Art in the classroom Covering walls with inspiration

By Michaela Pointon

Creating a classroom of colour where students feel creative and comfortable can help increase learning and positive behaviour.

Gone are the days where school lessons are held in brick wall style buildings. Kura is now about self-expression and learning to embrace everyone’s differences. Art can be one way to do this. There are endless possibilities to bring artwork into your classroom, including displays on the walls and integrating creativity into lesson plans.

Bringing artwork into the classroom by getting students to support assignments with photographs, videos or documenting on software programmes such as Canva or Pic Collage can exercise their creativity.

It’s important to emphasise that a student’s artwork is not required to be ‘perfect’. The practice of visualising and brainstorming ideas on paper (or online) is part of the creative processperfection is not needed.

The Education Hub New Zealand Author, Dr Tim Paterson, is a researcher and educator with more than thirty years of experience working with primary, secondary and tertiary education providers.

Tim says, “Creativity is valuable in education because it builds cognitive complexity”.

He explains creativity is centred in problem solving and is essentially similar to the beginning process of the scientific method of trial and error in experimentations.

“Creativity is an inherent part of learning. Whenever we try something new, there is an element of creativity involved. There are different levels of creativity and creativity develops with both time and experience,” he says.

Students need to feel a sense of being psychologically safe when being creative. Tim says “A set of simple changes rather than a complete redesign of a classroom is required”.

Modifying the size and makeup of student groups, working on desks, whiteboards or even outside to learn is one way to generate and develop creative capacity.

“Creativity works best with constraints, not open-ended tasks. For example, students can be given a limit to the number of lines used when writing a poem, or a set list of ingredients when making a recipe.”

He says constrained limits lead to what cognitive scientists call ‘desirable difficulties’, as students need to make more complex decisions about what they include and exclude in their final product.

Printing out work and displaying this throughout the classroom can create a sense of pride by sharing work amongst peers. Ensuring your classroom feels inviting, warm and safe for students to explore their creativity will mean displaying artwork or sharing creative ideas will become natural.

Initially, it’s important that students feel safe and not judged for their ideas in the classroom. Some older high school students may find it difficult or nervewracking to share artwork amongst peers.

Making artwork a regular exercise and form of learning in your classroom will emphasise the importance of artwork not needing to be ‘perfect’. Art in the classroom can be the beginning of sharing and initiating ideas amongst classmates without being the final product.

Changing classroom displays regularly, either weekly or bi-weekly can remove possible insecurity around being vulnerable from students. If understood by students their work is not permanent, this can give more room for creative expression.

Art in the classroom is more than hanging pictures on the wall. While the physical artwork creating a colourful environment is important, problem solving and thinking skills gained from creative exercises are invaluable to a student’s learning and wider development.

To find out more about The Education Hub and Dr Tim Paterson, make sure to visit: theeducationhub.org.nz.