helping student-teachers broaden their conceptions of art curricula

National Art Education Association

Helping Student-Teachers Broaden Their Conceptions of Art CurriculaAuthor(s): Rachel MasonSource: Art Education, Vol. 39, No. 4 (Jul., 1986), pp. 46-51Published by: National Art Education AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3192989 .

Accessed: 11/06/2014 02:21

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

National Art Education Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to ArtEducation.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 193.104.110.123 on Wed, 11 Jun 2014 02:21:35 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=naea

http://www.jstor.org/stable/3192989?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


Helping Student-Teachers Broaden Their Conceptions of

Art Curricula

Rachel Mason

A;Ur^. ,^ *^ j; _:, '' ^&:* rt teacher-training in Britain (and, to a lesser

Mi felffi~~- : . AB~ ^vocational, and technical. Prospective art i,t' t ' --"8 H -_A Steachers participate in studio courses for three

KS^ i1'? ) '" iS#~ z . -- sB ^to four years to acquire technical, artistic, and aesthetic

w^~-~ -1.;. _~,< HMfe^^^^^k3|~ ^skills essential to become practicing artists and designers. _-'i ~-- ^ ':

~ '- ':_c'-'""-!^ Following this, they enroll in teacher qualification pro-

grams and spend one year studying art education in isola- _ : iH^ ; -.::. .IK B^ B^- _tion from other school subjects or disciplines. Art special-

ists preparing to become teachers tend to confuse the role of art in general education with professional training; their perceptual grasp of their subject is weak and limited or

i- jl ~confined to what Feldman (1981) has labelled narrow technical or psychological conceptions of art curricula'. In

..... _ ^ ^^^^^^ _^^B^^ ~~ ~ this paper, I intend to explore ways they can be helped to .f l 'i~ ~broaden or extend their understanding of art education

. ErP

,W^ ^S^* and embrace more liberal or humane conceptions of its function in schools. Art Education Theory A number of general educational tendencies, or move-

5 _'^ ^^^^^Bt .* 1 ments, are reported to have influenced art educators' .HfCH B~^' '::~ :thinking over the past two decades (Smith, 1982). Rela-

_''' f '-

.*. _.. ? tionships between visual arts curricula and educational movements such as environmental education, humanistic education, and multi-cultural education, for example, have been the subject of theoretical discussion and analysis in art educational literature. College faculty or lecturers re- sponsible for art teacher education programs should direct their students' attention to scholarly articles in professional journals such as Art Education, Visual Arts Re- search, The Journal of Art and Design Education, Aes- thetic Education, and Multi-Cultural and Cross Cultural Research in Art Education. Because art specialists tend to

1. Feldman (1981) describes advocates of psychological and technical conceptions of curricula as focusing their educational attention almost exclusively on children's artistic performance and emphasizing technical mastery, or the psychological benefits, of art making. Advocates of liberal or humane conceptions of art curricula propose that children study humanity through art and seek to free them from a variety of psychological, geneological, physical, sectarian, or societal constraints.

46 Art Education July 1986



In this article ... Mason argues for a broad conception of art education to include integration with other subjects. "I contend that student-teachers benefit from curriculum experiences in which they formulate and implement curriculum that integrates art with learning in other subjects."

Art Education

be skeptical of academic theory and research, they place a premium on individual expression and personal knowledge gained through studio experience (Chapman, 1982); they should be encouraged to consider academic theory to- gether with their own ideas concerning the role of art in environmental, humanistic, or multi-cultural education.

Our professional literature includes conceptual models for teaching in the form of curricula exemplars. The au- thors of textbooks for art teachers such as Art and the Built Environment (Adams and Ward, 1983), Art, Culture and Environment (McFee and Degge, 1977), and Becom- ing Human Through Art (Feldman, 1970) advocate different kinds of teaching methods but agree on the following liberal or humane approaches to art educational practice. They urge art teachers to extend children's thinking beyond their personal ability to create art and to redress the neglect of what Chapman (1982) has called the public,

July 1986 47



collaborative, technical and popular arts2. They emphasize the need for art teachers to instruct children in art history and develop the skills of critical analysis along with skills of artistic production and call for art instruction that fo- cuses on the role of art in everyday life and in foreign cul- tures. The teaching of art in schools rarely occurs through textbooks or formal curriculum materials, though it is important that student-teachers study examples produced by experts who have extensive knowledge of art education re- sources and are skilled in curriculum planning. Since conceptual models are most useful when they function as in- terpretive tools for teaching (Eisner, 1982), they should study them in the context of practical experiments in which they are required to design, implement, and evaluate curriculum units. Instrumentalist and Contextualist Curriculum Objectives Curriculum design and planning necessitates formulating goals and objectives in which art instruction is clearly related to general educational functions (Chapman, 1982). Art education theorists (e.g. Eisner, 1979) have helped by distinguishing between essentialist and contextualist or instrumentalist art education objectives. The former focus on the fact that art is a unique form of knowledge worth learning for its own sake, and the latter emphasize the con- tribution it can make to non-aesthetic or extrinsic educational aims and objectives3. The following instrumentalist or contextualist objectives have been culled from the three textbooks identified. They inform us that art education can enable children to take a more positive role in environmental decision-making (Adams and Ward, 1983); teach them about people, society, and places (Feldman, 1970); and help them understand different cultural attitudes,

2. I found Chapman's book, Instant Art, Instant Culture, invaluable when writing this paper. It provided a basic reference point for fundamental concepts and vocabulary about art curricula.

3. It is possible to argue that essentialist and generalist goals are one and the same. Smith (1982) has described visual arts education and general education as overlapping in the study of the arts as cultural artifacts, cultivation of an aesthetic attitude, acquisition of aesthetic pre- ferences and standards, and in educational programs that stress art as a paradigm for self-development.

values, and beliefs (McFee and Degge, 1977). While instrumentalist curriculum goals such as these have certain dis- advantages - they can lead to fragmentation of purpose or discriminate against formal teaching of art (Chapman, 1982), student-teachers can be directed to design curriculum units that incorporate learning experiences essential to their subject while fulfilling one or more of these general educational aims.

Student-teachers with whom I have worked have re- sponded to this suggestion in a variety of ways. Some of them have rejected instrumentalist objectives on the grounds that they are an excuse for art or make it seem unworthy of study. Their views are supported by Eisner, Smith, or Chapman, who have argued for essentialist justi- fications and basic arts curricula. Others have paid lip service to humanistic, environmental, or multi-cultural in- strumental objectives in that they admitted they have found them useful as a means of stimulating children's personal expression and because they furnished ideas for lessons that focused exclusively on the making in art. In my view, these student-teachers have trivialized or abused the instrumentalist or contextualist aims they identified. Student-teachers who have made genuine attempts to in- tegrate essentialist and instrumentalist art educational goals and objectives have valued the latter because they have helped them break down barriers between art and other forms of knowledge. It has afforded them oppor- tunities to examine important moral, political, and social issues with children and enabled them to link art with practical and personal aspects of children's lives. Interdisciplinary Teaching It is common for elementary classroom teachers to inte- grate or correlate arts activities with instruction in other subjects. Art specialists in secondary schools, however, generally do not plan or implement interdisciplinary approaches to teaching. While recognizing that interdisciplinary teaching can lead to miseducation runs the risk of diluting art instruction and necessitates an enormous amount of lesson preparation and research, I contend that student-teachers benefit from curriculum experiments in which they formulate and implement curricula that inte- grate art with learning in other subjects. They must plan art programs with the premise that art is a subject worthy of study and explore links between art and other forms of knowledge to broaden their perception of its role in general education.

Some interrelationships my student-teachers have ex- plored between art and other subjects have appeared logi- cally more consistent than others. Two student-teachers elected to increase children's knowledge about Indian art and found that concepts located in religion were pre- requisite to its understanding. Another student-teacher engaged children in observational drawing while teaching the ecology of trees and capitalized on principles of drawing which were scientific and complemented scientific learning. I take issue, however, with curriculum theorists identified by Adams (1976) who describes some combinations

Art Education July 1986 48



of subjects as more basic or fundamental than others. We are conditioned to thinking that related arts subjects such as drama, music, and dance lend themselves to interdisciplinary links with visual arts curricula; my student- teachers have successfully combined art with learning in history, languages, health education, environmental and social studies, and sciences. Thematic Approaches to Curriculum Planning Student-teachers planning, implementing, and evaluating curriculum units have to be helped to formulate organizing frameworks around which to structure approaches to learning. Words, concepts, and themes alone do not, in themselves, provide strategies for teaching, and teachers who plan programs around single concepts may emphasize highly abstract or naive relations among subjects (Chap- man, 1982). Nevertheless, they supply subject specialists with a specific focus around which to develop ideas about interdisciplinary curriculum content. Student-teachers can be directed to experiment with one of the four thematic modes of curriculum planning that Bolam (1968) has identified as characteristic of interdisciplinary practice:

1. They can select a single area or field of study such as a foreign country or local environment and develop synoptic overviews of their chosen topic. Some of the more success- ful curriculum experiments conducted by my student- teachers have evolved from this form of curriculum plan- ning4.

Two of them isolated "The Indian Continent" as their single area of study. Their teaching was subject-centered in the sense that it focused on artistic production and included instruction in art skills, concepts, and techniques. It also utilized geographical and sociological frameworks to extend children's knowledge and understanding of the Indian continent and its art. Their lessons incorporated geographical facts and included detailed information about Indian clothing and its religious and social signifi- cance. The student-teachers drew attention to narrative and decorative aspects of Indian miniature painting and encouraged them to incorporate traditional Indian color schemes into their prints and drawings.

Another student-teacher utilized a historical building in the neighborhood as a thematic reference point for a curriculum unit integrating drama, drawing, and crafts activities with historical and environmental learning. She taught historical facts about the building, and the children made observational drawings of the building and its surroundings and examined its architectural details and con- struction. They acted out an encounter between Viking and Roman settlers. Finally, each child made a mask of a character in the building's history, and the group developed a performance presented to their parents.

2. Student-teachers can organize their curriculum units

4. My students conducted these experiments in Saturday morning classes, attended voluntarily by children aged 5-15. Their curriculum plans were designed for pupils of upper elementary and lower secondary school age.

around overarching concepts or themes pertinent to several disciplines. In spite of the fact that my student-teachers were familiar with the educational strategy of organizing art teaching around design concepts, they experienced dif- ficulty with this approach to interdisciplinary curriculum planning.

Two student-teachers identified the concept expression as an appropriate focus integrating art with humanistic understanding. They directed children to photograph people with particular reference to their facial expression and character and developed excellent teaching strategies for motivating young children to photograph people and inducing facial expression. They had assumed that increasing children's aesthetic awareness of facial expression would lead naturally to learning something about people's life-styles, emotions, and character. At the end of their experiment, however, they admitted they had taught basic photography concepts and skills, but had failed to achieve their humanistic educational aims.

3. Student-teachers can organize curriculum units




around human issues that affect the world, ourselves, and social organizations and address their teaching to a depth study of these issues. This approach to curriculum planning has proved popular with many of my student-teachers.

Two student-teachers who integrated observational drawing and natural science around the theme of trees at- tempted to increase children's knowledge of processes that shaped their immediate surroundings. They understood this as the key to increasing their future involvement in the problem of nature conservation. They engaged children in repeated exercises aimed at improving their skills in observational drawing of trees because they believed this had the potential to increase their perceptual awareness and aesthetic enjoyment of nature.

Their curriculum plan incorporated facts about tree-life and tree systems into every lesson. They included informa-

50

tion about different tree-types, tree growth, the process of photosynthesis, and taught children about what lives and grows in tree bark and how trees breathe. They made a map on which students charted different trees out- side the classroom, and they sent students out to collect tree bark, branches, leaves, moss, birds' nests, etc. that be- came subjects of study for observational drawings. Fin- ally, the children created a group collage of natural materials, intended to demonstrate the interdependence of animals, plants, and birds in tree environments.

4. They can organize curriculum units around a practical concern that affects children's everyday lives and map out an approach to inquiry aimed at producing a synthesis of cognitive and evaluative insights. Bolam (1968) has described this as a variation of the social problem unit and as cognitive and evaluative mapping. Student-teachers who

Art Education July 1986



adopted this approach developed inventive and imagina- tive teaching strategies and combined learning in the arts with practical learning that is neglected in formal, academic curricula.

Two student-teachers designed a curriculum unit around the theme of germs; they integrated learning in the arts with health education. Art and drama activities were used with an educational film with basic information about germs (e.g. what they are, where they live, what causes and pre- vents them, etc.). The children painted pop-up scenes of germs in appropriate environments and invented germ characters in the form of shadow puppets constructed from black cards. Following this, they developed a story- line for their germ characters and made scenery by drawing on sheets of acetate with felt-tip pens. Finally, they per- formed and video-recorded a puppet play.

While the student-teachers gave children detailed in- structions about how to make and manipulate shadow puppets and suggested a story-line, their curriculum plan was open-ended and emergent (Eisner, 1979). The children wrote the script, narrated the story, and produced and video-recorded the play. The play documented the travels of a motley crew of germs along some sewers and con- trasted these adventures when they emerged into clean and dirty houses. Since it focused on the causes, results, and prevention of bacteria, the student teachers felt they had achieved their general educational aim which they described as environmental awareness teaching.

Two student-teachers used a local shopping area familiar to children in their class as a theme for a unit en- titled "Constructing A Street Scene." In the first lesson, the children drew maps of how they got to the shopping center; in the second, they visited the area and documented what they observed visually, in drawings, and verbally on tape. Drawing on this experience, they selected an accident as the subject for a group sculpture. They acted out the accident scene and were allocated characters. The children constructed small figures of an old man knocked over by a car, a nosey old man, a punk, a boy pointing, children running, a police patrol driver, and shoppers. They designed shop fronts, a crossing, and street furniture and staged their accident in this setting.

These student-teachers successfully taught children skills, concepts, and techniques associated with sculpture and model making (e.g. how to build armatures, mix and manipulate plaster, calculate the proportions of the human figure, etc.), while reinforcing student knowledge about safety procedures and what to do in an accident. They identified their most important general educational ob- jective as getting children to look at a familiar environment from another person's point of view. Summary and Conclusions In making a case for widening student-teachers' conceptions of art curricula, I am aware that many of our leading curriculum theorists have argued against the curriculum strategies suggested. Chapman, for example, has argued that general educational movements such as hu-

manistic, environmental, or multi-cultural education are nothing but empty slogans that seem important at the time, but are unworthy of serious attention; that the long tra- dition of art educators pursuing instrumentalist curriculum objectives has prevented schoolchildren from learning any- thing about art; that the arts should be viewed as a broad field of study like the sciences, social sciences, and humanities with their own patterns of behavior and skills, and that interdisciplinary teaching means planning art around other subjects; and that thematic approaches to curriculum design are shallow and misleading and militate against depth study in our field (Chapman, 1982).

I do not deny that there is a need for student-teachers to learn how to formulate essentialist objectives and design, implement, and evaluate basic arts curricula. I accept the fact that thematic approaches have serious limitations and that art is a distinct form of knowledge with its own logical structures of inquiry. I do not understand this, however, as negating the possibility of the kinds of curriculum experiments described.

Art specialists evaluating such experiments must ask whether they used the content of art to enhance humanistic, environmental, or multi-cultural general educational objectives; they must consider the problem of logical relationships between art and other forms of knowledge and question whether integrated curricula were built on prior learning concepts and structured to increase children's understanding of each discipline involved; they must ask themselves whether the themes that determined their choice of content were appropriate, significant, and edu- cationally worthwhile. Given these kinds of considera- tions, I understand that these curriculum strategies function to help student-teachers broaden their conceptions of art curricula. M

Rachel Mason is a Senior Lecturer in art education at Leicester Polytechnic at Scraptoft, Leicester, England.

References Adams, A. (1970). The humanities jungle. London: Ward Lock Edu-

cational. Adams, E., and Ward, C. (1983). Art and the built environment. Lon-

don. Chapman, L. (1982). Instant art, instant culture. New York: Teachers

College Press. Bolam, D. (1971). Integrating the curriculum: A case study in the hu-

manities. Paedegogical Europea. Brauenschweig: George Westermann. Eisner, E. (1972). Educating artistic vision. New York: Macmillan. Eisner, E. (1979). The educational imagination. New York: Macmillan. Eisner, E. (1982). The relationship of theory and practice in art edu-

cation. Art Education, 35 (1), 4-5. Feldman, E.B. (1960). Becoming human through art. Englewood

Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Feldman, E.B. (1981). Varieties of art curricula. Journal of Art and

Design Education. 1 (1), 21-45. McFee, J., and Degge, R. (1977). Art, culture and environment. Bel-

mont, CA: Wadsworth. Smith, R. (1982). On the third realm: Two decades of politics in art ed-

ucation. Journal of Aesthetic Education, 16 (3), 5-15.




helping student-teachers broaden their conceptions of art curricula

Documents