Modelling Sustainable Thinking Through Making
Student led workshops
Next week Andy will lead a workshop around thinking through making.
Three objectives:
Entry level: Everyone should feel confident and able to give good demonstrations.
Applied level:
Articulate the importance of 'Thinking through making' to knowledge in art and design.
Advanced level:
Understand the relationship between material practice and sustainable ways of being in the world.
Book recommendations:
Intelligent hands: Why making is a skill for life.
Charlotte Abrahams and Katy Bevan
Art education for a sustainable planet: Embracing Eco-pedagogy in K-12 classrooms
John Huckle and Stephen Sterling
Thinking through making
Tim Ingold
Signature pedagogy 1
The creative project
Signature pedagogy 2
The demonstration
Signature pedagogy 3
questioning the role of art
"The pedagogizing is regulated by a restricted code as the modelling principle, the generative principle is shown, demonstrated, experienced rather than verbally elaborated." Bernstein, 1996.
bernstein explains that the only way to learn a 'craft' is by having it shown, demonstrated, and crafted in front of the learner.
Klaus Rinke and Monika Baumgartl (D):Primary Demonstration, 1971
Barbara Bolt, skill with materials
Develop skill WITH materials.
Enter into a dialogue with the materials that you’re working with.
Observation task:
We made notes on how this artist successfully articulated their making practice and how tthey did not successfully articulate their process.
Did not explain terms as she raised them
VIdeo was filmed in a cinemagraphic way that did not
Demonstration was prescriptive and restrictive, allowing only for the demonstrated process.
That being said, they did not explain the choices behind their design.
The other group looked at a more successful and expansive demonstration.
Explained how we look at work, how we make choices through material exploration
How the train of thought, but not necessarily about prescriptive technique.
Visualising language and repeating them to reinforce language
What do you choose to emphasise when demonstrating in a classroom?
Different classrooms require different demonstrations.
Demonstrations are not a step by step guide.
Basics of demonstation:
Always complete the task or skill that you are demonstrating at least once before teaching it.
Use the same materials, equipment and setting that the learners will be using.
Gather all the resources (tools/equipment and materials/ components/ingredients) that will be needed and have them close to hand – working closely with a technician can be invaluable on this one.
Practice the demonstration including explanations and questions – doing this with a peer, in front of a mirror or a video camera can give useful feedback.
Different approaches to demonstrations
The public pass-it on demo
You demonstrate to the whole group.
Then ask a student to repeat what you have just done – and to talk through what they ‘think’ they are doing. Students can be prompted by their peers.
Pre-empts when everyone is released to complete the task.
The pass-it on demo - (Delegating knowledge)
You demo to a small group of students who are then charged to go and demo to their peers. In small groups.
The silent exaggerated performance demo - Silent film/Mime Performance
You demo silently to the whole group and encourage them to watch. Use exaggerated gestures to emphasise key moments.
Flows into a responsive demonstration - Then ask a couple of students to direct you through the demo again – or to do the demo again themselves.
The ”look for” demo - Bingo
(Can be combined with the silent demo above or not depending on what is being demonstrated)
Give out cards to students with things to ‘look out for’ in the demo – and collect student’s answers at the end.
The predictive demo
This is a technique regularly used in the science classroom. You ask the students to predict what will happen when you do something – what will the effect be? You can deliberately make mistakes and check if students notice - encourages attention.
Visual Thinking Strategies:
A specific approach to looking at art, known as Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS), was co developed by Abigail Housen, Harvard Cognitive Psychologist, and Philip Yenawine, Director of Education at MOMA between the years of 1988-1991
This teaching method is initiated by facilitated discussions of art images and is documented to have a cascading positive effect on both teachers and students.
This type of viewing activity asks students/viewers three basic questions which require a careful analysis of not only what is seen in the work, but also a reflection on the students’ thinking. This format is an inquiry-based approach that creates dialogue and discussion. The questions are designed to require students’ interpretations and ideas to be based on what is evidenced in the visual artwork. The questions to guide class discussion are:
1) What’s going on in this picture?
2) What do you see that makes you say that?
3) What more can we find?
You can also use these more generatively with student's work. Almost as a studio critique.
Effective way of reflecting on accomplished work.
The paradox of creativity in art education: Kerry Thomas
What grounds our practice as an art and design teacher?
Your own skill with and empathy for the materials and processes you work with as an artist, designer, art historian, creative as a way of being and becoming in and with the world.
Tim Ingold, The life of lines: the world of background.
'We are led to suppose, .. that the ground outside like the floor, is a kind of baseboard or infra-structure pn which all esle stands.'
Refers to the hard surfacing of the earth as both literally and metaphorically separating us from the ground that should otherwise nurture us.
Living 'on' the world, rather than 'in' it.
Do you understand your subject konowledge and skilll with materials and processes as applied to a hard-surfaced world, studio or classroom as a background or growing from and within the responsive and caring intra-actions of an ensemble of relations? Gert Biasta, Head Heart and Mind
Rejects art education as for self expression or feeding into art industries
Simply put, we could say that we can think about the world, that we can feel for the world, and that there is a willing of the world, a wanting to be in and with the world.
The work fo our hands, gets us closest to what it means to be in dialogue with what is real, what is material, physical, what has its own integrity, its own pace, its own rhythm and so on.
The five ways to wellbeing
Connect
Be active
Take Notice
Keep learning
Give
Modelling your own empathetic journey with the 'work of art' through live demonstration an dnarration of your own visual thinking.
Modelling your own sustainable ways of being and making through demonstating the five ways of being in the classroom.
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