Since I began my studies of art education at CSU, my ideas and philosophies behind education have flexed, changed and adapted as I’ve learned more about the theories and pedagogies behind art instruction. When I decided I wanted to be an art teacher my understanding of my role as a teacher was minimal. I assumed I would be creating fun and engaging art projects for my students to participate in and that would be the majority of my role. As I began taking general education classes I started to see that there was a lot of importance in what I taught. That is, the curriculum I would be communicating through my classes. I started to see that the activities I planned for my students were meant to have more purpose in communicating concepts of art, art history, and techniques. When I began Concepts in Art Education my ideas about educational philosophy were expanded even further. I realized that it isn’t just about what you teach, but how you teach it. I realized that although teaching my students about art history and formal art concepts is important, these are just the scaffolding that supports students learning how to think like artists and participate in a genuine artistic experience. That has been my biggest take-away from this course. It has changed my view on art education and helped me see that my role as a teacher is a facilitator of my student’s individual explorations into how they want to express themselves and make meaning. Some of the main themes I have seen emerge in this class that have shaped my personal philosophies behind education are the conditions of art making and their relation to the Colorado Art Standards, the importance of student-centered classrooms and differentiated instruction, the formulation of lesson plans that begin with learning outcomes and are tailored to the developmental artistic stages of students as well as the importance of motivation and ideation in fostering intrinsic motivation among students.
As I mentioned, it was only this semester that I realized the purpose behind teaching art. Art education is not just about teaching students how to complete art projects assigned by the teacher, but to facilitate a genuine artistic experience in your students. In Concepts of Art Education our study of the conditions for art making was the theory that led to my realization of the importance of the art experience and the process of meaning making rather than the final product. Even in previous classes I’ve taught I’ve encouraged students to make art that all ended up looking the same and now reminiscing on that experience I see that I was replacing their intrinsic motivation with my own motivations. Rather than investigating their interests and giving them the tools to express themselves, I came up with lesson plans that encouraged them to create art that fit a mold. Now I see that this final product should not be the main focus of my curriculum, but rather it should be fostering the conditions of art making; artistic causality, idiosyncratic meaning and intentional symbolization. In a classroom setting artistic causality can sometimes be hard to pin down. In order for students to be the true originators of their artwork they must be the reason for creating art rather than the reason being that they are in an art class and they must meet the standards and prove their understanding of art concepts. In this way a teacher must foster a passionate approach to art in their classroom that is based on the intrinsic motivations and interests of their students. Idiosyncratic meaning has to do with the way art is specific and meaningful to the artist creating it. This can also be hard to enact in a classroom because it requires a level of freedom and choice among your students that requires a fine balance between the student’s intentions and the standards that must be met by them. Last, intentional symbolization involves how the student artist is making meaning. This has to do with the medium they choose to express their ideas as well as what they intend to communicate. When these three things come together they facilitate a genuine artistic experience which is also the goal of the Colorado Art Standards. The standards highlight the process of an artist in creating artwork, that is, reflecting and envisioning what they want to communicate, observing and learning to comprehend and perceive the world around them, creating actual works of art, and transferring the knowledge of critical thinking and problem solving to other works of art, and other areas of the world. These theories about art education have shaped how I intend to organize my curriculum as well as how I will structure my classroom. In my mind my class would be an environment where students were comfortable expressing their ideas and opinions and where they would have access to all the materials they needed to do so artistically. I would have a heavy focus on how art making relates to meaning making and how artists use their perceptions and identities to fuel their artwork. I would want my classroom to be a place where students felt empowered by their ability to communicate their ideas and share what makes them unique with the world.
Another important take-away from this class were the concepts of differentiated instruction that scaffolds learning to reach every student. As someone who struggled personally to acquire an education due to my financial situation, equity in education has always been an important concept to me. Every human has the right to an education no matter their situation and learning about differentiated art instruction put this idea into a new context. I saw that even students that have access to the education all other students have may not be experiencing it the same way and therefore are missing out on a full learning experience. Without this they lose out on other opportunities in life, as success is often based on successful completion of early education as well as higher education. Differentiated Art Instruction put into perspective the struggles students face in reaching the learning targets set out by teachers and showed me that these learning objectives don’t have to change to be accessible by every student, they just have to have differentiated routes to completion. My service learning class was another experience that helped cement this idea. I struggled at first to adapt my lessons to the students in my class because I wasn’t always aware of their physical or mental abilities. This forced me to formulate lessons that were flexible enough to accommodate the learning styles of all students while still enabling them to meet the learning targets. The most effective way I saw of doing this was providing students with a lot of choice and focusing on the overarching concepts rather than the way they got there. For example, with the vehicle sculpture lesson we emphasized how people get around and encouraged students to brainstorm modes of transportation. We then gave them access to the “art store” which was an area of the classroom with many different materials and tools they could use at their discretion to realize their ideas. They were also provided with paper to plan their sculptures if they wanted and we showed them examples of composite vehicles that combined transportation with everyday things. In this way we appealed to many different learning styles. We had a group discussion about transportation for learners that are more successful with auditory examples. We wrote down our ideas and provided planning paper for students who were more visual, and we showed physical examples as well as pictures of creative vehicles for students who work better with tangible examples. On top of all this we provided a level of choice and freedom of medium that enabled students to decide for themselves the appropriate materials to create a sculpture. The overarching learning outcome was for the students to be able to create a tangible structure from their ideas about transportation and they were almost all successful in this.
Although I was introduced to lesson planning in my general education classes, I felt this class gave me an in-depth breakdown of how to develop a comprehensive and effective lesson. Like I previously mentioned, I used to believe that the lesson was all about the activities I planned, but this class helped me realize that the activities are just the ladder that gets the students to the learning target. This is why it is important to start with the learning objective, that is, the artistic concept you want your students to understand by the end of the lesson. By starting with this overarching concept, the lesson can be broken down into the essential understandings, procedures, activities, and assessments that will build and gauge student understanding. One aspect of lessons that I didn’t understand before this class was the importance of motivation and ideation and how these facilitate art making. I have always had trouble figuring out how to motivate my students to participate in the lessons I plan and I realize that this usually stems from a lack of intrinsic motivation. I would often replace my student’s intentions for their art with my own which resulted in a lack of engagement. I now see that the reason for creating art stems from the artist’s personal interests and their need to express themselves and make meaning based on their perceptions. To foster this idea in my students I think it’s as simple as investing time in learning what they are interested in and then transferring this to my lessons. That’s not to say that each lesson has to be tailored to each individual student’s interests, but the lesson must include enough choice for students to be able to express their passions and identity freely through their artwork. The way to do this is to decide on an overarching concept you want your students to understand and provide activities that allow them to explore this topic in their own way. The role of motivation and ideation is to provide students with a way to generate and organize ideas about this topic the way any artist would explore their ideas before they create a work of art. These ideas will be essential to my future lesson planning.
This class has been extremely helpful in putting my previous knowledge of education into an artistic context. There are many different theories and philosophies about art education that have given me a deeper understanding of the many aspects that go into efficient art education. My mind has opened to the importance of not only what I teach my students, but how I teach them. The way I conduct myself as a teacher as well as the environment I create in my classroom all influence the way my students learn. Overall I see the importance of developing a classroom culture and curriculum that foster the personal artistic development of my students as well as teaches them problem solving and critical thinking skills that will transfer to other areas of their lives. My hope is that not only will my class teach them to think like artists, but it will enable them to see the importance of their ideas and passions because they have learned how to communicate them through art.