask the teacher for help, suggestions are very common. Suggestions are much more common than responses that teach independent thinking. Suggestions are much more common than thinking questions. Suggestions are far more common than coaching experimentation. I have come to believe that when we make suggestions we are practicing a method of teaching that reduces thinking and learning.
Therefore, when students ask me what to do to improve their work, I have tried to stop making suggestions. I try to use open questions about what I see or do not see in the work. These habits have been very hard for me change.
Suggestions are easy for me, but they do not teach much seeing and and very little awareness that ever carries over to another part of life. However, questions that do not include the answers can motivate some good thinking. In some cases I ask them how they could do an experiment to help make a choice about ways to proceed.
After I have used these methods college students and with preschoolers as young as three, I have noticed that they begin to learn to ask themselves questions and experiment on their own. A three-year-old may be making a drawing. Ordinarily, the the three-year-old will work very quickly and be finished as soon as the basic parts of the drawing are finished. However, if a caregiver, teacher, or parent has been asking a series of open thinking questions such as: "What (or who) does this person like to play with?"; the child may stop and say, "Let's see. What did I forget?" Self-learning has immense potential. It develops the thinking neurons.
In the lessons I have posted, I do not show any examples of artwork at the beginning of the art lessons. Examples can reduce thinking. I often introduce famous artwork after the media work, asking questions such as, "What do you see?" "Why do you notice that? Why do you think the artist did it?" These questions can be answered based on thinking they have learned to do during their media work. The media work is designed to teach artistic thinking and feeling. After doing this, we can begin to read the mind, the intentions, motiavations, and passions of an artist by looking at her work.
Marshall McLuhan said, "In a global information environment, the old pattern of education in answer-finding is one of no avail: one is surrounded by answers, millions of them, moving and mutating at electric speed. Survival and control will depend on the ability to probe and to question in the proper way and place." -- McLuhan probably wrote this 30 or 40 years ago. With the internet, it has become more obvious. The quotation is found in Marshall McLuhan: Cosmic Media By Janine Marchessault. page 224
My lessons start with ways to practice, to generate ideas, to experiment, and with questions to bring ideas into focus. Students are not told to do whatever they want. They are presented with strategies by which artists generate and refine their own ideas based on their own passions. They are to learning thinking strategies by practicing them. They are learning ways to innovate, create, refine, practice, synthesize, and so on.
In place of most teacher demonstrations, students can be given hands-on practice rituals (self-demonstration and warm-ups). This gives students confidence and motivation for new processes or procedures that are needed and lets them know that art must come from the artist -- not from a teacher. An art class is not merely a place to make things, it is a place to learn to think and feel. This is learned by the process of learning to visualize and materialize thought and feeling. Learning this way provides the practice that can build minds that are creative, independent, critical, empathetic, and effective. It is a way to leave no minds behind. It is the way for students to self-construct knowledge---not to be behavior managed into doing things and learning things just because these are the things we always had to learn in art.
A few skills and technical procedures are so complex (and/or hazardous) that they are best learned from a demonstration. In these cases I think it is best to follow the demonstrations immediately with hands-on practice. Sometimes I use a demonstration, but keep it short and have the students doing it as they watch. When I demonstrate, as in using a potter's wheel, I stop and ask them to tell me the shape it should take. They need to participate -- not only watch. Being an artist is not being a spectator. I want students to immediately begin to practice to see what they missed and to start looking for new possibilities for shapes it can take and things it can say.
Some ideas in my essays and lessons were inspired when I saw how DBEA (Discipline Based Art Education) trended to increase the showing of examples (or "doing research" by looking at the work of other artists) prior to media work. It was often done in name of teaching art history, but it also appeared to short circuit some creativity neurons. I question the thinking habits being developed. Do we want to encourage dependence on experts? Learning from examples is seductive resulting in premature gratification. It short circuits learning. Their answers do not grow out of their own experimentation, but from somebody else's results. Students fail to learn to think for themselves about their own experiences. Yes, using examples gives faster results. Teachers and others see student products and may be deceived into feeling that students have learned art.
This may be an unintended trend. I am certainly supportive of DBEA's effect on making art education a more serious and more comprehensive endeavor. I also believe that the art of the masters of every culture and both genders is a rich source of ideas and concepts from which art teachers should take concepts that need to be taught - not by having students imitate the look of the artwork, but by having students imitate the thought processes and approaches used by the artists. Of course students need to be exposed to great art of many cultures and both genders. I do this at times when it is not intended to be copied or imitated for a studio project and at times that follow a project that has been planned to build a frame of reference for the historical study.
I may be unique when I tell my students that as an artist I look at as much art as possible so that I know what I do not have to do. I tell them that I try to learn how the artist was thinking and what was motivating the artist. I try to imagine the creative process the artist must have used to come up with such a great idea. Viewing art this way is a form of mind reading where I am not aiming at the look of the work. I am aiming at the thinking that motivates it. I tell them that I wonder what I would create from my life experiences and with my skills if I were to use a similar concern and creative process.
DESCRIPTIONS OF A FEW OF THE PAGES
How to Plan Art Lessons by Marvin Bartel, gives instructions on what comes first, last, and in the middle. It has suggestions on motivation, keeping on task, and what not to do.
Idea Generation methods are essential to the work of any artist. These can be taught, but they are too often ignored in favor of teaching techniques.
Teaching with Questions points out the difference between teaching to think and teaching to follow directions. It is the difference between education and training. It is the difference between slave training and leadership training.
How to Teach Drawing to Children This page was reprinted in the Canadian Homeschooling Horizons Magazine March, 2007. I was originally inspired to write it by an inquiry from an Australian mother whose son, age eight, was feeling discouraged and wanted help in learning to draw better. - to top of page
These are links to some assignment pages from my classes in
teaching art methods.
Art
Education Assignments | Readings | Planning the Parts of
Creative Art Lessons
| Pass it
On - practice teaching what we learned
(teaching is great way to learn) | One-on-one
Teaching Assignment | Successful Art
Class Critique Sessions | DBEA Art Rubric | Study Sheet for test 1 | Study
Sheet for test 2 | An example essay answer
CLASSROOM RESEARCH TOPICS IN ART EDUCATION
1. Compare methods to teach children how to learn to come up with their own ideas for art.
2. Compare ways to help children learn to design experiments in art.
3. Compare ways to teach observation drawing and observation clay modeling.
4. Compare methods of motivation for media work.
5. Comparing ways to increase the imaginative power of children.
6. Comparing ways develop children's inventive powers through art.
7. Comparing ways that art teachers develop and assess new art assignments.
8. Compare types of teacher responses to art student requests for help.
CONTACT ME if interested in more elaboration.
Good EDUCATIONAL VIDEOS are in short supply
Are you an art teacher interested documenting creative teaching techniques so that others can see and consider what you are doing? Should college and university classes in art education see how you are teaching creativity? Other teachers who are less informed or more frustrated may benefit by seeing how you teach. You no longer need a camcorder. I get some great video with my digital camera. It will put 30 minutes on a 4GB memory card.
CONTACT ME if interested.
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