Learning through artworks

This post discusses the possibilities of artworks in facilitating learning and alternate ways of imagining the world. I draw upon the work of Maxine Greene and John Dewey to explore the proposition that children’s learning through artworks has the potential to challenge dominant discourses, opening up new ways of thinking and being. There is also a resource list for educators and parents interested in incorporating artworks into children’s learning.

Amalia Pica’s ‘A ∩ B ∩ C’ (2013). © Amalia Pica. I found this bad boy on the Guggenheim online archive.

“It is not that the artist offers solutions or gives directions. He nudges; he renders us uneasy; he makes us (if we are lucky) see what we would not have seen without him. He moves us to imagine, to look beyond” Maxine Greene (2000, p. 276).

Artworks can be used in many ways for many different reasons in learning contexts. They offer rich possibilities for experiencing and imagining the world from new and multiple perspectives. Visual art as well as the arts more generally, have the ability to make people aware of different ways of thinking and being in the world, working against reductionist and singular ways of thinking.

Maxine Greene (2000) extends upon the word of John Dewey (1916, 1934, 1954) to argue that imagination and the arts play a critical role in the making of democratic communities. She suggests that school curriculum should aim to prioritise the ‘releasing of the imagination’ through providing rich aesthetic experiences for children. These then provide new modalities for children to sense, experience and learn through the world.

However, the mere presence of artworks in a learning environment does not guarantee that a child is encountering or imagining the world in new ways. Greene argues that if school curriculum is to support imagination through the arts, children’s encounters need to be aesthetically varied, rich and reflective. Through this, learning through artworks has the potential to challenge dominant discourses and ways of thinking. This may then encourage children to question their understandings and assumptions about the world, to think critically about what is and what could be.

Below is a list of resources for educators and parents who may be interested in incorporating artworks in children’s learning at home or in the classroom.

Resource list 

Many of the major modern and contemporary art museums have online digital archives for their collections. Here are some links to my favorites:

Online art museum collections

• MoMA’s online collection

The Museum of Modern Art has made 77,000 works from 25,000 different artists available online. The search engine is easy to use and you can refine your hits using different classifications and time periods.

• The Tate online collection

Tate also have an extensive online collection featuring artworks, exhibitions, videos and artist journals. The digital archive is well referenced and has many tags that are great for getting lost in amazing artwork worm-holes. The search engine is easy to use and has lots of search filter options. Tate’s most famous artworks feature extensive summaries, a copy of the artwork’s display caption as well as the techniques used to produce the artwork, for example Marcel Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’ page. 

• The Guggenheim also has an extensive digital archive.

Video Channels

• TateShots  and TateTalks– Tate have also put together two quite an exceptional collection of video and audio recordings. TateTalks features video footage of talks and events held at the art museum. TateShots comprises of artist interviews, performance pieces (I highly recommend watching Earle Brown’s ‘Calder Piece‘), exhibition films and artist studio visits. If I had a dollar for every minute I spent watching TateShots I would be a millionaire. But I work in children’s education and the arts so maybe I shouldn’t put a monetary value on the amount of time I procrastinate.
• The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark has a constantly growing online collection of videos from different fields such as art, architecture, music, literature and design. I love the Louisiana Channel as it features a lot of Scandinavian and European contemporary artists who I have only discovered through watching these clips.
• The art auction houses of Southeby’s and Christie’s both have YouTube channels featuring short video clips of artist interviews, studio visits and world auction records.

Online courses

• MoMA has developed three online courses that explore inquiry-led learning through artworks. Admittedly I have not had a chance to do any of these courses but I think it worth a look. The first, ‘Art & Ideas: Teaching with Themes’ uses theme-based teaching practices to support educators in incorporating modern and contemporary artworks into curriculum. Then there is Art & Inquiry: Museum Teaching Strategies For Your Classroom looks at museum education strategies for inquiry-based teaching and how these can be used in classrooms. Finally, Art & Activity: Interactive Strategies for Engaging with Art builds on content from courses one and two to explore activity-based strategies for using artworks primary and secondary lesson plans.

Article

• Here is a link to Dr. Emily Pringle’s article on ‘The Artist as Educator: Examining Relationships between Art Practice and Pedagogy in the Gallery Context.’ Emily is Head of Learning Practice & Research at Tate & also my awesome co-PhD supervisor.

References

Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and Education. New York, Macmillan.

Dewey, J. (1934). Art as Experience. New York, Minton, Balch.

Dewey, J. (1954). The Public and Its Problems. Chicago, IL: Swallow Press.

Greene, M (2000). ‘Imagining futures: the public school and possibility,’ Journal of Curriculum Studies, vol 32(2). P.267-280.

The role of materials in children’s learning through art

This post discusses the possibilities of materials and material play in children’s learning through art. I draw on the theories of loose parts and new materialism to argue that materials, including artworks, play an active and participatory role in opening-up divergent thinking and inquiry-led learning in schools, home and informal learning contexts such as art museums.

Why do materials matter?

Materials and material exploration have long been a part of artistic inquiry. Since Frobel’s development of the kindergarten in the late 1700’s, they have also held an important place in early childhood settings. In the 1970’s Simon Nicholson presented the theory of loose parts – the proposition that young children’s creative empowerment comes from the presence of open-ended materials that can be constructed, manipulated and transformed through self-directed play. It is fair to say that material content, including artworks and art materials, hold tremendous possibilities for facilitating children’s inquiry-led learning in new and divergent ways. I consider materials to be one of multiple forces that learning can emerge from in an art museums. Others may include social interaction between people, spatial layout of things and the delivery of curatorial content such as through audio guides or information resources.

As reading and writing are often privileged in school curriculum, experimentation with different materials can provide new opportunities for alternate and aesthetically-driven pedagogies to be produced (check out this blog for how I define pedagogy). This is to say that different materials may encourage different ways of thinking, learning and being. For example, in a previous posts on ‘suggesting as a technique for facilitating children’s learning through art’ I talk about the different cognitive, social, emotional and aesthetic learning pathways that two different materials: plastic cylinders and large paper sheets may present. Whilst the cylinders may provoke explorations around stacking, placing, dismantling, balancing, arrangement and construction, the large paper sheet may suggest gentle movements, swaying, rolling, folding, hiding and enveloping. Through experimentation, the properties and abilities of a material may change, creating new starting points for further inquiry and experimentation.

The active role of materials in art practices and learning

In the arts, different materials such as paint, clay, paper, resin, fabric, wood or plastic can be experimented with in a myriad of ways. In art forms such as dance, live art and socially engaged practices, materials may be slightly more abstract such as the human body, sound, participants and society. I believe that art materials are not just a tool for self-expression or a thing for children to manipulate; they are an active and participatory force in the production of learning and knowledge. For example, check out this lovely video by visual artist Shirazeh Houshiary in which she talks about the active role of materials in her practice:

I really connect with this, especially the comment: “… they are not representation of the form but a pulsation of the form. I am not interested in painting. I am not interested in the processes of making in the conventional sense of representation. I am trying to get into how something works. This process has taught me a huge amount about who I am, which is surprising. It a process of learning for me more than anything else.” The paint and paintings are active, participatory and dynamic in the artist’s creative experimentation.

Art materials as an invitation to experiment

Material play has the ability to encourage emergent thinking processes, allowing children to produce new understandings as well as experiencing the world from multiple perspectives. However, materials also have the ability to be used in static and predictable ways that shut down creativity and divergent thinking. Whilst I do love Instagram feeds and craft blogs that share ideas for children’s art activities, I am cautious that these may unintentionally encourage imitation and fixed ways of using materials with children. This may then reduce the ability for experimental thinking and practices to emerge.

The challenge to me – and everyone working in learning settings with children – is to keep experimenting, keep questioning, keep venturing into the unknown and the yet-to-be-discovered of art, play, materiality and pedagogy.

I am sure many of you have really interesting insights on this topic and it would be lovely to hear them. Why is children’s play with materials important to you? What are your favorite materials to experiment with?

Further links

The Institute of Making at the University College of London has a great online material library – perfect for anyone who likes to nerd out about different material forms: http://www.instituteofmaking.org.uk/materials-library

My friend Nina Odegard has written a brilliant article on children’s learning with recycled ‘junk’ materials. Nina formally ran a creative recycle centre in Norway: http://www.academia.edu/14201590/When_matter_comes_to_matter_working_pedagogically_with_junk_materials

Professor Pat Thomson, Nina Odegard and I recently did a conference symposium on children’s material play. Check it out: https://louisapenfold.com/2017/12/06/childrens-learning-with-new-found-and-recycled-stuff-symposium-at-aare/

Here is the link to my blog post on Simon Nicholson’s theory of loose parts: https://louisapenfold.com/2016/05/23/simon-nicholson-on-the-theory-of-loose-parts/

I also love the book ‘Encounters with Materials in Early Childhood Education’ by Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw, Sylvia Kind and Laurie Kocher.

Visit to MONA in Hobart, Australia

This post features reflections on my recent visit to The Museum of Old and New Art or MONA in Hobart, Australia. I discuss the ‘O,’ a custom-designed mobile experience for museum visitors that replaces traditional wall-mounted interpretation texts.

Last month I travelled to Tasmania to checkout MONA’s latest exhibition, The Museum of Everything. The show features an array of works by artists who ‘fall outside the confines of the art world proper, the work of ordinary people, working far from the cultural metropolis’ (MONA website, 2017). After visiting MONA for the first time in 2014 and LOVING IT, I was super excited to return to see their new stuff.

MONA is the lovechild of David Walsh, a professional gambler and art lover who opened the museum in 2011. Built underneath a cliff-face that overlooks the River Derwent, the museum has exhibited an array of controversial and thought-provoking art including Patricia Puccini’s Skywhale, Egyptian mummies and a giant cloaca (poop) machine. Yes, you read that correctly.

The MONA building was also designed to naturally flood as the River Derwent rises over the next 50 years. When questioned about this in a 2014 Guardian article, Walsh said:

“It will be an evaluation of whether it has actually achieved anything. If everyone says, ‘Ah f*%$ it, let’s leave it – let’s just let the ground floor flood,’ that would be a good result because it would mean whatever the structure or system that makes choices – which I assume will be someway democratic in 50 years – has expressed its opinion.”

I feel like this quote somehow embodies the museum’s ethos. Regardless, MONA has been a monumental success for the Tasmanian tourism and the Australian art world.

At the museum, there are no wall-mounted texts in the galleries. Instead visitors are given a mobile iPod devise containing a custom-designed audio-visual app called The O. As people walk through the galleries, the O uses a wireless positioning system to locate artworks in close proximity. The app features content such as curator’s discussion of works, artist interview, music and David Walsh’s rambling thoughts. Each artwork features three levels of content which can be grouped into:

“Art wank’ (look for the cock-and-balls icon, you can’t miss it); ‘Gonzo’ (Walsh and curators go Hunter S. Thompson on yo’ ass); ‘Ideas’ (little chunks of info, for those with a short attention span); and interviews with artists… Once you’ve visited the museum, you’ll be able to continue using the O app at home. Like Tinder, but with more art and stuff.” From the MONA website.

Visitors can also select whether they ‘love’ or ‘hate’ a particular artwork (check out the pic above). Whilst walking through The Museum of Everything I used the O continuously. I tried out the object summaries, curator’s wank, Gonzo and ideas. I found the title ‘curator’s wank’ kind of misleading as the content was pretty standard and straight forward curatorial information. There were certainly more personal references and a much more conversational tone to what you would normally have on wall-mounted exhibition texts but overall, I wouldn’t say the ‘curator’s wank’ was fundamentally different to anything I had experienced previously. Or maybe this is because ‘wank’ is the standard talk in galleries, lolz.

I absolutely loved the room with Pat Brassington’s photographs in it! Above: ‘Curiouser and curiouser’ (2017)

I really enjoyed the ‘ideas’ option on The O, especially the music tracks. I always listen to music while walking through exhibitions and it was cool to have someone else’s thoughtful selection of beats to guide thinking in new directions. I also found the music encouraged me to connect more emotionally with the art.

The thing I loved most MONA was that it encouraged me to make and explore relations between myself and art from outside the traditional thinking of major institutions. As I live in England, a country that seems to have such a class system and establishment, it felt refreshing to experience art from a new and fundamentally different perspective.

Further Links

The Art Processor website goes into the geeky technical make-up of The O here: http://artprocessors.net/projects/mona/

 

Serpentine Galleries’ Play as Radical Practice toolkit

This post looks at Serpentine Galleries’ ‘Play as Radical Practice’ toolkit, a creative resource produced between the Gallery’s learning team, artist Albert Potrony and the Portman Early Childhood Centre (UK).

Image credit: Serpentine Galleries

In 2014, the Serpentine learning team commenced a series of artist residencies with the Portman Early Childhood Centre in Westminster, London (UK) run as part of their Changing Play programme. Changing Play aims to explore the possibilities of play through exploring current practices and alternate re-considerations of early childhood education.

Last year, artist Albert Potrony undertook a 12-week residency at the Portman as part of the programme in which he worked collaboratively with children, staff, parents and Serpentine to explore the potential of free play in the school system. Throughout the residency, Albert created a series of material-led play spaces featuring matter such as recycled tubes, plastic sheets, ropes and reflective plastics. During the sessions, children were encouraged to creatively explore the materials alongisde peers and adults through play. Before, during and after each session, the artist, Portman staff, parents and Gallery team engaged in critically reflective discussions that considered the relationships between the programme’s various components such as the materials, curriculum, people and pedagogical underpinnings. The ‘Play as Radical Practice’ toolkit is a direct product of these collaborative discussions.

The toolkit is comprised of three main parts: a booklet, a 24-piece card game (pictured below) and an accompanying film. These work together to share and further consider the imagery, questions and ideas generated from the residency. The toolkit also seeks to support early educators to form solidarities with the children they work with and to advocate for free play in the state school system. This is done through taking a individuals taking position as well as including thoughts and questions from multiple perspectives.

I really like the way the card game explores the residency’s emergent debates and ideas from multiple perspectives including children, parents, curators, the artist and centre staff. Each of the cards in the game features an image and provocation such as field notes, a quote and/or question. For example, one card combines an image of a child and staff member playing with the artist’s materials in the nursery. A quote from a Portman staff member is then presented alongside the image with four interconnected questions:

” ‘They are different children with different members of staff. It’s really interesting, when you read the school reports you think ‘I don’t see him like that at all.’ He may be really chatty with me and really quiet with someone else and also the children behave differently depending on who is present, which is that thing about stepping away from them and letting them play by themselves as part of that witnessing.’ Staff

What is witnessing? Who does it? What does it mean? Witnessing as assessment?  “

These work together to situate the emergence of the educator’s idea around the standardisation of learning within the specific context that it was produced. Furthermore, the card invites the reader, or ‘player’ of the card game, to extend, challenge or support the teacher’s experience through critically thinking about the questions themselves.

Each card is further divided into key themes such as space, relationships, standardisation and chaos/order. Each one of these themes prompts deeper consideration and re-considerations around the imagery, quotes and questions featured in the toolkit. The accompanying booklet investigates these themes more extensively alongside quotes from key early childhood and play theorists such as Hillevi Lenz-Taguchi, Tim Gill, Simon Nicholson and Arthur Battram. You may also come across the introduction I wrote for the toolkit in the booklet, lol. I do wish to point out that my role on the programme is insignificant in comparison to the amazing educators, curators, artists, children and parents who worked together on an ongoing basis to produce the complex conversations, thinking and practices throughout the residency.

The toolkit booklet can be downloaded from the Serpentine website here. A limited number of printed toolkits are available free of charge from the Serpentine learning team. For a copy, please email: jemmae@serpentinegalleries.org . The Play As Radical Practice film will be available to view on the Serpentine website in the near future. An interim report of Serpentine’s World Without Walls programme, including Changing Play, can also be downloaded from the University of Nottingham’s Centre for Research in Arts, Creativity and Literacies website here: worldwithoutwalls_interimresearchreport_final-copy

What is a children’s ‘creative learning environment’ in an art museum?

In this post I explore the question of ‘what is a children’s creative learning environment in an art museum?’ Various understandings of this question are drawn upon to consider its relationship with other terminology such as ‘space’ and ‘relational learning.’

A shadow self-portrait taken by child

Creativity stems from the latin word ‘creō’ that means to make or to create. This word  suggests that creativity is a process that supports the formation of previously inexistent things such as ideas, physical objects or meanings. An environment can be understood in various ways, including possible associations with the natural and physical world. The Oxford online dictionary gives two definitions of environment. Firstly as ‘the surroundings or conditions in which a person, animal, or plant lives or operates’ and secondly as ‘the setting or conditions in which a particular activity is carried on.’ Both definitions imply that an environment is something that extends beyond physicality to non-material forces such as society, emotions, discourse (the way we talk and communicate) and concepts.

A creative learning environment can therefore be seen as a specific temporal, social, historical and cultural context in which these forces intertwine and momentarily shape how, what and why a learner is learning. Once this moment has passed, the forces unravel before continuing to transform and recombine in future learning contexts. This connects with what cultural geographer Doreen Massey’s (2005) describes in her writing on ‘space’ as forming from the emergent interrelations between human and non-human things over time and place. A learner’s experience in a learning environment can therefore be seen as a series of interconnected relational moments in which these diverse and complex forces come together.

This framing is built on an assumption that the world, and human knowledge, is in a continuous state of change, transformation and interconnection. In an art museum context, this could take many forms such as a dedicated space for children and families, a workshop, a performance, an exhibition or even a person’s experience of walking through the building to go to the bathroom.

A creative learning environment allows for the expansion of possibilities for learning instead of limiting them. Pre-set curriculum, guidelines, policy and regulations in schools have tendencies to control and reduce children’s ability to construct new relations in their learning and play (Dahlberg, Moss & Pence, 2007). Moving away from this, art museums are uniquely places sites for learning through their separation from formal curriculum. Whilst art institutions still have their own rules, regulations and guidelines, they also offer the potential for expansive learning possibilities with and through art. This then presents the possibility for new and complex relations to form over time, creating a network of connections between peoples, places, meanings and things.

To relate this back to the physical design of a learning environment, Mark Dudek argues that architecture for early childhood centres is not driven by a need for what is novelty and new but rather by an environment’s capacity “to grow and develop alongside the evolving patterns of its hosts, especially those of the children themselves… (Dudek, 2013: 7-9).” This suggests that a significant strength of a physical learning environment is in its ability to be creatively adapted and modified to new relations that emerge over time. Flexibility in design is therefore critical.

I am also drawn to the term ‘creative laboratory’ as a means of describing the pedagogical principles outlined above. The associations connected with a lab, such as it being a place that encourages experimentation, questioning, testing things out and productive failures seems like a metaphorical fit for these ideas. However it could also be argued that these qualities are simultaneously emblematic of an artist’s studio, FabLab or makerspace. Perhaps the term ‘creative learning environment’ is an over-arching expression for any learning context that encourages the expansive, dynamic and unpredictable growth of human knowledge.

References

Dahlberg, G., Moss, P., & Pence, A. R. (2007). Beyond quality in early childhood education and care: Postmodern perspectives. Oxon: Routledge.

Dudek, M (2016). Nurseries: A design guide. Oxon: Routledge.

Massey, D (2005). For Space. London: SAGE Publications.

Techniques for facilitating children’s learning in art museums: Demonstrating

This is the third post in a series on techniques for facilitating children’s learning with and through art in museums. The first introduced the broader ideas and debates underpinning facilitated learning, the second explored ‘suggesting’ and the third featured ‘questioning’. In this post the method of ‘demonstrating’ will be explored for its ability to extend, support and challenge children’s learning processes in art museums.

Each post includes a description of a technique in addition to how and when it may be useful. These should not be seen as all-conclusive methods of teaching and learning but more as different options to experiment with. I see these posts as thinking snapshots and hope they might generate deeper consideration around how others understand and implement methods in their context.

Demonstrating

To demonstrate means to show or explain how something is done (Cambridge Dictionary online, 2017). In an art museum, demonstrating could be used to show children how they could experiment with a resource, pronounce a new vocabulary word, use an art tool or explore different ways of thinking through artworks. MacNaughton & Williams (2009) also suggest that demonstrating is a means of assisting children in learning alternative and more effects ways of exploring a problem. Demonstration can therefore be used to introduce both verbal and non-verbal skills that aim for learner’s to then be able to use them independently. Finding a balance between children’s self-directed explorations and an educator making a decision to intervene and demonstrate a new skill or technique can sometimes be difficult to find.

Demonstrating new skills and behaviours can support the construction of new possibilities that children can use to explore artwork meanings, materials and concepts. Like other facilitated learning techniques, demonstrating can help to encourage more complex ways of thinking with and through art.

Artists may bring specialised knowledge on concepts, tools, art techniques and ways of engaging with art that they can then introduce to children through the instructional process of demonstration. The need to demonstrate skills suggests that there are limitations to the deconstruction of instructional-based learning and that children’s learning with and through art can be facilitated further through the introduction of new knowledge by someone with more advanced understandings of a particular skill. Bolt & McArdle (2013: 14) elaborate on this:

“With mantras, then, of self-expression, freedom and creativity, art teachers may avoid providing much direct instruction about art making to children, all the while having ‘rules for breaking the rules’ and to ‘teach without teaching’ (McArdle, 2008: 367) which go unspoken and taken for granted. Many preservice teachers, having themselves been left in primary and secondary school to develop ‘naturally’, give the lie to this notion of ‘natural unfolding’, when they arrive at university with little or no skill or artistry and without artistic language or insight. The discourse of ‘natural unfolding’ is attractive to those who know nothing about art, and it is convenient in the contemporary era of bare bones educational funding. If there is no teaching to be done in the arts, then there is no need for an art teacher.’

As this quote implies, the demonstration of specific skills and techniques that assist children’s thinking with and through art may be useful in facilitating and complexifying learning. Demonstrating does not necessarily mean that children need to progress through a series of fixed developmental stages of understandings. In a facilitated learning environment, demonstration can alternatively be seen as a method that gives children further possibilities for experimentation and explorations. A child may choose to take the skill or technique further or they may choose not to. Therefore, whilst demonstrating does require a child to imitate an action or behaviour to learn something new, it does not necessarily produce a singular way of doing this.

For example, picture a four-year-old child walking into a material-based family activity in a sculpture garden. The activity features an array of ‘loose parts’ materials (leaves, sticks, twine, logs, stones and clay) laid out over the lawn next to an Andy Goldsworthy artwork. These materials can be explored in a myriad of ways and do not require a gallery staff member to verbally introduce the activity to the family. The child runs over to the materials and stack the logs onto of one another. After a period of time, an educator or artist may decide to start playing alongside the child, picking up small pieces of the clay, rolling it into small balls, sticking it to a log and then squishing sticks into the clay. The child may watch this non-verbal demonstration of the clay’s ability to act as a connecting materials and begin to explore this technique themselves or they may continue to stack the logs and ignore the demonstration. Either way, the educator has opened possibilities for the child’s further experimentation and thinking through the materials.

A second example could be if an artist wants to encourage parents to talk with children in a workshop, they may create a situation in which they can demonstrate asking a toddler a series of questions that encourages more complex thinking through an artwork. The parents may then extend off this demonstrating and start a conversation with their child asking similar questions to what the artist did. Once the conversation starts to flow, they may then experiment with variations of different questions or even construct their own. Alternatively, they may ignore the artists demonstration all together.

Extending upon these examples, demonstrating can further support children’s learning when an educator:

• Uses clear, direct language to support their demonstration (MacNaughton & Williams, 2009);
• Creates logical and sequential steps that breaks down how to perform the skill. This can make a complex skill easier to understand. The educator must be familiar with the steps themselves so as not to confused themselves or children while demonstrating it (MacNaughton & Williams, 2009);
• Allows children lots of time to practice the skill, ask questions about it, discuss it as a group and seek further information if required;
• Encourages children to experiment with the technique in new situations or contexts once they feel comfortable performing it as a basic level;
• Gives further guidance or feedback in relation to how the skill could be used with other skills, materials and concepts.

Demonstrations can sometimes be an overly simplified version of an action or behaviour. This can be problematic if the learner does not understand that they have the ability to extend and expand upon the skills or techniques being introduced. Demonstration alone may be insufficient in facilitating children’s learning with and through art and may be more effective when combined with other techniques such as questioning, suggesting and giving feedback. Together these give children more options that can be combined with their self-directed explorations and experimentation.

I would love to hear your insights and feedback on demonstrating techniques to facilitate children’s learning with and through art in museums.

What is your experience of demonstrating skills to children and parents in art museums?

How do you allow for a balance of both instruction and children’s self-directed learning?

References 

Bolt & McArdle (2013). ‘Young Children, pedagogy and the arts: Ways of seeing.’ In McArdle & Boldt (Eds). Young children, pedagogy and the arts. Routledge: New York.

Cambridge Dictionary online (2017). Cambridge Dictionary website. Cambridge University Press.

McArdle, F (2008). The arts and staying cool. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 9(4), p. 365-374.

MacNaughton, G & Williams, G (2009). Teaching young children: Choices in theory and practice. Second edition. Maidenhead: Open University Press.

 

Techniques for facilitating children’s learning in art museums: Suggesting

This is the second post in a series on techniques for facilitating children’s learning with and through art in museums. The first presented broader ideas and debates underpinning facilitated learning. Each post will include a description of a technique in addition to how and when it may be useful. These should not be seen as all-conclusive methods of teaching and learning but more as different options to experiment with. I see these posts as thinking snapshots and hope they might generate deeper consideration around how others understand and implement methods in their context. So, let’s hear it for….

Suggesting

To suggest something means to present an idea for consideration (Cambridge Dictionary online, 2017). Suggestions give children a choice as to how their learning path may proceed (Mac Naughton & Williams, 2009). Suggestions can be made verbally through language or non-verbally through actions such as selecting materials, the positioning of equipment or physical gestures. Like other facilitated learning techniques such as questioning, modelling and giving feedback, suggestions can encourage children to explore their learning processes in a new or deeper way, leading to more complex thinking over time.

Image one credit: Centro Internazionale Loris Malaguzzi

Suggesting differs from direct instruction in that it implies there are options. If a suggestion is being used, it is important to consider that a child may not want to act upon it. If a child does not have an option, for example if an artwork cannot be touched due to conservation requirements then direct instruction may be a more appropriate means of communicating information. This could also be accompanied by an explanation as to why there is no choice. For example, “we cannot touch this picture as we have special oils on our hands that are good for keeping our skin soft but if we touch the artwork these can damage it.” If this information was delivered as a suggestion such as “perhaps you could try not touching the artwork” it might be unclear and confusing as to what the child can and cannot do.

Image two credit: Centro Internazionale Loris Malaguzzi

Suggestions can also be made without human intervention. The selection and arrangement of artworks, materials, concepts and resources could propose particular ways of thinking and physically experiencing a gallery space. For example, the plastic cylinders in Image One (top) and the large paper sheets in Image Two (bottom) may prompt significantly different cognitive, social, emotional and aesthetic learning processes. The cylinders may provoke explorations around stacking, placing, dismantling, balancing, arrangement and construction. Alternatively, the large paper sheet may suggest gentle movements, swaying, rolling, folding, hiding and enveloping. These ways of experiencing art and gallery spaces may then catalyse or restrict particular meaning-making and thought processes. An immersive art installation such as Yayoi Kusama’s Obliteration Room could also make various suggestions towards people’s engagement that changes over time as the materials, spatial arrangement and meanings associated with the artwork also transform.

Extending upon this, here are some possibilities for how suggesting could be implemented in an art museum learning programme. Some of the questions have been adapted from Glenda Mac Naughton & Gillian Williams’ book ‘Teaching Young Children’ (2009):

Verbal

• “You could have a go at… drawing the sculpture from different angles.“
• “This printing tool might work better if… you push harder on the handle so that the paint stamps onto the fabric.”
• “Maybe you could… have a look at different artworks that are made out of clay… to think about how you could approach… making your vase using different sculptural techniques.”
• “How about we see if we can find… some artworks that explore the concept of infinity.” 
• “Perhaps you could think about how… this artwork relates to your experience of being in a family?”

Non-verbal

• Using body language to demonstrate or model different behaviours or techniques.
• Altering the aesthetic arrangement of a space so that it stimualtes the construction of new thought processes and relations. REmida centres often do this through presenting familiar recycled materials in unfamiliar ways.
• Carefully considering the grouping of artworks, concepts and materials. What ways of thinking might a particular arrangement provoke?
• Considering how the placement of things (artworks, materials, resources, furniture) allows for people to physically interact and move in a space.
• If an artwork cannot be touched then consider putting a barrier around it or asking floor staff to politely let children know they they cannot touch it as they enter the space. This may fall under ‘direct instruction’ but I had to sneak it in somewhere (#1 pet peeve when it does not happen).

I would love to hear your insights and feedback on using suggestions to facilitate children’s learning in art museum. Coming up as an exciting sequel to ‘facilitation’ and ‘suggesting,’ the next post will discuss the technique of ‘questioning.’

References 

Cambridge Dictionary online, 2017. Cambridge Dictionary website. Cambridge University Press.

Mac Naughton, G & Williams, G 2009. Teaching young children: Choices in theory and practice. Second edition. Maidenhead: Open University Press.

 

Learning with Serpentine – Interim Report

This is a repost from the Centre for Research in Arts, Creativity and Literacies (CRACL) blog. The original post was written by Pat Thomson, Professor of Education within the School of Education, University of Nottingham (UK). 

We have been conducting an evaluation of learning in the Serpentine’s World without Walls programme. We have just reported on our interim results from an examination of two projects. One was the first instalment of Changing Play, a project conducted in partnership with the Portman Children’s Centre.

Anton Franks did this first set of research. His investigation of the work that artist Albert Potrony did suggests the following benefits for children:

• awareness and understanding of a range of materials and objects, manipulative skills in handling large and small materials and objects, and ability to conceptualise them in form and use
• imaginative development in the interaction with materials, objects and other children, allowing experimentation in applying and combining of materials.
• linguistic development in the use of words, utterances and in the construction of narratives accompanying play and reflecting on it afterwards is essential in early conceptual development.
• the richness of children’s narratives incorporated their understanding of social relations and responses to immediate and mediated culture – many instances of children making references to familiar media characters (notably Power Rangers) and to their experience of social and cultural life (home life, rockets, putting people in prison)
• the ability to ‘read’ materials and objects – to name things in their playworld and to construct complex narratives ­­adapting them to their imaginative purposes – are powerful precursors of literacy development
• looking at the images the artist had taken of the children in play and then reflecting on them later, interpreting them and making narratives assisted the development of memory
• continuity and consistency in working regularly with a particular group of children – the original plan was to work both with the Nursery and with a drop-in parent and toddler group, ‘Stay and Play’, but after reflection and discussion with staff this was modified to concentrate on working with the Nursery children
• particularly apparent was children’s increasing sense of autonomy in the playworlds they created, affording them a clearer sense of their own developing character and personhood for themselves and in relation to others. Children were able to lead adults into and through their imaginative worlds, involving them in their play

There were also benefits for nursery staff and children. You can read our full interim evaluation report here as a downloadable pdf. worldwithoutwalls_interimresearchreport_final-copy