March 2017 – Expressive Arts and Culture

March 30, 2017April 9, 2017

Tuesday 21st February

Today were the class presentations. These were extremely interesting as I got a chance to see what the Arts and Culture means to others in the class and the specific areas that they were focussing on. These ranged from art with children with special needs, art in the early years or, our topic, STEAM.

Our group discussed a variety of areas within STEAM, but my specific area was STEM to STEAM. I discussed the distribution and numbers of STEAM educators there are in the world, using an interactive map.

I also showed a section of a video about a school who are very much applying arts into their STEM work and how both the students and the teachers feel about it.

I had also drawn on my own experiences and feelings towards integrating arts into science, technology, engineering and maths as it is the way I always learned better as a child, and still do today.

In my section of the presentation, I really tried to keep it visual and engaging for the audience and not just have words on a PowerPoint, as it does not give them a feel of my topic. I tried to keep it as open and active as possible, and I feel I gave it a good go.

A presentation which particularly caught my attention was one that spoke of art in the early years, and she linked the whole project to her infant son. This use of real-life examples gave us a clear idea of her points and her topic.

Below are the sourced that I used in my presentations:

Dowker, A., Bennett, K., Smith, L. and Hindawi (2012), Child Development Research (Accessed: 14 February 2017).

raiseyourhandtexas (2016) Academy high school and the ‘art’ of STEAM. Available at: https://youtu.be/AwTl2wvmd2g (Accessed: 14 February 2017).

Government, S., House, S.A., Road, R. and ceu (2016) Getting it right for every child (GIRFEC). Available at: http://www.gov.scot/Topics/People/Young-People/gettingitright (Accessed: 14 February 2017).
Harris, A (2016) Creativity and Education. Edited by Anne Harris. Melbourne, Australia: Palgarve Macmillan.

Scotland, E. (2013) Creativity Across Learning 3-18. Available at: https://education.gov.scot/improvement/Documents/Creativity/CRE2_UnlockYourCreativity/Creativity3to18.pdf (Accessed: 15 February 2017).

Craft, A. (2000) Creativity across the primary curriculum: Framing and developing practice. London: Routledge Falmer.

Cochrane, P. and Cockett, M. (2007) Building a Creative School- a dynamic approach to school development. London, United Kingdom: Tetham Books.

Education, S. (no date) Map. Available at: https://steamedu.com/map-2/ (Accessed: 21 February 2017).

March 20, 2017April 9, 2017

Thursday 2nd February

STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) is a scheme that has been promoted through primary schools, encouraging the study of scientific subjects from an early age (Stem, 2017). This, however, does not include the arts, and the arts and the other curricular areas “are taught in isolation from each other” (Abbs, 1987).

STEAM (science, technology, engineering and maths) is a newer scheme with the integration of the arts in STEM (Stemtosteam, 2017). Today, we were discussing the importance of highlighting the art and design subjects in partnership with STEM as they are not effective without the other.

I believe, that in today’s day and age, every single person should have the right to express their thoughts and feelings through whichever method suits them best. This includes in the classroom. Every child learns in a different way and this means the children that learn visually and in other ways. We live in the 21st century where the arts are a part of our everyday lives, and this should be embraced in schools for every single child, even those who don’t prefer it as much as others. The “investigation, adaptation and transformation” (Dixon and Chalmers, 1990) involved in a child’s creative journey, reflect skills used in subjects like maths or English and prove that the arts are equally important.

Abbs, P. (1987). Living Powers: The Arts In Education. London: Falmer Press.

Dixon, G.T and Chalmers, F.G. (1990) ‘The Expressive Arts In Education’, Childhood Education. pg 12.

Stem. (2017). STEM. [online] Available at: https://www.stem.org.uk/ [Accessed 19 Mar. 2017].

Stemtosteam. (2017). STEM to STEAM. [online] Available at: http://stemtosteam.org/ [Accessed 19 Mar. 2017].

YouTube. (2017). Integrating Art with STEM Education | Océane Boulais | TEDxBocaRaton. [online] Available at: https://youtu.be/DjpWQkmopgY [Accessed 19 Mar. 2017].

March 15, 2017April 10, 2017

Thursday 16th February

Scotland has a history of having some of the world’s most creative people; from Charles Rennie Mackintosh to Peter Howson, we have an incredible range of architecture, paintings, designers and inventors. Living in Glasgow, I have been brought up surrounded by amazing art galleries and museums. As a child, Kelvingrove and The Burrell were always my favourite, and even today these buildings are some of my favourite in the world.

I feel that having a cultural upbringing has resulted in me being an open-minded and creative person who went on to do Advanced Higher art at school. Yes, I may not be able to get every child to fall in love with art like I do, but I do strongly believe that experiencing and understanding the expressive arts in our culture leads to being a more rounded person and learner. It is this that I hope to bring to the classroom.

Children develop their ‘knowledge and understanding’, ‘skills’, ‘attitudes and values’, ‘enjoyment, inspiration and creativity’, ‘activity, behaviour and progression’ and ‘attitudes and values’ (Hooper-Greenhill, 2004). It is known that school trips are sometimes difficult in disadvantaged areas due to expenses, however many museums and galleries now do free bus links between the school and the building, therefore every school gets equal opportunity. Going to art galleries and museums are also not just educational, for a lot of people they are an escape and a type of therapy.

I strongly feel that children need to understand not only about our culture and history, but about the world. Museums are the perfect place to do this and with the creative partnership between the school and the education staff at the museums, young people can learn far more about the world than simply in the classroom.

Hooper-Greenhill, E. (2004). Inspiration, identity, learning. 1st ed. Leicester: University of Leicester.