Reflections on teaching art Head

REFLECTIONS ON TEACHING ART

Back when I took art for School Certificate, (after fighting with everyone in authority except my supportive mother to be allowed to move from the academic stream to do so) I spent the year learning how to produce a piece of work in a formal three-hour examination.

We practised figure drawing, placed in different surroundings, and studied still life in all its iterations. We sat two papers; the first required the candidate to illustrate something along the lines of: “Ah, curried sausages,” he exclaimed as he lifted the lid of the pot, or He raised the lantern high to reveal…

The second paper asked for a design for a menu cover or a book jacket. I still remember my idea for my menu cover for a fish restaurant – two fish on a plate using their knife and fork as oars to escape their fate. I spent ages on their very human desperate expressions. I also remember I did not get a top mark as my sense of humour overtook the requirement to come up with an appropriate design! Of course, we had to learn how to do lettering by hand (and a ruler) and you definitely learnt how to space the letters or you ran out of room and had to start again.

We did not have any art subjects at Year 12 and the Fine Arts Preliminary Examination was six folio panels and two subjects on the timetable.

By the time I arrived at Diocesan, art education had already come a long way and was seen as a very important part of the curriculum. Students took art for University Entrance and if they were not accredited, their work was sent away for examination. It was all very stressful, both as a student and for the teacher. My first and only Year 13 student studying for the Fine Arts Preliminary Examination at Diocesan in 1984 was Niki Caro.

Now we have classes in painting, printmaking, design, photography and art history. We also have the International Baccalaureate Diploma in the Visual Arts, a two-year course that is inclusive of all the art fields. Working from the artist model as a teaching approach began in the 1980s and at first it was taken up quite literally. Students were heard to say they were ‘doing Matisse or Picasso’ or they were directed to copy a work to study the making process. Students ‘mastered the Masters’ and developed their technical vocabulary, however, their ideas were so often an emulation of the style and not a synthesis of their understanding of conventions and ideas.

I made ‘a van Gogh’ at art school. At a certain point the small reproduction I was working from was taken away by my tutor and I had to finish it on my own. I gave it to my mother and she had it in pride of place on the wall in her formal lounge. I did refuse to sign it, despite pleas from my mother – what would I sign it as? Shelley Van Gogh?

I acknowledge the benefit I gained and the deeper understanding and real appreciation of the artist’s method and approach from this exercise, however, time constraints make this

kind of exercise difficult to justify in our current learning environment. Now we encourage students to reference as many different examples of best practice as possible.

The days when an art class was formal and everyone drew the same rusty pot, vase of flowers, bowl of fruit or an old boot were slowly coming to end. While some thought art could be taught, others believed in the freedom of creative expression. Some thought an art teacher’s role was to nurture that rare talent of that one student in the year group who was clearly a gifted artist and remember the awe we felt when we saw that student’s achievements. But what about the rest of the class?

Today students learn art like any other curriculum subject and the curriculum is designed for every student in the classroom or studio. It is important to remember that learning about art and becoming an artist are two very different propositions. Our objective is to provide an accessible art education designed for everyone. We also have a responsibility to foster creativity by providing a learning environment where creative thinking and visionaries are nourished and can thrive.

Following a major public consultation on the curriculum in the mid-1980s (the Curriculum Review) the Department of Education began work on an overall framework for a revised school curriculum. Prior to this there were a lot of different guidelines dating from 1961, covering all the year levels and they were in a number of different formats. Full implementation of the new curriculum did not take place until 2010 onwards and, along with the development of the framework for schools, we began to shift to NCEA. An important change in thinking came about from the development of the first arts curriculum alongside the move towards standards-based assessment.

So, to a question I hear quite often: ‘Can you actually mark or assess art?’

Most people believe that it is too subjective and can’t be done fairly. A common misconception is that examiners have preferences or ‘like’ certain styles or ways of working more than others. This also relates to themes, ideas, fashions and trends in approaches to making artwork. The development of standards-based assessment changed this aspect too, and this form of assessment has always suited the teaching of evidence-based subjects like the visual arts.

The answer to that question is ‘yes’. Of course, assessment practices have been refined from the early days of marking 200-page School Certificate workbooks (worth 40%) with a folio of four panels (worth 60%) using predetermined benchmarks carried over from the previous year. Now we use a moderation and verification system based in Wellington that samples a number of schools’ submissions to align with them with an established national standard.

All of Level 3 are marked using a similar benchmark and established standard system in Wellington by panels of experts consisting of teachers and educators from different schools and demographics. They make collective decisions on the sample of works before them and check marks are carried out to ensure the system is as accurate as possible.

At Diocesan we have developed an assessment structure for our Junior High School students that looks at the cumulative evidence and evaluates their learning under three headings: research and theoretical practice, skills acquisition and understanding of conventions, and the development of ideas. This means we focus more on the learning and understanding of the creative process than the outcomes. Our system is modelled on NCEA and on some of the principles of MYP and the IB Diploma assessment practices.

We place considerable emphasis on the workbook to document and comment on their learning as it evolves from their directed inquiry. We teach them how to relate their research to their own artmaking and to reflect on every aspect of their art practice.

In the recent In the Frame exhibition of student work, the thing that was most obvious to the viewer as they followed the curve of the panels featuring work from Years 8 and 9, then Years 10 and 11 on the other side, was the diversity of ideas, the originality of the concepts, the skills displayed and the range of art forms presented. The senior work confirmed this first perception. Every single student has ownership of their own idea and they have been given the skills to realise it.

Today every child benefits from an art education in a world where knowledge doubles every few seconds and we cannot hope to keep up with the information overload. Students need to be prepared for this world. We now know that learning to think creatively is the most important thing they can learn if they are to successfully navigate their future in such a world.

Shelley P Ryde, Head of Visual Arts