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.

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

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: Questioning

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’ as a method for presenting children with options for different learning trajectories. 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.

Eduardo Paolozzi, Wittgenstein in New York (1964). Screenprint on paper. 763 x 538 mm.Tate collection

Questioning

“Asking questions to children provides them with an opportunity to think and use language in a functional manner by allowing them to report observations, describe experiences and make predictions.” Ramsey & Fowler (2004)

“Our vision is a world where people think for themselves and can confidently ask questions, answer questions and understand the world around them.” The Exploratorium 

Questions are asked to find our more information or reconsider something from a new perspective. An educator may ask a child a question for various reasons including directing attention to a particular issue, stimulating curiosity, helping to pinpoint an individual’s level of understanding or encouraging deeper thinking (MacNaughton & Williams, 2009). Questioning can also be used to challenge assumptions, investigate a problem or prompt metacognitive learning processes.

Questions can be closed or open. Closed questions can be useful if a simple recollection of information is needed to assess where an individual’s current level of understanding or interest is at. However, these can also be limited in relation to pushing a learner to think past what they already know. Alternatively, open questions may encourage children to question assumptions and deepen understandings.

Open-ended questioning can also be used to move learners between different types of literal, analytical and conceptual thinking, allowing learning to complexify. This process can be referred to as Socratic questioning (Richard & Linda, 2007). Fisher (2007: 623-624) outlines these stages as:

1. Literal questions that ask for factual information such as:

• What is this about?
• What happened?
• What did you have to do?

2. Analytical questions that encourage critical thinking such as:

• What question(s) do you have?
• What reasons can you give?
• What are the problems/solutions here?

3. Conceptual questions that encourage abstract thinking such as:

• What is the key concept (strategy or rule) here?
• What does it mean?
• What criteria are we using to judge this or test if it is true?
• How might we further investigate this concept, strategy or hypothesis?

Combined together, these questions may encourage increasingly divergent and critical thinking over time. Below is an example of a conversation between an educator and a group of six year olds driven by Socratic questioning (Ibid: 624):

Teacher: Why did the mother think that her baby was best?
Child: Because it was beautiful. She thought it was beautiful.
Child: She thought it was beautiful because she was the mother.

Teacher: What does it mean to be beautiful?
Child: It means someone thinks you are lovely.
Child: You are perfect …
Child: Good to look at.

Teacher: Can you be beautiful even if no one thinks you are lovely?
Child: No. You can’t be beautiful if no one thinks you are beautiful.
Child: You can be beautiful inside, you can feel beautiful …

This conversation illustrates possible lines of enquiry driven by questions that continuously respond to the children’s evolving thought processes. The extract demonstrates how the basic principles of ‘what beauty is’ was interrogated through the cumulative questions asked by the educator. Each question extends children’s thinking as opposed to asking new questions that are separate from their responses (Fisher, 2005). Socratic questioning is one approach that can be use to make learning more complex, contextualised and personally relevant. This could be a useful strategy to experiment with when talking to a group of children in an art museum or developing a paper resource around artworks, artistic processes and art concepts.

Questioning can also be used to increase children’s aesthetic awareness of artworks (MacNaughton & Williams 2009). Take as an example, Janet Cardiff’s artwork Forty Part Motet (2001), a sound installation featuring the choral composition of the Renaissance English composer Thomas Talli. To encourage aesthetic awareness, an educator may ask: Where have you heard music like this before? What else does the music sound like? How could we make music like this? Why do you think the artist chose to make the room dark? Why do you think it was important for the speakers to be placed in a circle?

Janet Cardiff Forty Part Motet (2001). Video from Tate website (2017).

Questioning around this particular artwork could be further contextualised within a child’s experience through an educator describing their experience of the artwork as a starting point for group enquiry. For example:

“When I was walking around the space, I tried standing in front of each speaker so that I could listen to the different voices coming out of each one. When I did this, I could feel the sound moving physically in my body and as this happened, it felt like I was also experiencing different singer’s emotions inside of me. Did anyone else notice these feelings? How would you describe them? Did the singer’s emotions all feel the same or did they change throughout the song? How did the different voices sound and feel different from one another? “

I would love to hear your insights on questioning as a technique for facilitating children’s learning with and through art in museums. The next post will feature the method of ‘demonstrating’ as a teaching and learning strategy.

References 

Fisher, R. (2005). Teaching children to think. Second edition, Cheltenham, Nelson Thornes.

Fisher, R. (2007). Dialogic teaching: developing thinking and metacognition through philosophical discussion. Early Child Development and Care. 177 (6/7), p.615-663.

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

Ramsey, J & Fowler, M (2004). “What do you notice? Using posters containing questions and general instructions to guide preschoolers’ science and mathematics learning’, Early Childhood Development and Care, 174(1), p.31-45.

Richard, P & Linda, A (2007). Critical thinking: The art of Socratic Questioning. Journal of Developmental Education. 31(1), p. 36-37.

Tate website (2017). Tateshots: Janet Cardiff viewed July 16, 2017 at http://www.tate.org.uk/art/videos/tateshots/janet-cardiff

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.

 

Techniques for facilitating children’s learning in art museums

Over the next month I am going to have a go at writing a handful of posts on techniques for facilitating young children’s learning with and through art in museums. I have been thinking about doing this for a while but didn’t quite know how to go about it as I did not want to construct an idea that there is a singular way of teaching and learning in galleries. I am also totally disinterested in presenting the idea that I have more expertise on this topic than others as that is simply untrue and well, boring. There are so many people out there doing brilliant things in early childhood education and I love learning about the different ways that other educators approach their work. Please feel free to comment below to pour some other perspectives into the mix! I see these posts as thinking snapshots and hope they might generate deeper consideration around how others understand and implement methods in their context.

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 but more as different options to experiment with. This first post will explore the broader notion of facilitated learning and its possibilites in relation to gallery learning.

Before I go any further, I would like to acknowledge two former colleagues and friends – Kaye Stuart and Shelley Radanovic – who taught me so much about techniques for facilitating children’s learning. I worked with Kaye and Shelley on the children’s programme at the Ipswich Art Gallery in Queensland, Australia. Kaye had previously worked as a director of a community kindergarten and Shelley as a primary school teacher. Shelley now runs an amazing children’s art studio driven by a project-based learning philosophy. Their relentless enthusiasm, passion and knowledge towards early childhood education had a huge influence on me and I will be forever grateful to have had the opportunity to have learnt from them.

Facilitation

To facilitate means to make something easier (Collins Dictionary online, 2017). In an education setting, this does not mean to lower the standard for learning bur rather support an individual’s ability to make connections and thinking critically about their learning process (Mac Naughton & Williams, 2009). Facilitation may take many forms such as questioning, suggesting, modelling and giving feedback as well as non-human interventions such as the layout of materials or the arrangement of artworks. A facilitator, whether that be a parent, a peer, a resource, an art tool or a material allows learning to complexify, deepen and diversify over time.

Facilitation acknowledges the active role children play in their own learning and development. This moves away from an understanding that knowledge is predominantly contained in direct instruction. In an art museum, an artist or gallery staff member may create the conditions for learning but it is the participants who select what they explore and how their learning journey proceeds. The role of the educator could then be seen as guiding and extending an individual’s thinking.

From my experience, finding a balance between a child’s individual explorations and adult intervention can sometimes be tricky. Too much intervention and the learning environment could become overly didactic. Too little intervention and the activity could lose any pedagogical structure leading to an individual becoming frustrated or disinterested. An important aspect of this process is also allowing children to encounter failures and frustrations as part of their journey as this permits time for problems to be explored in innovative ways.

Whilst facilitation is a low-intervention technique, this can become problematic if it is understood as a ‘laissez-faire’ approach to learning. The following quote from Mike Petrich, a designer from the Tinkering Studio at the Exploratorium in San Francisco describes this misunderstanding in relation to the tinkering movement:

“Unfortunately, a lot of people think that tinkering is just about throwing a lot of random things on a table and asking kids to have fun with them. That’s not what this is about. Tinkering is fun, but it’s also a highly choreographed, sometimes painstaking, deeply discussed, and a well thought-out discipline, so that we actually can facilitate peoples’ thinking through initial starting points that might lead to complex new directions.

Instead of just saying: “Go ahead make anything you can imagine”, we are trying to carefully choreograph moments where you enter into a situation and  find something of interest to start with. It is not “whatever” you want to build with our light play setup. We are asking: “What do you notice?” “What are you curious about looking at more?”  “What might you want to change?”  “What might you like to construct now that you have become more familiar with the material?” (Petrich & Wilkinson, 2015).

Facilitation therefore requires skilled practitioners who are confident in supporting, extending and scaffolding children’s diverse learning needs and interests over time. Learning curators and artists play an active role in planning the context that children’s learning is facilitated in. This could be done in many ways including:

• Selecting artworks, materials, tools and equipment for an activity;
• Selecting ‘cognitive tools’ such as what artistic techniques will be demonstrated or what art concepts may be introduced;
• Selecting furniture and a spatial arrangement that encourages people to play, make and talk together;
• Recruiting staff who are experienced and confident in their ability to work with young children;
• Considering what additional resources could be given to parents to support them in supporting their children’s learning;
• Encouraging those working directly with children to continuously observe, reflect and make changes to an activity whilst it is in progress.

Building upon this, the next post will explore the technique of ‘suggesting’ and how this can be used to support learning.

References

Collins Dictionary online, viewed July 6, 2017 at: https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/facilitate

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

Petrich, M & Wilkinson, K 2015. ‘What do we want? More replicants or a next generation of students who can think for themselves?’ The LEGO Foundation website, viewed April 10, 2016.