Vision Setting

Kandice Stewart

Xin Xu

Pamela J. Fairclough

Zi (Zoe) Ye

Vision Setting

1. What is my “vision” of the role of art education in the lives of the pupils I teach? What is the knowledge base upon which this vision is built, and how can I best express this vision to my school principal, other teachers, parents and the pupils themselves?

The role of art education for children is to provide them with an evolving language for expressing themselves.  A well guided aesthetic/art education can and should develop and evolve in nuanced ways similar to speech.  This other form of language can provide children with outlets for expression not provided anywhere else.  

Because children are initially kinesthetic learners, mark making is one of the first sensory vehicles for expression.  As a child grows, art provides a growing number of tools and ways to develop a language that is multi dimensional.  Using, understanding, and creating within these multiple dimensions draws on different cognitive areas of the brain, helping to develop and secure new pathways for thinking and problem solving.

To provide inclusive experiences in art education, the topics explored, the works provided as references, and the materials used should draw from a multicultural repertoire. We see art as a tool for helping children/young people gain a deeper understanding of each other and for learning to be open-minded and caring of others. 

Fundamentally, we envision art education as a process of stimulating children's development and creativity where students are encouraged to express themselves freely while at the same time gaining some control over their mode(s) of expression.   

These ideas and goals have been enhanced primarily by the theories of Victor Lowenfeld, Judith Burton, Al Hurwitz, and Michael Day who, while slightly different, approach art making from the child’s developmental perspective.  This vision around the value of a multicultural and socially and emotionally responsive vision is built on the Social Emotional and Physical Learning framework that beckons children to learn and become more confident in their skill sets and knowledge of self.

2. How will I state my own vision in terms of specific goals that respect school mandates and external standards, yet leave room for my own interpretation?

As with the Common Core, the art standards are represented in broad terms and are basically well founded.  The challenge for individual teachers is for them to be clear with their own goals and to be able to express them to students, principals, and parents.  

Teachers should feel free to be creative and use their strengths to communicate and teach students.  Rather than having the mandates drive the activities, the activities and projects will be examined to determine which mandates can be highlighted.  Well founded lessons can be shown to address most mandated standards.  

The deeper challenges come with adopted curriculums that may be overly prescriptive or where the administration views them as prescriptive.  If we work in schools that have these curriculums, we will work to have our own interpretations and adapt the art curriculums, projects, and activities to fit within our overall art education goals.

We will develop a curriculum that supports the core visual standards of creating, responding, connecting, and presenting which can then be tied to the standards. We plan to use family engagement, community outreach, and peer-to-peer interactions as communication tools for that vision.

3. How comfortable am I working with different materials, including technology, and how best can I keep deepening my own insights about their qualities and possible uses so that my repertoire of responses becomes increasingly more extensive and flexible?

We are happy to work with a variety of materials and to experiment.  We will encourage students to try different materials and mix traditional and new technologies.  We are comfortable with being ‘uncomfortable’ and taking risks with all forms of materials.  We enjoy learning alongside our students and having both successes and failures.  During art making, there are or can be many twists and turns that can transform mistakes into something interesting.  With these  opportunities, we use our collective reviews to record our process, discuss the challenges, provide support, explore goals, discover pitfalls, and share tips. 

The general area of materials that we are least familiar with but are interested in exploring, is technology and how it can be added to the toolbox of art materials.  We are still in the process of learning basic creative technologies and yet do not want to lose sight of the importance/relevance of the kinesthetic and sensory nature of traditional materials in art making.  We think that this new and evolving area of technological tools creates opportunities for students to teach us new aspects of the different materials.

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