In a previous work (appendix) I stated this below:
We contextualise art and artists and understanding the work of individuals and movements in art is now enshrined in government art educational strategy. It is now generally agreed that practical art and critical studies in art are mutually dependent, that the one improves the appreciation and study of the other.
Previously I have looked back at great educators, John Ruskin, Acland, Dyce, and Matthew Arnold. I believe that understanding their methods has helped me reflect on my own pedagogic issues. I will examine my own work as a pupil, artist and teacher just as I would that of my students. My own view on Art Education is that we need to bring more skill-based activities into schools; skills build ideas and form a solid background to fall back on.
In stating this then, and using my pedagogic practice, I intend to examine my own role of teacher and artist.
Reflection on other practitioners has enhanced my knowledge and helped form my options.
The notion of paradigms.
Paradigms are central to the philosophical theory of educational inquiry, critical reflection. Paradigms are described as a pattern, model, and knowledge of behaviour, which is structured.
Some art teachers have tried to view their teaching situation in terms of paradigms, in an effort to make sense of their development. Efland’s theoretical orientations in psychology suggest four main orientations.
The mimetic tradition in aesthetics with psychological behaviourism,
pragmatic aesthetics with cognitive psychology, expressive aesthetics
with psychoanalytic psychology, and objective aesthetics with gestalt
psychology.
(Efland, A.D. Conceptions of teaching in art education,
Art Education, 1979, 32 (4), 21-32.)
Akoi refers to paradigms that can be applied to research theory in education, his framework is adapted from Habermas’ three basic forms of knowing.
(Habermas, J. Knowing and human interests. Boston: Beacon Press, 1971.)
Habermas discerns Nietzsche’s connections to epistemology, underlying human interests. These positions of historical philosophy are as follows:
Paradigm 1: The Empirical-Analytic Orientation.
(Technical Knowing)
Paradigm 2: The Interpretive-Hermeneutic Orientation.
(Situational Knowing)
Paradigm 3: The Critical –Theoretic Orientation.
(Critical Knowing)
Since Habermas’ tri-paradigmatic theory came into art education, most critical reflection in research and practice has been conducted from this perspective.
The implications of my IMP, the theory and subjective knowledge all have an impact on my profession.
I am attempting to discuss my experience as an art teacher, artist and workshop leader. I currently do a variety of workshops as well as teach. My most recent association is with the NSEAD, where I currently deal with human right issues through visual art. I also work for an exam board as a moderator, so get to compare work and ideas.
My personal position within the continuous role of artist and teacher in notion has led me to consider my role as the pupil artist, which in turn has led me to my question.
Motivation, Creativity, Opportunity.
Introduction:
Creative pupils need creative teachers with the confidence to take creative risks. If we want to promote and firmly establish creativity in the school curriculum then providing the proper opportunity, the right environment and motivation will be crucial. It seems to me that some of the problems of how to encourage creativity and motivation are intertwined, they are both somewhat elusive and you may feel that they tend to be caught rather than explicitly taught. There is no doubt that the education pendulum recently has swung decisively towards recognising the importance of creativity, or at least talk about creativity while the ability to motivate pupils more often continues to be regarded as the fortunate gift of the talented teacher rather than something that can be consciously nurtured as part of any well considered pedagogy.
What is exactly is creativity? The NACCCE report defined creativity activity as 'Imaginative activity fashioned so as to produce outcomes that are both original and of value'. It is not the exclusive prerogative of the arts. Howard Gardner suggests that the creative individual ‘…is a person who regularly solves problems, fashions products, or defines new questions in a domain in a way that is initially considered novel but that ultimately becomes accepted in a particular cultural setting.' Thus what we see as creativity is culturally determined and striving for innovation for innovations sake, or a conceptual artist’s single-minded determination to provide the ultimate ‘shock of the new’, is not in itself enough to be identified as a purposeful creative act.
Creativity is not rare in the sense that the ability to be creative or to think creatively is not limited to those who, either in their time or subsequently, are recognised as creative geniuses. On one level creativity is a commonplace human attribute: most people regularly make significant creative problem solving or aesthetic decisions – at work, in the home, in school, in the garden, wherever...
I doubt that there is much argument about the importance of teachers giving their students a strong motivation to succeed. My dictionary helpfully suggests motivation is: ‘The (conscious or unconscious) stimulus, incentive, motives, etc., for action towards a goal, especially as resulting from psychological or social factors; the factors giving purpose or direction to behaviour’. But the word ‘motivation’ is nearly as problematic as creativity to define: its possible synonyms include ‘incentive’, ‘stimulus’, ‘inspiration’, ‘inducement’, ‘incitement’, ‘spur’, and ‘goad’. These indicate differing strategies that might be employed in the classroom from offering rewards or concessions (incentive) to provocation (incitement) and punishment. Perhaps all of these approaches can prove expedient from time to time but in these enlightened times some more extreme examples of ‘motivation’ I experienced at school in the 1950s would infringe current human rights legislation! My purpose in this talk is to try to look into these concepts and their implications for the classroom in a little more depth.
Creativity:
Creativity is not simply a matter of novel or divergent thinking. The balance typically may vary from discipline to discipline between those appositional modes of thought that are so much neglected in education (what Julian Barnes memorably called 'impertinent connections'), compared with the more-favoured propositional modes of thinking such as reason, logic and causality. But there are no invariable rules about this balance, for example in the sciences compared to the arts, or from individual to individual. The important point is that these ways of thinking, either separately or more likely in combination, can be equally creative. Einstein famously said 'In times of crisis imagination is more important than knowledge', acknowledging that creativity is dependent on more than logical, systematic planning and reasoning sub-conscious scanning of information often plays a crucial part in the search for creative solutions.
Creativity cannot be rushed or reduced to a formula: there is often a long incubation period before creative ideas suddenly gel in that 'Eureka!' moment. Serendipity often plays a key role in developing creative outcomes or finding design solutions but this may be more than just good luck or fortune. It requires 'space', of a kind often in short supply in target-driven schools, to allow for accidentally making unexpected discoveries, perhaps in the course of looking for something entirely different. (Serendipity was a word coined by Horace Walpole after the title of an old Persian fairy tale, Three Princes of Serendip, the heroes of which were always making accidental but useful discoveries of things they were not looking for. Apparently ‘Serendip’ is a variation on the Arabic name for Sri Lanka. You can find various versions of the tale on the Internet.) A good example is the discovery of penicillin but there are countless others.
I find it most useful to think of creativity as shorthand for a raft of multi-faceted abilities and predispositions that need to be fostered throughout the curriculum. Creative individuals may display a range of characteristics that extend beyond some assumed general capacity for divergent thinking. For example these might include: a tolerance for ambiguity and a willing playfulness with ideas, materials or processes; an ability to concentrate and persist, to keep on teasing and worrying away at an idea or problem rather than seeking premature closure.
They are likely to recognise, or have a readiness to explore, unlikely connections, juxtapositions. They may be particularly self-aware and have the courage (or plain bloody-mindedness) to pursue their ideas in the face of opposition. Most of all, creative individuals must have the confidence, the self-belief to take intellectual and intuitive risks in the cause of innovation, breaking or pushing back the boundaries of what is known or thought possible, or in achieving new aesthetic conjunctions. Perhaps in essence creative thinking, as Richard Kimbell has suggested, is simply ‘risky thinking’?
Dewulf and Baillie identify four elements of the creative process:
◦ Preparation – in which the problem or question is defined, reformulated and redefined, moving from a given to an understanding.
◦ Generation – moving beyond habitual pathways of thinking, purging associative concepts to the problem; brainstorming.
◦ Incubation – a subconscious stimulus, often following a period of relaxation or relaxed attention – hence the Eureka moment.
◦ Verification – where ideas are analysed, clustered and evaluated, followed by planning the action and implementation.
It is important to stress that this is rarely a simple linear process and usually there is interplay between these elements, with various phases being revisited and reviewed. For example when dead ends seem apparent. This suggests that adequate time or ‘creative space’ is a crucial requirement if the creative spark is to flourish. There are other preconditions that are equally important for both teachers and pupils including an atmosphere of mutual trust and affective support; the constructive use of probing questioning to increase the intellectual challenge; allowing the pupil to develop a real sense of ownership of the task or problem; and bolstering confidence and self-esteem.
It is soon apparent that these necessary preconditions do not always sit easily alongside the everyday classroom pressures and controlled prescriptions of the national curriculum, literacy and numeracy hours, assessment and inspection. I am attracted to the definition of creativity as 'risky thinking', but clearly in many schools the prevalent view is that it is best to play safe, stick to the established routines and not to take chances.
Creative pupils need creative teachers with the confidence to take creative risks. Unfortunately, this takes exceptional commitment and vision in our increasingly high stakes education system with its pressures to conform created by the standardised curriculum, standardised assessment tasks, targets, ITT standards, numerous other initiatives, league tables, inspection, limited resources and limited CPD, and large teaching groups in schools. Performance related pay provides a further incentive for teachers to avoid being seen as 'out of line'. The concept of high reliability schools, analogous to air traffic control, where any failure of the system is potentially disastrous, severely limits the scope for individual teachers to innovate or push the boundaries and to avoid becoming what Ted Wragg once called 'curriculum delivery operatives'. There seems to be too few rewards for creative initiatives. Creativity does not seem at present to figure much on current inspection checklists or ITT standards and it might help, as the NACCCE report suggests if inspectors were ‘…to take fuller account of creative education and the processes of teaching, learning and assessment that it involves'.
One consequence is that in secondary schools it is entirely possible to run what is recognised as a ‘good’ arts department and achieve excellent examination results by means of assiduous teacher prescription and direction, where students are coached to replicate safe and reliable projects year after year. In this case, activities may be more re-creative than genuinely creative and often typify the orthodoxy of 'School art'. By contrast, real creativity is allied with the pursuit of ideas that are inventive, show imagination; ideas that may be innovative, radical and sometimes heretical or revolutionary. The outcomes may often be uncomfortable or confrontational – indeed some contemporary practice seems to be simply designed to do little more than shock. Perhaps that is why in a recent discussion an examination board spokesperson blithely told me that creativity in schools was a ‘good thing’ – provided, he said, it is 'properly controlled'. And controlled it often is. Not long ago a Sunday Times feature declared: 'Forget creativity, imagination and play. For children at school in Britain, life is tests, tests and more tests'. 'But', the writer asked, 'if stamping out their individuality is designed to get better results, why isn't it working?'
The QCA set up a working party to advise on guidance for schools about ways to promote pupils' creativity. Its findings resulted in an ‘official’ creativity web site to complement the QCA publication ‘Creativity, find it promote it’, but at the same time we still have a curriculum boxed in by attainment targets, programmes of study and closely linked assessment procedures. This quick-fix ‘solution’ that presents schools with exemplary 'creative' projects, may be destined only to add to the prevailing orthodoxy.
However it would be wrong to give the impression that neglect of creativity or failure to afford it a proper balance in the curriculum is a recent problem. In 1982, well before the advent of the National Curriculum, Leslie Perry, then Professor of Philosophy in Education at King's College London, pointed out that it is not simply the case that creativity provides a universal golden key to successful learning for all pupils. The key point, he rightly asserted, are to do with how far knowledge based curricula are permeated with creativity and how far creativity is permeated with knowledge, habit-forming, and other perfectly reasonable aspects of the curriculum:
Those who teach knowledge as a matter of memorising forget that it is the product of past creativity and should be presented as such. Those who teach creativity to the neglect of knowledge should remember that past creativity is preserved and brought into continuity with present creativity by knowledge well learnt. Surely, if we espouse creativity come what may, then 'come what may' is not long in arriving: the curriculum loses structure and form and classes have a long tail of apathetic pupils. If it is knowledge come what may, then we have a daily gap between memory and understanding, lack of vitality, and a long tail of apathetic pupils.
Where will this new found enthusiasm for creativity lead? A template to assess and report on a ten-point scale the supposed competencies associated with creative behaviours? The pitfalls should be obvious. In his anatomy of creativity, Creating minds, Howard Gardner questioned the validity of tests for creativity and pointed out that that creativity is not the same as intelligence: that while these two traits are correlated, an individual may be far more creative than he or she is intelligent, or far more intelligent than creative.
E. P. Torrance made similar points over thirty years ago, pointing out that ‘…if we were to identify children as gifted on the basis of intelligence tests, we would eliminate from consideration approximately seventy per cent of the most creative’. He claims that this holds true regardless of how intelligence is measured and no matter what educational level is studied from kindergarten to graduate school. Torrance noted that teachers rated more highly the children with high IQs on most counts but, he noted, highly creative children appear to learn as much as the highly intelligent without seeming to work as hard. Why? He concludes, ‘My guess is that these highly creative children are learning and thinking when they appear to be “playing around”’. May be such individuals often seem difficult to manage in the classroom situation, because they often want to follow their own agendas, at their own pace, rather than that of the teacher? What happens to them as a consequence?
Motivation.
The Evidence for Policy and Practice Information and Co-ordinating Centre (EPPI) is part of the Social Science Research Unit at the Institute of Education, University of London. A recent EPPI systematic research review considered the impact of summative assessment and tests on students’ motivation for learning. The review team defined motivation as:
…a complex concept concerned with the drive, incentive or energy to do something. Motivation is not a single entity but embraces, for example, effort, self-efficacy, self-regulation, interest, locus of control, self-esteem, goal orientation and learning disposition. …motivation for learning is understood to be a form of energy which is experienced by learners and which drives their capacity to learn, adapt and change in response to internal and external stimuli. It is closely identified with the 'will to learn', which determines the effort that a learner will put into a task.
The EPPI review team recognised that there are different ways in which this energy or will to learn can be motivated and made a particular distinction, as many others have done, between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation:
Those who learn in order to gain an extrinsic reward are unlikely to continue learning once the reward is obtained or the penalty avoided, and they will give up earlier if reward seems unobtainable. For continued learning, the motive needs to be intrinsic, the reward being in the process of learning and in the recognition of being in control of, and responsible, for one's own learning.
There are some general and fairly obvious principles of motivation – for example, incentives motivate learning and these include privileges and receiving praise from the teacher. In contrast in a general learning situation: ‘…self-motivation without rewards will not succeed. Students must find satisfaction in learning based on the understanding that the goals are useful to them or, less commonly, based on the pure enjoyment of exploring new things’.
The EPPI review team make some further useful points. For example, they confirm that students need not only to understand the goals of their learning, but also need to understand the criteria by which they are assessed and how to assess their own work. Feedback has an important role in determining further learning and students are influenced by feedback from earlier performance on similar tasks in relation to the effort they invest in further tasks: such teacher feedback needs to address the student’s ego rather than simply focus on the shortcomings of the completed task.
Positive inter-personal relationships matter between teachers and students: constructive discussion is important in creating an ethos that supports students' feelings of self-worth and effort – students will not take creative risks unless they trust their teachers not to crush their endeavours at the first sign of any deviation from some prized lesson plan. Education systems that place undue emphasis on evaluation produce students with strong extrinsic orientation towards grades and social status. If motivation is not to be ephemeral, interest and effort should be encouraged through self-regulated learning by providing students with an element of choice, control over challenge and opportunities to work collaboratively.
Huitt in his overview of ‘ Motivation to learn’ reports a general consensus that motivation is an internal state – perhaps a need, desire or want – that serves to activate or energise behaviour and give it direction. Determination and persistence are also keys to maintaining effective motivation. It is self-evident that success is more predictably motivating than failure, hence the old dictum ‘Nothing succeeds like success’. Huitt suggests that motivation requires three constants to be present.
1. The perceived probability of success (expectancy);
2. a connection between success and reward (Instrumentality), and
3. recognition of the value of obtaining a particular goal.
Therefore: ‘…if an individual doesn’t believe he or she can be successful at a task or the individual does not see a connection between his or her activity and success or the individual does not value the results of success, then the probability is lowered that the individual will engage in the required learning activity’. Similarly, as teachers, we tend to respond positively when our students are motivated and despair when they are not, creating a dangerous tendency to de-motivate students and become ever more de-motivated ourselves: a depressing situation for all concerned.
Huitt also provides a list of specific strategies teachers can employ to increase both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in the classroom. Years earlier Silverman described the motivating factors he considered important for art education. By combining and modifying their ideas the four key areas to consider might be:
1. Planning the learning experience with care to arouse and maintain pupils’ curiosity; setting clear goals while avoiding prescriptions that would determine outcomes. Teaching that too directly addresses pre-determined assessment criteria standards and targets too often inhibits creativity and motivation.
2. Providing opportunities for discussions which attract attention to the complexity of art and, thereby, arousing curiosity; avoiding repetition and orthodoxy by seeking varied teaching strategies; organising a variety of activities that involve play, surprise, and ingenuity; explaining or demonstrating why learning about a particular context or skill is important.
3. Knowing about pupils' aptitudes for art and being empathetic to what is meaningful to them; finding ways to channel their interests and the issues that concern them into worthwhile art projects and objectives; helping pupils develop individual work plans – personalised learning – that relate to their needs and interests and allow them to proceed at a pace commensurate with their ability and preferred patterns of working.
4. Offering feedback that boosts pupils’ self-esteem through appreciative critiques rather than just corrective critiques. Helping pupils identify the criteria by which they can evaluate their progress and the outcomes of their work and, thereby, serving as a stimulus for further accomplishments.
All these suggestions are aimed primarily at developing lasting intrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivation – for example, overt reward and punishment – may work for a time but usually only while the pupil is under the teacher’s direct control.
Opportunity:
Accepting that there is a need for change in how we teach the arts, how likely is it that it will come about? For some time the rhetoric of politicians, including the prime minister, has emphasised the creative imperative. Tony Blair asserts: ‘Our aim must be to create a nation where the creative talents of all the people are used to build a true enterprise economy for the twenty-first century - where we compete on brains, not brawn.’ Secretary for State (USA) Tessa Jowell has added ‘Societies that are creative will have an economic advantage’. But Sir Ken Robinson, the chair of the NACCCE, responded before leaving for the greener pastures of the Getty Institute for the Arts in California, 'If the government were to design an education system to inhibit creativity, it could hardly do better'.
However there is evidence of real change afoot and one reason for this is a very strong economic imperative. The Department for Media, Culture and Sport web site reveals telling statistics, including the rapid growth of the creative industries and their contribution to the balance of trade, overall employment, nearly two million jobs, with over seven percent of all companies in the United Kingdom involved in this field. Given the major economic significance of these recent developments, perhaps the only surprise should be the time it has taken government ministers to realise the implications for education!
As if to refute such allegations ‘Collaborate, Create, Educate’ was a major conference jointly organised by the DfES and DCMS in June 2003. The key message – ‘Creativity, imagination and innovative thinking should be at the heart of children's experience at school’ was hammered home. This was the occasion when the £70 million plan was announced to extend the Creative Partnerships scheme to a further twenty areas around the country.
As usual there is some scepticism about government commitment to the creativity agenda. It is worth recalling that similar sentiments to those now being expressed by ministers, were until recently usually dismissed out of hand as unrealistic, hopelessly idealistic and sad harping back to the 1960s. But the interest has been maintained for several years and a ‘Creativity Review’ jointly commissioned by the DCMS and DfES is to be published on 17th June 2006.
Time for change.
So what happens now? How easily can change come about? How can art and design education in particular benefit from the change? There do seem to be some obstacles including deep-seated attitudes to the comparative worth of curriculum subjects, the need for further investment (Creative Partnerships was not rolled out across the whole country), and issues of continuing over-prescription and perhaps undermined teacher confidence. But the pace of change appears to be quickening. The National Society for Education in Art & Design (NSEAD) for example is involved in developing an increasing number of creative projects in collaboration with government agencies, including Arts Council England, QCA, BECTa and the TDA – and all with some serious funding involved for a change.
I do not want to suggest that the economic imperative is the only worthwhile rationale for arts education in schools, but if it is an argument the government understands why not use it? But I would also like to offer a more balanced over-arching rationale for my specialist subject area. Art, craft and design education is concerned with the transmission and transformation of cultures. Thus students should learn to appreciate, value and be tolerant of images and artefacts, western and non-western, contemporary and from other times, and to understand the contexts of their production. They should develop the capacity to work confidently and creatively with a range of traditional media and new technologies, appreciating and enjoying competent and intelligent making. They should learn to reflect critically on their work and that of others, making reasoned judgements about quality, value and meaning, while developing a life-long interest in the visual arts.
Arts teachers no doubt will wish to remind colleagues, parents and pupils of the creative subjects key roles – including their economic significance – in these enlightened times whilst demonstrating the wide benefits of truly innovative, creative and enjoyable art and design education! Doing nothing is not an option, we should grasp the opportunities presented by the present interest in creativity to re-think and broaden the whole curriculum, not just the arts curriculum.
Michael Barber formerly head of the DfES Standards and Effectiveness Unit, is responsible for this very apt quotation: ‘Creativity is not only an outcome of a good education, but a means of achieving a good education.’ There’s somebody who appears to understand the issue.
Remember, Creative pupils need creative teachers with the confidence to take creative risks.
NACCCE (1999) 'All Our Futures: Creativity, Culture and Education', Department for Education and Employment, London.
Gardner, H (1993) 'Creating minds', Basic Books, New York, p.35.
Oxford Talking Dictionary, CD-ROM, The Learning Company, Inc., 1998.
Dewulf, S & Baillie, C (1999) ‘How to foster Creativity’, DfEE, London.
Cornwell, J (2001) 'Learning the hard way', Sunday Times Magazine, London, pp.22-27.
www.ncaction.org.uk/creativity/ accessed 10 May 2013.
QCA (2002) ‘Creativity: Find it, promote it’, Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, London.
Perry, L (1982) 'The Educational Value of Creativity' in Crafts Conference for Teachers report, London: Crafts Council.
Gardner, H (1993) 'Creating minds', Basic Books, New York.
Torrance, E (1970) ‘Stimulating Creativity’, in Vernon, P (ed), Creativity, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, p.358.
Ibid, note 10.
http://eppi.ioe.ac.uk/EPPIWeb/home.aspx
‘A systematic review of the impact of summative assessment and tests on student’s motivation for learning’, EPPI-Centre, June 2013, retrieved 12 June 2013 from: http://eppi.ioe.ac.uk/EPPIWeb/home.aspx?page=/reel/review_groups/assessment/review_one.htm
‘A systematic review of the impact of summative assessment and tests on student’s motivation for learning’, EPPI-Centre, June 2013, retrieved 14th June 2013 from: http://eppi.ioe.ac.uk/EPPIWeb/home.aspx?page=/reel/review_groups/assessment/review_one.htm
‘General Principles of Motivation’ (author unknown) retrieved 21st September 2004 from http://honolulu.hawaii.edu/intranet/committees/FacDevCom/guidebk/teachtip/motivate.htm
Huitt, W (2001) ‘Motivation to learn: An overview’, Educational Psychology Interactive, Valdosta GA: Valdosta State University. Retrieved 23rd September 2004 from http://chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/col/motivation/motivate.html http://chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/col/motivation/motivate.html
ibid., note 16.
Silverman, R (1972) ‘A Syllabus for Art Education’, California State University, Los Angeles (in Taylor R (1986) p. 71.
Blair, A in NACCCE (1999), op. cit. note 1.
Cornwell, J (2001) 'Learning the hard way', Sunday Times Magazine, London, pp.22-27.
www.culture.gov.uk accessed www.culture.gov.uk accessed11 July 2013
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