Today was our second input for Integrated Arts and we focussed on Childhood Development within the arts. In preparation for today’s lecture I read a chapter of Fleming (2012) ‘The Arts in Education: an introduction to aesthetics, theory and pedagogy’ and we considered this as a group in the lecture. This piece of writing discusses the justification of teaching the arts and has a very insightful and positive outlook on the affects that the arts can have on the development of children. We were all given a printed page from the chapter we had read and were asked to annotate it with visual representations of the meaning behind the text. I was given page 14. I drew an eye to represent the ‘insight into human situations’ which Fleming discusses, and a balanced set of scales to represent the balance which Fleming labels as a very important consideration if we want to make the most of all of the possible benefits from the arts. I feel that the main message conveyed by the text on this page is that different art forms have different impacts; some which are direct and some which are discrete. I love this idea as a way to develop contextual understanding of a piece of text in the classroom as I feel that it would have the power to connect even the most reluctant learners to both literacy and visual art. I also believe that it is a fantastic way of allowing learners to develop that which they may not be able to express with the written word. The development of higher order thinking skills such as analysis and evaluation may come before the learner is able to display them using the written word. Using art in this way can allow for them to make use of and further develop these skills. As lesson 5 from Elliot Eisner’s (2002) 10 Lessons the Arts Teach discusses that we know more than we can say, it is clear that this method can be used to make visible that which we may not be able to put into words.
This method could also be used with sheet music, allowing learners to appreciate the impact that the arts in the form of sounds can have on their emotions and to represent this impact using different visual techniques such as colours, lines, materials and textures which they feel to be appropriate. I believe that it will only be an effective method if people are left to do whatever they wish and are reassured that however they choose to represent the text or music, they will never be wrong. This taught me a valuable lesson in itself today as I feel that as a teacher I must reassure the pupils if they are to truly benefit from the arts. This is to say that I must put aside my natural wishes to ‘help’ the pupils in my class by directing their art works towards what I think is right, and focus on helping them to discover their own interpretations by giving them just enough guidance for them to explore their own imaginations, emotions and understandings.
In the workshop after today’s lecture, we analysed collections of visual art works by children in the early level, first level and second level of school. At Early level, children will often use big arm movements and punch the paper with their drawing tool, making scribbles which can be confused by some as having no meaning (McAuliffe, 2007). However, this form o
f visual art has lots of meaning which can often only be described by the creator. McAuliffe (2007) suggests that questions about these pieces must be asked carefully and with an encouraging tone. This has shown me that as a teacher I must show the learners that I care about these pieces of expression just as much as I care about their work in literacy and mathematics. The teacher of the pupil who created this piece has written on the back of it that the task was to use paint to fill the whole composition. The learner has done this successfully showing their interest in different colours, shapes, lines and textures. The teacher has provided the learner with an A3 sheet of tan coloured paper which gives them enough space to be creative and a black canvas on which most colours, including both black and white, can be seen. The nature of this piece suggests that the learner has experimented with a relatively new material and has shown creativity by using different physical motions to apply the paint to the paper.
Moving into the first level, learners tend to become more aware of their surroundings and become more conscious of pressure and of the learned behaviour of correctness. They are still expressing their emotions and creativity through visual art as they can often be seen to represent that which they know is there rather than what they can see. This displays that they are still to some extent using their imagination when creating pieces of visual art as they are not copying exactly what is in front of them. Both of these pieces show 
the attempts of learners to make their drawings and paintings more realistic and life-like through increased detail and perspective. However, as discussed by McAuliffe (2007), at this level they are often left feeling disheartened and unhappy with their work as despite their attempts, they cannot make it look as life-like as they wish to. This is shown by the perspective of the heads facing side-ways in the pencil drawing and by the perspective of the bridge in the painting. This has taught me that as a teacher at this stage of development I must focus on maintaining the imagination wherever possible and supporting the fact that representing exactly what we see is not always the best way to represent our own interpretation of it.
Finally, looking at the work of second level students showed me that their work is often commended only if it displays a high level of detail and a ‘realistic’ perspecti
ve. However, many of the pieces of work are copies of that of famous artists and this displays that young people at this age are beginning to feel self-conscious about their work and to lack confidence due to fear of doing it wrong. As a child in school myself I remember feeling that as I moved into secondary education, my imagination was unimportant compared to my academic abilities and my abilities to demonstrate any so called talents which I had. The imagination of young people should instead be celebrated and maintained for as long as possible and the best way to do this is to make use of it to show its value. In order for this to happen I should provide learners with opportunities to experiment with a wide range of media and provide them with a wide range of skills and allow them to interpret artistic tasks however best they see fit; encouraging a balance between creation and observation (Fleming, 2012).
Overall, today I learned various methods and ways to support the development of children through the arts in order to maintain the imagination and to channel different means of understanding and learning. I shall continue to look into this further as I believe that it is a topic which holds a lot of potential for engaging learners in the classroom and allowing them to develop and make use of higher order thinking skills.
References
Eisner, E. (2002) The Arts and the Creation of Mind. Yale University Press.
Fleming, M. (2012) The arts in Education: an introduction to aesthetics, theory and pedagogy. London: Routledge.
McAuliffe, D. (2007) Foundation and Primary Settings. In: Cox, S. et al. (eds.) Teaching Art and Design 3-11. London: Continuum, pp.26-29.
lities such as aspects of good versus evil, tense feelings, and a happy ending. However, young children have less life experience so have less preconceptions, meaning that their interpretations of sounds and visuals will often be very different to those of the child sitting next to them. This helped me to consider the fact that in the classroom, I should always encourage learners to embrace their imagination. It also allowed me to consider that within art, there is most often not a right and wrong answer, meaning that art is a fantastic way to help young people to feel a sense of achievement and to build confidence within and outwith the classroom. There may, for example, be pupils in the class who struggle with maths and literacy, but if they are taught that by simply using their imagination they can connect to the arts very effectively, they may feel more accepted in school and be driven to persevere.
and sticking with difficulty. Having read this wheel today, I feel that the habit of persistence is the one which we focussed on in most depth and its importance within the arts has became very clear to me.
They can also be incorporated into and improve performance in other aspects of the curriculum, such as literacy through speech, writing stories and contextual understanding as they allow for the development of many skills and expression of the self in a way which is controlled by the individual themselves.