Month: September 2021

Environmental Art Education

• Empathy
• The Teacher and Peers
• Reflecting
• Bigger Issues

Environmental Art Education

Another approach that is important to me is Environmental art, or Eco-art, which combines art education and environmental education.

Empathy

One of the biggest focuses is developing empathy, both with other people and with non-humans like plants, animals, and the environment. This involves thinking of oneself as part of a community with the world, not just humans, like an ecosystem which relies on diversity and relationships. In a study I read (cited below), they talked about how students do really enjoy engaging with the environment; they only dislike it when they have no knowledge or experience about the environment, hence the bad habits we’ve developed as a society. Art is a really good method for developing empathy since you see so many different views and feelings through peer art, and with critiques you have a chance to help your peers improve and act on empathy. Eco-art connects to empathy with that as well as participating in engaging with nature like caring for plants or going out and connecting with a specific place.

The study also mentioned how just observing nature while drawing it can lead to empathy. This made me think of meditative activities when you do something repetitive or methodical or you become really focused in an activity that doesn’t involve speaking or reading, it allows you to think about whatever’s on your mind. In this case, observing and drawing plants is very focused and quiet so it allows students to think about the plant and nature, admire it, and even meditate on it my letting your thoughts flow while drawing.

The teacher and peers

As with any class, the teacher should model the teachings. So, in this case it’s very important for the teacher to participate in activities as well as develop a positive relationship with the students. If the teacher is kind, caring, friendly, supportive, etc. then students learn from that behavior to be more caring (and therefore empathetic) themselves. It seems important for eco-art to be very student centered so students actually feel and develop the emotions and connections rather than them being pushed onto the student. This means the teacher has to have an even closer connections to students to interact and hear their individual thoughts and ideas for observation. Students can also develop close peer relationships through group activities to further encourage the empathy gain through working with other students, hearing other points of view, and combining skills.

Reflecting

Reflecting on connections with things, places, and organisms seems to also aid empathy. When you feel connected to something you start to care for it and actually desire to care for it. This is reflected in exploring environmental art through places special to the student, where they can think about how they connect to the place and why it’s special. That then can be prompted to think about the future of whatever you feel connected to, both the goods and bads – and think about how to make the goods actually happen. This leads to student engagement and reflection too by interacting with a place and thinking about the future. The same could be done with caring for a plant and thinking about how you impact it, how the plant depends on you, and the plant’s future. These things can be reflected on through self-reflections, discussions, and interpretive art works as well.

bigger issues

From those connections, students can learn about issues threatening their place and how to work against the issue. This is where environmental art education can teach about sustainability, environmental history, justice, and integrity to make the world or place the version students want to be reality. Art is very useful for communicating and reflecting on these thoughts and learnings that students will come across for art’s diverse outcomes and meanings, and even being inventive with art supplies to put sustainability, etc. into the student’s own practice. And, with these being such big issues, art can be a more concise but still deep method of communicating ideas. Art also has the benefit of being therapeutic for simultaneously dealing with the stress of worrying about the future if students do feel overwhelmed at all. This is a good reason for the order of starting with developing empathy and relationships and connections before moving onto discussing the issues so students feel the compassion to act through art rather than sit in anxiety from the sudden burden of world issues. With art, you can actually make change and this approach teaches that along with the empathy and reflection and resourcefulness.

References

• Sunassee, A.; Bokhoree, C. A Designed Eco-Art and Place-Based Curriculum Encouraging Students’ Empathy for the Environment. Ecologies 2021, 2, 248–267. https://doi.org/10.3390/ecologies2030014

Teaching for Artistic Behavior

• Artistic Behaviors
• Similar Approaches
• Assessment
• Relationships and Communication
• Resources
• Evaluation

Teaching for Artistic Behavior

After some research into teaching approaches, I’ve found that Teaching for Artistic Behavior, aka TAB, is one I’d like to apply in my own future classroom.

TAB is for starters is a very student-centered approach. The teacher and students are thought of as equals, with the teacher being more like a facilitator or guide and allows the students to have a lot of freedom and control over their educational experience. But in this case students are also responsible for self-directing their learning and putting in the effort, just into their own interests and goals.

Artist Behaviors

As in the name, this teaching approach focuses on teaching the behaviors and skills that most artists develop. These include practice, persistence, critical thinking, problem solving, observation of processes, reflecting, evaluating outcomes and progress, planning ahead based on those outcomes and reflections, accepting that sometimes you won’t know where you’re going, and above all, making and expressing the things that matter to them. This puts a lot more emphasis on the process of making and experiencing the art rather than making some nice-looking piece. Making art IS a process and can involve a lot of scrapped rough drafts and disliked attempts so, in being a class focused on artist behaviors, this teaching approach reflects that.

Similar Approaches

The TAB approach is a lot like the constructivist approach in my last post in that the TAB approach is very student-centered and puts a lot of emphasis on students actively learning through making art on their own and experimenting and actively practicing with the process and material interactions. And, in making their own art that is important to the student artist, TAB is very focused on the student making their own interpretations and meanings from the experience. Each artist has their own little favorite art approaches, strategies, mediums, and tricks so while the teacher will likely demonstrate basic materials and strategies, it’s still up to the student to make those their own.

TAB is also very similar to another approach known as Inquiry-based education. In this approach, the teacher is also a facilitator focusing on guiding the student through exploring and researching their own interests. Research and thinking strategies might be taught but mostly the teacher would do things like checking student work for research errors or asking prompting questions to think or search further in some relevant direction, and giving suggestions for things that the student might not know about but would benefit them. In TAB, the teacher would do these things as well and give feedback and inspirational suggestions to the students based on their interests, goals, and ideas. Overall, both focus on the student deciding what they want to do and asking their own questions to explore.

Assessment

In this approach, assessments would probably include self-reflections or other reflective writings to understand student thoughts and processes and ideas in more depth, and critiques to give feedback to the student on their work, and discussions to understand their ideas but also share ideas and maybe gain new ideas from peers for further inspiration. Regardless, the grade would be applied to the observed efforts and growth and processes rather than the finished product which also puts less stress on the student and encourages them more to just try their best.

Relationships and communication

With the approach being process-based, teacher and peer relationships should be pretty close so the student feels comfortable asking for feedback and advice on ideas as needed, but also so they can get that feedback and support without having to ask all of the time. Peer relationships strengthened through discussions and feedback-focused critiques can make students actually want to help each other improve their art. The teacher-student relationship (as mentioned earlier) also has that added benefit of helping the student find the resources and inspiration relevant to the student’s ideas and goals too. And, like the constructivist approach, a relationship with the rest of the school and community will aid this search for the right resources to match the student, such as if they want to make technological art and want to visit the computer lab or even learn from an actual engineer outside of the school.

Resources

Resources and technology will also need to be flexible based on student needs and may include internet for free research. A large variety of art supplies to choose from would be required so students can choose their desired medium. It would probably be a good idea to make most of these supplies safe for student independent use so the student can freely grab what they need as they need it without waiting for permission. But, of course there may be some useful-but-dangerous or expensive mediums that the student could still use freely so they can have those sometimes-higher-quality materials, but they would still need permission for those. Just free up as much as you can for ease of use. A class website would be another useful tool for the teacher to more easily keep track of all the individual projects going on and the little steps and parts of those projects, and for easy communication and feedback with the teacher on the side of the students.

Evaluation

In this teaching approach, anything that will aid the students in making the art they want to make should be strived for. And, that is absolutely one of my goals as an art teacher, so I will very likely be making use of this one.

References

• 2U Inc. (2021). Teaching methods. Teach. https://teach.com/what/teachers-know/teaching-methods/ 
• Hein, G. E. (1998). Educational theory. In Learning in the museum (pp. 34-40). New York: Routledge.
• Kirlew, B. (2021). Teaching for artistic behavior. Teaching for Artistic Behavior Inc. https://teachingforartisticbehavior.org 

Constructivism

• Methods
• Assessment
• Necessities
• Evaluation

Constructivism

The Constructivist Pedagogy or teaching approach is a very interesting one to me. It is based on the idea that people construct knowledge rather than it just being poured into their heads through lectures and readings. This involves lots of activities leaving towards students actively using their minds and interacting with things, making their own interpretations and developing their own understandings. Of course, this requires participation and engagement on the part of the student but, in my opinion, it’s much easier to be engaged when you’re doing something than when you’re sitting still.

Methods

With this pedagogy, the teaching methods involve more so the teacher giving some information in some form, and then giving the students the room to run with it. This can be done through some sort of active experience like interaction, manipulation, experimentation, and activities applying critical thinking and problem-solving skills, all of which are done in an art class so this makes for a great pedagogy for art teachers. And, that makes this approach very student-centered too, since the student has some control over their learning in being more active.

Assessment

Assessment would probably focus on student processes since this may result in a variety of interpretations of the information. So, the teacher may use self-reflections, discussions, visual journals, written responses, open-ended art projects, or similarly interpretation-centered things so the teacher can get an idea of how the students are thinking about the lessons and what meanings they are constructing. Since students are making their own meanings, the only criteria would be that the interpretations make sense given their thought processes and evidence, as opposed to having a single right answer. The students would especially benefit from discussions to hear those multiple meanings and points of view being generated.

Necessities

With this open-ended and active learning, it might make sense to have a flexible or movable classroom layout. This would allow the seating to match the activities like being spread out for individual work but having the option to be pushed together for discussions and group interactions to hear the previously mentioned multiple perspectives. And, due to those multiple perspectives, students should be allowed to communicate with other students and have peer relationships. But, of course the teacher should still make sure that students aren’t working in groups the entire time so they still have time to think about their own ideas on their own. Also having relationships with the rest of the school might be beneficial to create active experiences like leaving the classroom to do research in the library or watch a science experiment in the science class which could then inform student artwork. Being open to trying new resources and technology would also be beneficial to create experiences where students could interact with technology for active learning.

Evaluation

The focus on active learning and experiences and interpretation makes this pedagogy seem overall very valuable to the students. When I was in high school everyone hates the typical lecture-based classroom (and I still do) so this is a much-needed pedagogy.

References

• Hein, G. E. (1998). Educational theory. In Learning in the museum (pp. 34-40). New York: Routledge.