Improving Teaching and Learning in the Arts

Gloria Callaway, Mary Kear

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9781135709884
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Didattica
• Subtopic: Didattica generale

Covers the contribution of arts to children's learning from Art and Design, Design for Technology to Drama and Music. The book also looks at the state of the arts in primary schools, and includes an evaluation of the relationships between the arts and those moral, spiritual, cultural and social values which impinge on all aspects of the arts and arts education. Each subject within the arts curriculum is considered separately to illustrate the general and specific issues which influence the work of the class teacher. The book also takes on the current thorny issue of assessment, recording and reporting, offering strategies for ways of responding to children's work, and suggestions for accumulating evidence on which to base assessment.

Part I

Common issues

Introduction: developing primary practice in the arts

Gloria Callaway

Teaching and learning in the arts

Teaching has been described as a vocation, a profession and other things besides, but most often as an art. As reflective teachers, we learn more about children as we teach them; as they learn, we learn. We also learn about teaching by watching more skilled practitioners in action, and by studying useful theory arrived at by experts in the field. Observation, study and reflection on our own and others’ practice helps all of us to improve, if we allow the expertise of more skilled others to inform our work, and if we learn in equal measure from our successes and failures.

This is particularly true of teaching in, through and about the arts. Adults as well as children learn about the arts from looking at, watching and listening to skilled artists or artistes; from being taught by more able teachers, and, of course, from their peers. This often involves practical engagement, trying out ideas, and attempting to relate this personal experience to knowledge and understanding gained from other sources.

The term ‘art’ is listed, in the Collins Thesaurus (1995) along with the words craft, skill, mastery, expertise and knowledge, all of which carry with them the notion of something that can be taught, passed on, perhaps in an apprenticeship model. But we also get the words aptitude, knack and virtuosity, which might imply that the arts are a gift, which we either have or don’t have: something over which we have little control. This is a widely held belief, one which we intend to challenge during the course of this book.

While there is undoubtedly a range of skills and aptitudes evident in any group of children, there is every reason to assume that the arts can be taught. Equally, there is every reason to assume that we support children’s creativity by well structured teaching, offering appropriate models and examples of artists’ and artistes’ work, and encouraging the best practice in every sense.

Teaching and learning in the arts is rightly considered as beneficial across the curriculum, although we do not propose that we teach the arts because they help children do better at mathematics. (Try to reverse that statement, and see how it reads.) Learning in and through the arts complements and supports achievement, it promotes clear thinking, logical decision-making and considered approaches to problem-solving.

‘Just because artistic judgements are not open to scientific verification, it does not follow that they are closed to all forms of verification. There are different kinds of reasoning…. feeling and reason need not be considered dichotomous; it is the interplay between them which leads to a more comprehensive form of knowledge. Thus, to deny students access to the arts is to deny them access to a more comprehensible, richer, way of knowing than is possible within the limitations of ‘scientific rationality’.

(Bergman, 1993, pp. 109–12)

We argue here that a comprehensive arts education within the primary curriculum is vital, both for its intrinsic worth, and as a necessary complement to other aspects of learning. Through experiences in the arts, children learn, for instance, to interpret illustrations and pictures of objects and creatures they have never encountered in ‘real life’, such as dinosaurs and the cities of ancient civilisations, beanstalks that grow to enormous heights and machines that travel through time and space. Like adults, they build on their own experience of the world around them, to access the imaginary worlds of others, and to make their own. ‘Imagination’ is based on personal experiences and the ability to imbue known phenomena with wondrous and unknown qualities. This is surely both a function and the product of a worthwhile arts education.

Primary teachers and the arts

In primary schools, teaching the arts poses particular problems for some teachers, because of uncertainty about their own skills and knowledge, and even from a feeling of guilt about spending time which they feel should be devoted to core subjects. Yet there can be few teachers who are not familiar with many different forms of music, visual arts and drama. Cameras and computers are part of our everyday lives, as are newspapers, televisions and other media technologies. When we teach children, we try to start with what they know. So it may be helpful for us to acknowledge the vast wealth of knowledge and understandings we have, and to use it as a basis for teaching others.

This lack of confidence, lack of resources or limited space have been cited as reasons for the low status often afforded to teaching the arts in some schools. Perhaps such factors also contribute to a focus on ‘doing’ rather than ‘learning’. When time is perceived as being limited, the tendency has been to cut corners on the process, in order to achieve products. Throughout this book are examples of children and teachers creating ‘products’. However, we want to stress that the arts are primarily concerned with complex thought-processing, and so they make significant contributions to the development of children’s thinking skills. That is how good ‘products’ evolve.

‘Effective art teaching will support and encourage development of personal vision and therefore demand independence of thought from the student.

(Ross, 1985, p. 78)

Such independence can be challenging for teachers, who may find it hard to strike an appropriate balance between expressive action and structured learning. The arts can be noisy, messy and profligate consumers of time, space and resources. But primary teachers are skilled organisers, competent managers and able to make amazing silk purses from the most unpromising of sows’ ears. The aim of this book is to support the reader in building on existing skills and understandings. Through case studies, starting points for reflection and specific enquiry tasks, we suggest how to develop theoretical perspectives through careful consideration of issues which influence everyday practice.

Chapter 1, therefore, examines four major issues, which we believe are central to the debate about the role and function of arts education today. They are concerned with: a definition of ‘arts’; the relationship between ‘making’ (practical activity) and ‘consuming’ (experiencing and appreciating) in the arts; the pros and cons of ‘combined’ and ‘discrete’ arts provision, and the existence (or not) of a common ‘artistic process’ which informs making in all main art forms.

The role of the arts in the primary school

An important consideration, which underpins all our work in primary school, is how we, as teachers, position children as learners within the arts curriculum. The notion that children are mini-artists and performers is a tempting one. We certainly encourage them to display and make visual, musical and dramatic products for their peers and others to enjoy. But this is only one aspect of the arts in primary schools; not all artistic endeavours in the classroom are for public consumption. Think about role play, creative writing, personal sketchbook use and other creative pursuits which may serve as an end in themselves, for the pleasure of the participant or participants alone. Music making is surely not only and solely as rehearsal for performance: improvisation, composition and singing can happen unobserved, unheard, by anyone but the player or singer.

On the other hand, where a performance or exhibition is the intended outcome, skills already learned and practised are drawn on, and developed as appropriate for the ‘public event’. In schools, such events can be appreciated at different levels. Highly accomplished, technically competent and skilfully staged work is always a joy for the audience, be it the class assembly or the prestigious school concert. Children understand and appreciate the formal conventions which apply in such situations, and are able to rise to the occasion.

There is, increasingly in our experience, a worrying tendency to make the formal performance or exhibition the rationale for teaching in the arts, for example, when all singing or dance activities are geared towards a production, or when artwork gets frenetically generated to decorate walls in order to impress inspectors or parents of potential students. In itself, this is understandable, given today’s pressures on time, space and energies, but we need to ask whether this is sufficient to equip children with the breadth of experience that comes from a different pedagogical focus.

In planning and implementing classroom-based arts education (that is, not including special clubs or other extra-curricular activitie...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Series editors’ preface
• Part I Common issues
• Part II Art forms
• Part III Celebreating the arts for everyone
• Notes on contributors
• Index