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 of 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’ perspective. 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.