LTC 8740 - Day 4

Chapter 5 Eisner Describing Learning in the Visual Arts

“…Situated learning: the child is situated in a social and material context, and this context, viewed as a culture, teaches.” (p 93) 

Optimal learning in the visual arts takes place when:

There are opportunities for group work

Learning is connected to real life activities

Lessons that are sequential and interrelated

Lessons offer the ‘just right’ amount of challenge

Work is meaningful and has “something to say”

Technical skills are taught and practiced

Situations are created which refine the senses

Enable students to use metaphor

Encourages flexible thinking and analysis

There are several differing theories on the things that children draw, the reasons they draw them, as well whether or not meaning is intended in these drawing. Eisner argues that the act of creation “calls upon the use of the mind.” (p 107) “Human performance in the arts is the offspring of a dynamic medley of interacting features: development, situation, and the cognitive abilities the child has acquired as a result of this interaction.” (p 107)

I agree that group work is beneficial, but struggle with motivating the students who don’t want to work in a group. I encountered this situation this year, even after they were allowed to pick their own group. I loved observing social skills at work, the way that various teams elected to divide roles, the way the groups worked democratically to distribute the labor within the groups. I thought it was interesting that Eisner mentions the fact that children frequently make gurgles or other sounds when they are painting, an indication that they are deeply immersed in their work, both visual and kinesthetic. I have observed this in action more than once, now I understand why Johnny hums a low monotone tone as he executes his art.

Chapter 5 Freedman ~ Interpreting Visual Culture, Constructing Concepts for Curriculum

Curriculum created for postmodern education must reflect our students need to be literate in the multi-layered texts that permeate postmodern culture. “Interpretation is the process of giving meaning to form.” (p 104) It is not enough that students learn to merely interpret, they must be taught the skills to do so in a critical and intentional manner. When interpretation is inquiry based it allows for multiple meanings. Personal interpretations of postmodern art, based on the past experiences of the viewer, may possibly provide a, as Freedman says, “better” meaning than that originally intended by the artist. (p 92) 

I keep returning to the passage from Eisner, “Teaching like knowledge, cannot be shipped, pumped, or transmitted like the contents of a letter into the heads of students.” (Eisner p 47) Though the skills of interpretation may seem as something that would be automatic and transferred from the ability to decode written text, Freedman asserts that this is not the case. Interpretation skills need to be taught, the repeated act of interpretation facilitates growth. Freedman’s description of this growth is very much in line with Abigail Houssen’s stages of aesthetic growth. In reading this chapter I could see connections to everything I have learned thus far in my graduate studies – curriculum must allow for personal and meaningful connections, skills must be taught to comprehend the sophisticated (and frequently deceptive) nuances of visual culture.Although this sounds cliche, postmodern times mandate that students learn not WHAT to think in terms of visual culture, but instead, HOW to think.