Conclusion
“Concepts of Art Education” has been a class with many sources of learning, while roughly 3 hours a week were spent in a lecture class, my learning came from our instructor, a variety of books, lesson planning, teaching/ mentoring in Artistic Abilities, journal entries describing connections between practice and theory, papers, peers, and articles. The learning and growth have been extensive, and as in all broad learning topics, a variety of themes emerge, the most constant themes in my experience this semester were how to differentiate in lessons, the importance of thinking deeper and broader in art learning, and the success of directing lessons using abstract art.
For those five weeks I mostly worked with two exceptional students, Nick and Ashley. Nick was a quiet and focused artist, in nearly every class, no matter what medium he would work in, he would focus on color mixing. His form of praxis was very much about doing, in his case mixing colors, and in the action of doing, he would reflect on the colors he was making, he never seemed to have an end product in mind (Zurmuehlen). Many of his art works reflected Rhoda Kellogg’s shape stage, as he would create mandala’s that filled up the page (Kellogg, 1967). The compositions Nick would create were all slightly different, but came out of the colors he would mix or paint straight from the bottle, the compositions reflected the artistic tendencies of young children according to Wilson, Wilson, and Hurwitz; Nick displayed an avoidance of overlapping, a repetition of successful configurations, and tendency towards balance.
Ashley on the other hand is an artist with a very specific comfort zone, painting flowers, all the time. These flowers are representative of her environment; specifically through these paintings she as the artist tells a story of her favorite environment to be in. Her paintings are very schematic, include baseline and organic flower forms that are a mix of stereotype and schema.
Since I had two students with very distinct motifs and comfort zones, my challenge was to get them to venture out of their comfort zones, and to think deeper about the art they were making. I also needed to differentiate for these two very different types of art making.
With two students with different needs, I was essentially writing a lesson plan, and then splitting it into two lesson plans, each one personalized to the student. For example, one of our classes was based on transferring their motifs into stamp form, using tiered steps of instruction, sketching out the steps, and verbal feedback between student and mentor while carving, my students were able to achieve more and more complex carvings. Tiering the steps of carving stamps allowed me to provide various levels of difficulty based on my students needs such as fine motor-skills and prior printmaking knowledge (Fountain). At the end of the day, Nick was able to portray different large geometric shapes (printed in his mixed color preferences), and Ashley had a few different versions of her flowers.
In my second lesson, The First Forest, I was still getting to know my students and differentiated based on their subject preferences they had demonstrated in the first class. I wanted to spend the class learning bout how art tells stories. Ashley had shown an inclination towards painting flowers, and cutting and pasting using colors that please her; Nick showed a preference in things more logical (such as compasses and maps) and color mixing. So in planning an activity where we could all work together in mixed media, I brought in maps to inspire Nick, and different images of tree and flowers to inspire Ashley. I thought they’d be able to incorporate their artistic preferences in a storytelling manner.
My next two themes have a strong connection to each other, one feeds another; in this class I learned about the importance of thinking deeper and broader in art learning and the success of teaching abstract art to exceptional students. Any time I tried activities, discussions, or artwork meant to get my students to think of deeper concepts and meaning, I hit a wall. I could not get my students to understand any themes deeper than “happy,” and giving them a concrete assignment or theme for an artwork seemed to confuse them or stress them out. In summary, trying to get either of my students to create art that came from concrete ideas and meaning didn’t work. However, one class period where we joined another group in abstract shaving cream art, it seemed to click. I found that through an abstract process, I could get my students to move away from the concern of “making the art look realistic or like a certain thing,” and more about taking risks, and they were able to focus and learn more about processes. I was able to drive my lessons more towards compare and contrast of techniques, learning the steps of a new process and how it differs from the processes we have previously used. I could get them to think more about process and explore different, I was finally getting them to reflect. Lowenfeld believes thinking deeper is the most important thing in art making (Lowenfeld, 1958), but through Artistic Abilities, I learned thinking broader, taking risks, and exploring concepts and materials are just as important.
Concepts in Art Education, with all its facets, has given me a stone foundation and an immense amount of resources to continually improve my teaching. This semester has been challenging but immensely rewarding, especially in giving me an opportunity to work with student groups I have had little to no experience with in the past. I’m more confident in y ability to handle differentiation and a variety of students in my classroom, and I know I have all the resources from this semester to help my in the future.
Fountain, H. (2014). Differentiated instruction in art. Worcester, Massachusetts: Wyatt Wade.
Kellogg, R. (1967). Understanding childrens art. Psychology Today, 1(1), 16-25.
Kellogg, R. (1959). What children scribble and why. NP Publications.
Lowenfeld, V. (1958). Current research on creativity. NEA Journal, 47, 538-540.
Lowenfeld, V. (1957). Creative and mental growth .
Zurmuehlen, M. (1990). Studio art: Praxis, Symbol, presence (pp.2-6, 11-21). Reston, Virginia: National Art Education Association.