Today’s lecture and workshop was mainly based on the development of children’s artwork. During the lecture we were given out an extract from the book “The arts in education: an introduction to aesthetics, theory and pedagogy”.  Our task involved drawing the thoughts and ideas that came into our minds while reading the words.  Although it was a very simple task, i found it  challenging to put my thoughts into paper through drawing.  From the lecture, I learned that I need to build up a tolerance for ambiguity when it comes to arts – the idea that there is more than one way of looking at things.

In the workshop, we were provided with the opportunity to look at some art archives. As identified by Lowenfeld and Brittain, there are four different stages children go through in arts education. These are: scribbling stage (2-4 years old); pre-schematic stage (4-7 years old); the schematic stage (7-9 years old);gang stage (9-12 years old) (McAuliffe, 2007)

Scribbling stage:

This is an example of a painting from the scribbling stage. At this stage, the marks made by children can be difficult to understand. An adult might consider the above drawing as a scribble but for a child it could be “a map of meaning making” (McAuliffe, 2007, page 27).

Pre-schematic stage:

At the pre-schematic stage, children’s drawing seem to make more sense. They start to connect the shapes that they draw to what they see around them.

Schematic stage:

The above piece of artwork is made using tissue papers and represents a child’s work from the schematic stage.

Gang stage:

When children reach this stage of artistic development, they tend to become less creative and imaginative .  As they start seeing the artworks of others, they start doubting their own abilities.  Artwork during this stage are liable to be more topic based.  (McAuliffe, 2007)

“Stage theories are based on this culturally specific and traditional view of visual representation and thus may misrepresent children’s development. In any case, it is suggested that children conform only roughly to these stages and any apparent ‘stage’ of development is best considered without undue emphasis on chronological age” (McAuliffe, 2007, page 26)

While looking at the art archives, I realised that teachers play a huge role in supporting children to create artworks. Without appropriate materials, the above artworks would not have been the same. For example, the painting from the pre-schematic stage would need a thick brush whereas the painting shown in the gang stage would require a fine brush. Also, without the scrunched tissue papers, the Scottish flag would not have the same outcome.

In the last lecture, we had spoken about how arts can be Incorporated into different curricular areas. Viewing children’s art archives enabled me to see examples of this.

The above artwork caught my attention when looking through the archives. The child has integrated both arts and literacy in their artwork . They have made use of simile and metaphors and have not failed to be creative and imaginative with their drawing.

References:

McAuliffe, D (2007) Foundation and Primary Settings. in Teaching Art and Design 3-11 (Edited by Sue cox, Robert Watts, Judy Grahame, Steve Herne and Diarmuid McAufille) London: Continuum.