One challenge of learning in COVID times is the myth of replicating the learning activities, hoping believing that it would also replicate the learning experience. So the focus then becomes a measure of how 'out there' in the swimming pool their activities appear to be. The below swimming pool analogy has been widely used in illustrating the SAMR model or the level of inquiry learning. While it quickly brings everyone to a thinking framework that 'makes sense,' I can't help but wonder 'what about the non-swimmers? Or, say, you simply don't want to swim? Why is it still about having a single type of measure?'
Allegedly, Albert Einstein said “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” The impacts of using a single type of measure are not limited to students but to teachers as well in these days and times, with so many expectations to adapt, innovate, and transform curricula - what is really the essence of teaching and learning?
How did we get here in the first place?
The real disruption here involves managing the expectations of what learning and teaching look like. The activities are no longer the means to reach an end [-product] but a beginning of wonder, inquiry, or conversation. They are not measures but scenarios that gather insights into students' lives and inform teachers to create a safe and equitable learning environment. The crucial 'teaching' skills then become facilitating the 4Cs (critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and communication) in order to gather essential information to enable relationship building.
".. today we have too much knowledge, too little experience.." Ai Wei Wei, 14 May 2021, Conversations: Ai Weiwei. Auckland Writers Festival 2021.
Experience. Verb. Challenge your learners to be active meaning makers.
With a lot of us spending more time at home watching Netflix, the urge to connect and create becomes a necessity for maintaining our Hauora (wellbeing). Following Paint (n.) | Art Inquiry Project, I wonder what kind of creative projects one can do at home? And do they have to involve squeezing commercially made, mass-produced paint out of a tube to art?
One obstacle to overcome when incubating creative behaviours is how comfortable we are about being expert consumers. While it may broaden our perspective and help bring forward innovation, any chance of taking part in the process brings learners on a deep dive into 'how we got here' in the first place and that is unreplaceable by just focusing on the outcome. The creative process in my opinion is second to none when it comes to being the champion of knowledge acquisition. Learning by Doing really is about the doing!
Make your own vegetable dye
Instead of prescribing your learners endless instructions and leading them to your well of knowledge, a powerful approach is to empower them to do: Experience problem-solving, carrying it out first-hand, trialing and failing, and discovering something new for the first time.
Without consuming 'art materials', create your own colours!
[Colours at home. https://youtu.be/6PwZELIplu0]
The beginning of this conversation might lead to further wondering and discoveries. What more colours can we make at home? What other materials make colours? Before people could buy tubes of paint in a shop, how did artist do it?
[Collecting the world's colours. https://youtu.be/F8aVfqDKx1U]
Make your own egg tempera
The advance in technology can sometimes take us further away from the essence of what really matters. Surly one may argue art isn't about pigments, but you can't deny the importance of how the media gives insights into an artist's way of working. It's like the uncut version of the artist's true story!
[Make your own paint like Rembrandt. https://youtu.be/FOHKxg9h-4I]
So I finally got representational art! You make your paint, then you make your painting.
You paint an apple using the red derived from crushed lice, not a pressed apple. 😁
Speaking of the artist's true story. A tried and tested method in art education is studying artist models. It is pretty effective in producing employable artists, and in more 'successful' cases, employable art teachers. That is a rather self-serving system where the purpose of art is perhaps completing assignments for the course. Yet really, the essence of studying great artists is to get an understanding of 'the way of working' and gain an insight into 'what makes them tick.' And perhaps that gives us some motivation and pathways to embark on.
From Rembrandt to van Gogh (at 5:48), the impacts of technology also contributed to the style of the artworks. But this would not normally have been discussed if one were to do an artist study or a copy of a piece - because the goal normally is to train technical skills using the media you have at hand. Without the luxury of working with a master or a practitioner in an apprentice model or in a 'traditional' classroom setting at best, the purpose of art education should also be evolved.
Les arts plastiques, the human expressions in response to their time in space. How do we guide learners to experience more of the create, and less of the consume?
Love it. Do it!
