PaulStevensJune14

TeachingasInquiryEssay:HigherOrderThinkinginArt
Introduction
It was during my second placement at a large decile 7 co-educational secondary school in
Mt Albert that I best had the opportunity to formally implement Teaching as Inquiry into
the metacognitive aspects of art teaching and the capacity for promoting Higher Order
Thinking (HOT) in an art classroom. In particular it was with a Year 10 mixed art class
that the opportunity arose.
While working on portrait paintings based on 2-3 artist models, my Associate Teacher
suggested that I interrupt this activity to complete the next assigned unit titled Knowing
About Art, focused on a brief look at the history of art, with them instead to give me the
chance to put together and deliver a full unit. One of the most supportive ATs I had, she
insisted that I could have free reign with it and encouraged me to leverage my Art History
knowledge and experience to extend the students thinking. I jumped at this opportunity
and saw it as the ideal situation to engage with concerns of interest relating to the
promotion of intellectual thinking as part of a junior art programme.
Teaching Inquiry
In many New Zealand schools Art has been dumbed down. Half of the New Zealand
Curriculum for the Visual Arts, even at junior levels, refers to thinking - developing
ideas, and understanding the visual arts in context (MOE, 2007). But from my experience
in several Art Departments I have come to see that an attitude of teaching students the
how of art (practical knowledge purely) before teaching them the why tends to prevail.
In some cases this is so much the situation, with the use of artist models seen as
merely a box to tick for example, that art students may get to university before ever
really exploring the key strands and ideas of visual art practice, both historically and
with regard to the contemporary.
Consider if this was the case with another subject. Take English for arguments sake. If
instead of students studying both established practice in the form of the literary canon
- poetry, Shakespeare, important New Zealand writers, short stories, classic novels, etc.
- as well as learning formal and creative writing, attempting their own poetry, short
stories, and writing essays, they only (or for the vast majority of their schooling)
learned formal and creative writing, looking only cursorily at literature. Such a
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suggestion is absurd. How can you know how or what to write about without in-depth
study of established practice, including the reasons why practitioners operate like they
do? Yet from what I have seen this is precisely the case for Visual Arts in our secondary
schools, particularly at junior levels.
As anecdote let me quickly share on my own schooling experience.
It may sound absurd, being an Art teacher, but I hated Art at school prior to taking up
Photography at NCEA Level 2. I distinctly remember in intermediate (the last time I
took Art before I did Photography several years later as it was only compulsory until
Year 8) being asked to draw and then paint a representation of a soft drink can - the
whole class drawing the same thing. There was no context given to this exercise, no
discussion of Pop Art or even still life say, or the teacher asking us to respond to
ad-culture. We were just told to draw a can. No background was given even, no purpose
evident beyond learning the craft of basic drawing and paint handling, and perhaps
spacial awareness. Necessary skills to be sure but this still seems to me a little like
obsessing over handwriting in English class, insisting on perfecting it before
progressing further.
If I remember correctly my reaction was one of sheer boredom and, Im not proud to
admit, behaviour that would have required the most advanced of behaviour
management strategies from the teacher in question.
This experience I posit is not an anomaly and I would argue this is the result of a
long-term devaluing of what the arts have to offer our educational system. As Elliot
Eisner explains in his book The Arts and the Creation of Mind (2002) (a key touchstone
for my inquiry) :
Traditional views of cognition and the implications of these views for the goals
and content of education have put the arts at the rim, rather than at the core of
education. Schools see their mission, at least in part, as promoting the
development of the intellect. Hard subjects such as mathematics and science
are regarded as primary resources for that development, and the processes of
reading, writing, and computing are believed to be the best means for
cultivating the mind. We want a tough curriculum, something rigorous, a
curriculum that challenges students to think and whose effects are visible in
higher test scores. At best the arts are considered a minor part of this project.
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(pg. xi).
We expect creativity from students but regret to inspire it. We act as if Art History is a
specialist subject for the more advanced in the senior school, instead of core to an
understanding of visual practice. We underestimate students interest and ability,
thinking we can separate the practical from the theoretical without damaging the
intent. We have let art be labelled as non-intellectual and unacademic without
argument, allowing our leaders in education and government to view the arts as
inessential, tacked on, unnecessary, not worth encouraging for serious students, nice
but not necessary (Eisner, 2002, pg. xi). In short, I would argue, we have made art
boring.
In Junior Art this situation often manifests itself I believe in too heavy a focus on the
purely practical skills of art and an unspoken understanding that students need to
know how to make art before we can let them explore why. This is a trap. Just as theory
without practice is impotent and practice without theory is empty, so too is practical
art without purpose pointless and ultimately uncreative in the real sense of the word.
Real visually literacy (often forgotten even as we push Literacy) is as much if not
more about seeing than making.
As Eisner (2002) points out we need to, dispel the idea that the arts are somehow
intellectually undemanding, emotive rather than reflective operations done with the
hand somehow unattached to the head. (pg. xi).
No one lives in a vacuum, least of all artists, and I am yet to meet a serious artist who
doesnt thrive on the visual from a range of established approaches, surrounding
themselves with a wide visual vocabulary, always thinking about what things mean and
how they can respond.
This is an area where pre-tertiary education is lagging behind - stuck in the past,
while university art courses long ago largely dropped life drawing and still lifes
without purpose in favour of incorporating a strong focus on theory along with
practice.
The answer to this deficit of meaning in our schools then is for art teachers to embrace
and promote Higher Order Thinking in the classroom - meta-cognitive thinking, the
why of art. Our students are ready for this, they need it even, and we are selling a
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vibrant subject short to offer anything less.
But what do I mean by Higher Order Thinking (HOT) and how can it be promoted in
our art classrooms? The way I describe HOT is by way of being aligned with
meta-cognition - thinking about thinking as it were. You have a Higher Order Thought
whenever instead of just doing an action or exercise you think and reflect on it. This is
linked to philosophical ideas and ways of thinking. It requires language and takes
nothing for granted. In one word it is to ask why?.
I would claim that the use and promotion of HOT is one definition of Art itself, and in
this way it encourages seeing - not just looking, but really thinking on what is seen and
developing a response in this process (Berger, 1973). Seeing is after all a primarily
cognitive act (Eisner, 2002).
In the art classroom this can come by way of effective questioning by the teacher and
the use of exercises designed to get students thinking critically about what they are
viewing to make them think deeper about how they present ideas and images in their
own work. (We are teaching Artists after all, not Illustrators). But to really correct
the imbalance of practical teaching over reflected understanding I believe that
formally incorporating the teaching of the language of art and a sustained investigation
on both why art is made and how to view it is integral to producing well-rounded
artists and promoting art as the intellectually demanding subject that it is.
With this goal in mind, and in liaising with my AT about how to proceed, I went about
putting together a unit looking at the language of art and a short history of art, mainly
looking at art from the Renaissance to Modern Art and with a quick overview of Early
Art. A key text in regard to putting this unit together was The Story of Art by Ernst
Gombrich (1950). It is one of the most popular and accessible books on art ever
published and presents the history of art with insight and wit.
If thinking is really what our Curriculum promotes - in all of its guises from critical to
creative thinking, convergent and divergent, and meta-cognition - then knowing about
art and thinking about art, as well as making art, needs to be encouraged at every level
(MOE, 2007). It is my belief, supported by the writings of such teachers and thinkers
as John Dewey (1916) and Ken Robinson (2009), as well as Elliot Eisner (2002), that
this approach, a celebration of true, informed creativity, positively impacts students
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learning in their full range of subjects.
Added to this is my understanding that for students to fully engage with a subject
they need to see themselves in it. Sam Intrator recognises this in his book Tuned In and
Fired Up (2003). He quotes Edward Hirschs book How to Read a Poem in describing the
relationship between the teacher, the student, and the content: The reader completes
a poem, and in the process brings to it his or her own past experiences. You are reading
poetry - I mean really reading it - when you feel encountered and changed by a poem,
when you feel its seismic vibrations, the sounding of your depth. (pg. 73). This can be
elusive to be sure but if we are to pay more than lip service to the claim of teaching the
whole student then we must embrace teaching methods which forge
self-understanding in our students. And how can we expect students to be moved by
art without teaching them how to really see it?
As went my experience at the school I was impressed that a brief look at the subject
was already included in the Year 10 curriculum (although I completely rewrote and
substantially expanded on this and they went on to request my resources for future
classes), and I was also impressed in that a range of artistic disciplines were
encouraged through the levels, as opposed to only painting being offered at Level 1 as
an example, a Design for Print course was on offer (which I also taught) in which
design and photography were incorporated. Further to that I had the opportunity to
teach this content to two classes, with different challenges as I will explore, and this
certainly confirmed for me the need to teach individuals, as opposed to only content as
it were.
Teaching and Learning
The basis of the unit I put together was for students to complete a prior knowledge
evaluation by way of a language exercise getting students to think about how to talk
about art, and then to proceed to put together a detailed timeline on art, before
completing a technique exercise linking their learning on art history to working
practically. They also produced an image analysis sheet for homework on a chosen
painting.
The first exercise How do we talk about Art? (attached) asked students to fill in a range
of boxes on the formal elements of artworks to test and extend their understanding of
the correct words to use when analysing artworks. It was a successful activity as a
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starting point and enabled me to work out where students were at in understanding
the correct language and to get them started in thinking about talking about art.
In undertaking it with students I found that it was needed to provide image examples
so they could see the language in practice. Fortunately I had these ready and I also
circled the room to ensure students understood by asking them questions such as,
What elements do you see in this painting?, How does this painting compare to this
one? and so on.
After providing students with the Art History Timeline template (a students completed
example is attached), from Renaissance to Pop Art, I handed out the images and, doing
it cold, I got students to attempt to group the artworks themselves. The first to finish
were to be the first to choose their artwork for the analysis exercise. As students
attempted this I went around and gave hints and encouragement based on how they
were doing. I got them to think about paintings that might make sense together and
the movements that paintings they know may have come from. When I had confirmed
that they had them correct I let them glue the images down into the corresponding
boxes and choose a painting to research and analyse for the homework assignment to
be handed in on my last lesson with them. This took a full lesson.
With this introduction I proceeded to do something a little different over the next
three lessons. I put together slide presentations of all the artworks, along with an intro
on Early Art from cave paintings to the Renaissance, and had students take notes as I
led them through the artworks, prompting them to discuss the artworks with
questions and encouraging them to look at the paintings and respond to them to
scaffold their image analyse skills.
Offering lecture and discussion-style classes to Year 10s in Art would not usually be
recommended. But as part of my inquiry to bring academic thinking back to ask,
founded on Deweys understanding of art as experience and education through
experience (1934), I wanted students to stop and pause with artworks they would
usually overlook while also introducing them to the disciple of Art History, bringing
academic rigor back to the art classroom. As discussed below I was surprised at how
receptive the students were to this exercise.
Key to measuring the success of this teaching and learning was for students to
feedback with their own image analysis, by way of a homework assignment completing
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an A4 sheet on individual artwork. Marking the work I really got a sense that students
enjoyed researching an artwork and coming up with their own ideas about what it
means and how ideas are communicated through media.
I have attached a range of evidence which speaks to the success of this inquiry. This
includes my reflections written following a number of lessons, and reports from
observation from both my Associate Teacher for this class and an Evaluative Lecturer,
as well as a reflection written about the other class I also taught this unit to. I have also
attached good student examples of the work produced.
Learning Inquiry
As Ive said my goal was to get Year 10 students to think about art in new ways, for
them to see art as demanding academic rigor, and to introduce them to the Higher
Order Thinking capacities of art. I believe this goal was achieved and I was blown away
by the involvement and outcome by students. Significant to this I think, from analysing
the data I collected, was scaffolding the material to lead them into challenging
unexplored waters gradually. To do this I needed to create an environment and
framework which encouraged student initiative and responses. This was significant so
that I could maintain a gauge on how the students were picking up the material.
Starting with a brainstorm on What is Art? for example, at the start of the first lesson,
opened a dialogue with students that I sort to maintain. This contributed to the success
of the project. Setting high expectations within this was important, as acknowledged
by Mike Blamires in his report attached, as well as being thoroughly organised and
secure in content knowledge as he also mentions. My ATs comments attached also
confirm this.
Another aspect important for the inquiry was related to approaching students as
individuals - perhaps the hallmark of a great teacher (Fay & Funk, 1995). Reflecting
Sam Intrators (2003) approach I aimed to get students reflecting on their own views
and ideas as part of the project. This is evident in the examples of student work
attached in which there is clear evidence that students have come up with new ideas
themselves and thought critically about the artworks, as well as undertaking their own
research. One student in particular, who was challenging behaviour-wise for the
majority of the placement and was openly reluctant to engage with the material, on the
last day handed in his completed homework assignment, which showed evidence of
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interest and learning where I hadnt expected it.
Further to this, teaching this unit in a condensed format to another class really
highlighted for me the need for students to invest in you by you knowing them and
their names, particularly when it comes to challenging content and exercises (I have
attached a reflection I wrote during placement on this issue as data for this aspect). I
only had the other class half as often and with five other classes and only seeing them
twice a week I didnt have the chance to learn their names. This meant that the
students were much harder to corral, were openly reluctant to engage with the
material and I felt I was making little progress with them. They complained regularly
of wanting to get back to their previous artworks. The class I really created the unit for
(the class I had more often and who I based my Teaching as Inquiry around primarily)
on the other hand, after a lesson or two getting into it as my lesson plan reflections
attached point out, were overall braver in engaging with the material and were
significantly more engaged in class discussions and with the assessment.
Reflecting on this has made me realise the huge difference it makes to spend more
time with a class, put a programme together specialised to them, and make the effort to
learn all students names. Students are simply far more likely to let you take risks, try
new things, and take on new ideas when they have invested in you as a teacher, which
comes from you first investing in them as individuals. As a side note it was however a
delight when on my last lesson with the more difficult class I had two quiet students
from the back come forward to thank me, take their photo with me, and inform me that
I had been their favourite teacher that year. Sometimes you really dont know the
impact you have even when you are disheartened about progress with a class.
The work students produce, both in class while learning and through assessment, is
the key indicator of the success of a teaching strategy. While I have chosen strong
students work to analyse here I did mark all the students work and was overall very
impressed at the level of engagement and response.
The Art History Timeline example evidences interest and engagement in the material, a
readiness to take on new vocabulary, and an ability to mirror the techniques I was
demonstrating. The student has summarised the content of class discussions around
artworks as well as my analysis and background knowledge. They have written down
all the titles and dates as well as definitions of key words that I explained such as
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chiaroscuro and sfumato and clearly understands them in relation to particular
artworks. They connect the language to images, and analysis to artists biographical
detail well, and utilise the language introduced in the How do we talk about Art?
worksheet. A particularly strong understanding of the capacities of composition is
evident which I hope would be reflected in the students own artistic practice.
The extent to which this inquiry was successful is most I think evident in the Analysing
an Artwork worksheet done for homework. I had them practice using this framework in
class in groups so I could help them understand the purpose of each section and to
troubleshoot any areas of confusion. As Ive said I was overwhelmed by how intelligent
and perceptive Year 10 students could be with a new exercise like this one and I
believe the success of this element comes down to students being encouraged to put
their own ideas and thoughts about an artwork down and to not only research the
artwork but to also reflect on it themselves. This is particularly evident in the example
attached in which the student writes extensively about their interpretation of Van
Goghs Self Portrait from 1889. It shows perceptive and critical thinking, an intelligent
use of language, and insightful comments based on both research and personal opinion.
A key finding from this project for me is that to teach HOT in any classroom requires
the teacher to practice it themselves. I think the evidence here shows that students
have responded to my demonstrating and scoffolding of techniques by attempting it
themselves, both in class discussions and in their work. It is by demonstrating best
practice and maintaining high expectations that teachers empower students to achieve.
If I continued to teach this class I would be excited to come up with ways to use
students new knowledge base on art to inform their ongoing artistic practice. Students
went back to their portrait assignments after I left and it would have been exciting to
use the range of new artists and movements they now understand to continue
encouraging them to articulate how art works and also how the approaches of a range
of practitioners can influence their work. I would challenge students day to day to
analyse each others artworks and provoke them to develop and articulate content and
meaning behind the work they do. I would repeat to them again and again that every
decision an artist makes is for a reason and has a purpose in the end product, and I
would challenge them to think about each choice they make while working and justify
using correct language the decisions they make. A key skill in art at secondary school
is the effective use of artist models, an area many students struggle with. I firmly
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believe that founding the study of established practice in HOT and critical thought
enables students to utilise other artists work without merely copying or being
derivative. Just as I would hope to demonstrate effective practice for them, I would
hope that artist models would become touchstones in them coming to a deep
understanding of effective practice in art.


References
Berger, J. (1973). Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin Books.
Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and Education. New York: Macmillan.
Dewey, J. (1934). Art as Experience. New York: Penguin Group.
Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and Education. New York: Touchstone.
Eisner, E. W. (2002). Arts and the Creation of Mind. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Fay, J. & Funk, D. (1995). Teaching with Love and Logic: Taking Control of the Classroom. Golden,
Colorado: The Love and Logic Institute, Inc.
Gardner, H. (1985). Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. New York: Basic Books.
Gombrich, E. (1950). The Story of Art. New York: Phaidon.
Hume, H. (2008). The Art Teachers Survival Guide. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Intrator, S. M. (2003). Tuned in and Fired Up: How Teaching Can Inspire Real Learning in the
Classroom. USA: Yale University Press.
Marsh, C. (2004). Becoming a Teacher: Third Edition. NSW: Pearson.
McGee, C., & Fraser D., (Eds.) (2012). The Professional Practice of Teaching: Fourth Edition. Victoria:
Cengage Learning Australia.
Ministry of Education. (2007). The New Zealand Curriculum. Wellington: Learning Media Ltd.
Robinson, K. (2009). The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything. New York:
Penguin Books.


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