SP 1 Blog Post 3

Article 1: Gude, O. (2000). “Investigating the culture of curriculum,” In Real-World Readings in Art Education: Things Your Professor Never Told You, Dennis E. Fehr, and Karen Keifer-Boyd (Eds.), New York, NY: Palmer Press.  

As a blanket statement- I enjoy Gude’s articles. She writes in a way that is straight to the point and easy to read. Gude doesn’t “fluff” up her articles with useless information and excessive verbiage, from the very beginning she makes it very clear of her position and expands on it. Investigating the Culture of Curriculum does just as the title suggests. Gude starts with a short anecdote of her experience with preservice art educators. Gude had asked 2 questions: to list exciting areas of contemporary living and culture within the visual arts and what topics and issues would be appropriate for a beginning highschool art curriculum. To her surprise, the answers were polar opposites. Gude addressed the contradiction between the answers - on one end preservice teachers were interested in contemporary issues within popular and visual culture yet they answered students should be learning about antiquated practices within art education, the elements and principles of design (p.1). Gude goes farther to argue that while the elements and principles can be useful, there’s more we should be doing for our students to prepare them to interact and be contemporary thinkers. She states “time tested exercises aren’t useless because they’re old”, they are useful in helping students understand past art and traditions, but they are not giving students the tools they need to understand contemporary and modern art (p.2). I can agree with Gude’s position on this matter. I do want to provide my students with a variety of tools and experiences they need to engage in and appreciate the arts, and that is not always the elements and principles. I have to admit - in our curriculum we are free to do pretty much whatever we want, as long as we are covering the elements and principles. The good thing about this is that they are easy to slip into lessons, even if that isn’t exactly what the focal point is. In my opinion, Gude has a very strong voice in her writing, to the point where at first I think she sounds biased. I felt this way in the article until I read where she added a sort of disclaimer. Gude gives an example of students learning perspective. Perspective by itself seems a bit boring and a useless skill for students to learn in the 21st century (only because we have technology now that if they were to use it, it would most likely be a digital program of some sort). However, on page 3 she explains that our regular elements and principles can have completely new meanings and implications if we contextualize them to create a deeper and broader subject matter. Bring in differing ideas and cultures that have used perspective - it’ll bring a new perspective on perspective! Gude provides the reader with an idea that I think does a wonderful job of summarizing the purpose of this article: “What do they need [students] need to know in order to begin a lifelong engagement with art of the past and of the unfolding present” (p.2). Lessons with this question guiding its structure will be more impactful and memorable. Gude adds that our goal is not to come up with a single set of lessons that will act as an end all be all to teaching about contemporary practices, but to think of projects as “interventions in addition to change the way we think about culture and artmaking” (p. 3) To conclude, Gude provides us with a list that should help us form projects to teach our students of contemporary, collaborative practices and how to break down visual and consumer culture we are thrown in to. 

Projects should: 

• Deal with issue of developmental importance to students 

• Be based on a contemporary social theme 

• Include examples of past and recent artworks that explore chosen themes 

• Teach a method (conceptual and/or technical) for constructing works of art. 

This article makes me question my curriculum and how I can make it more meaningful for students. Gude gives a few examples on how to do this for some projects, but to me it seems like I have to change my way of thinking from what I’m used to when creating lessons. My only question I have unanswered is that I don’t necessarily know how. I am interested in finding workshops that introduce contemporary art into the classroom and tips on how to make it work. When moving forward with creating lessons, I want to be mindful of how I can introduce foreign ideas and cultures to my students. 

Article 2: Walker, S. (2005). Chapter 2. “Making it Count: Unit Foundations” 

The opening quote of this chapter is attention getting and summarizes the main idea behind the chapter. Walker (2005) explains the origin of discipline based arts education is meant to teach art in a way that provides opportunities for students to view and respond to issues in the past and present. Providing opportunities was a concept that I noticed to be brought up multiple times throughout the chapter. I also thought it was interesting to note that DBAE is a concept that isn’t that new. The idea came about in the 1980’s and is said to have “slowly changed the image of arts education as a “frill” in the minds of policy makers, educators, and parents” (p.8). While I agree that arts educators should be providing opportunities for students to construct their own knowledge (Walker, 2005), I see a gap in what is valued of art education. I have taught and learned in environments that have valued education (from personal experiences - seems to be places that have a higher socioeconomic status such as cities and university towns), and work in a smaller, more rural town where many of the population are at an economic disadvantage. I could be completely wrong on this, but in my opinion, it seems where people or a society as a whole are financially stable, education then becomes more important, which trickles down to the arts being important. Because of my observations and opinions, I do not see my school practicing DBAE or parents/administration/the community seeing art as a core subject. I agree that art class should not be a bubble that focuses on aesthetics, but rather a comprehensive scope at what art has impacted (socially, culturally, etc.).  However, I have found this difficult to accomplish when principles (and students) always want something to show for their work. I find it difficult to balance between giving learning experiences and having pieces to display in hallways. That being said, I know it is not impossible. This chapter has built off of Gude’s investigation of curriculum and makes me question how I can alter my practices to afford students opportunities that plant the knowledge base for raising and addressing philosophical questions that come with images, artifacts, and performances (p. 8). Throughout this chapter, Walker suggests ways of altering our units that produce free thinkers and analyzers. Educators often complain of students not being able to think (I am also guilty of this), but we need to teach differently. Walker (2005) states that it is a challenge for teachers to plan lessons that aim for deep understanding and avoid activity driven instruction. We have to break the mold of teaching how we were taught (p. 16). Walker lays the foundation for doing this by suggesting successful units have had cross curricular connections, student generated questions, and relative to student lives (Walker, 2005). The trick is knowing your population and figuring out what is relevant and engaging for them. There isn’t a formula or set type of lesson that will allow you to achieve this. I think Walker is helpful in the layout of units, but the bottom line is we, the educators, have to challenge ourselves to provide opportunities that provide autonomy and inquiry. We go from being the giver/dictator of information to a fellow explorer (Walker, 2005).  

Article 3: Wiggins, G. (1998) “Portfolio as Evidence.” Educative Assessment. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

This article was impactful for me because it brought to light some details of portfolios that I haven’t considered before. Wiggins is addressing this information to educators, but not specifically to arts educators. While I do find this information helpful, I don’t think all of it is applicable to my classroom. Wiggins (1998) describes portfolios as an “invitation to self assessment process” for students. After rethinking my curriculum and incorporating DBAE, I think students self assessing is a powerful exercise that will help build the foundation for critical thinking. Wiggins made it clear that though we are inviting students to self assess, they are not the experts on assessment, and we, the educators, have to frame the demands for chosen work (p. 192). As a newer teacher, I haven’t used portfolios in my classroom because it overwhelmed me. My only experience with portfolios was as a student, and they were simply used as a sort of storage file. When Wiggins (p.191) noted that portfolios are not to be used as a file cabinet or exhaustive collection of artifacts, I was a little surprised. I wouldn’t say that we filed away everything into our portfolios (for example, practice papers and sketches), but all of our finished projects would be placed in our portfolios. We didn’t assess ourselves, but it was a nice way to see how our skill has changed from the beginning of the year to the end. Wiggins has a clear voice in their writing. A great tip mentioned when thinking through the purpose of a portfolio were two questions : who is the audience and what is the purpose? (p.189). This gives educators a guideline on how they want to use their portfolios. Wiggins (p. 190) also makes it clear of the difference between categories and criteria. Criteria would be the guidelines for deciding what work fits into certain categories (for example, best work) (p. 190.  While I don’t think this chapter was written with arts educators in mind, I do think it provides helpful information when deciding where and how to start with portfolios within our classrooms.  

Article 4: Boughton, D. (2013). “Assessment of performance in the visual arts: What, how and why?” In Andrea Karpati and Emil Gaul (Eds.), From Child Art to Visual Language, Chicago, Il: Intellect, 119-142.

In this chapter, Boughton explores the idea of creativity and how the correct type of assessment can foster creativity - or how the correct form of assessment in general can improve the quality of learning (p.122). Boughton breaks down the purpose of her article into three simple questions : what should be assessed, who should be assessing, and how should it be done? (p.122). She explains how creative thinking is being stifled in today's public schools do to legislative decisions on a national level, specifically No Child Left Behind. NCLB pressures students to learn objective knowledge and know right or wrong answers. It doesn’t allow for creative or divergent thinking (Boughton, 2013). So, how do we foster creativity? Looking at behavioral characteristics of innately creative students, it is suggested they have rebellious and nonconforming qualities. We don’t want to teach students those qualities to become creative, so we must go deeper - to the environment (Boughton, 2013). What environments produce creative behavior? What qualities do those environments have? Boughton refers to Csikszentmihalyi and his suggestions on creativity. According to Csikszentmihaly, creativity improves under these conditions: development of curiosity and interest, cultivation of “flow” in daily lives, and thinking creatively (p. 125). To bring these successfully into a classroom environment, we must start off with establishing a safe place. If students are not comfortable, or don’t feel safe, they aren’t going to take risks that help produce (or are the product of) creative thinking (Boughton, 2013). Once the rapport is built, it is important to recognize and engage in the interests of students (p. 126).  I’ve made a note on my annotations that this article is engaging my own interests. In a sense, it is acting as a “how to” guide. This article was important for me because it addresses issues I have with my students - how do I make them excited about art if they don’t already have a natural interest? These articles have allowed me to reflect and ask myself how I want to sort of reintroduce art next year? I’ve been thinking of opening my first class to students with the questions: what does art do? Why is it important? And then have them write a few topics (depending on age) about what they are interested in and what they want to learn in art class. I think this allows all of us to immediately be exposed to an open dialogue, and allows me to get to know who my students are and what they like. To continue with the article, Boughton advocates for portfolios in the classroom, and explains “they drive curriculum in such a way that creative engagement more likely” and through them, students will be demanded to “demonstrate their interests and show ways….they have integrated classroom learning with their lives” (p. 128). The important part for me to remember is to not stifle their creativity with directed projects, but rather a “thematic study”. It feels like it’s time to revamp my lessons for next year.  

Article 5: Wiggins, G. (1998) “Scoring Rubrics.” Educative Assessment. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.   

This final article was one of the more relevant/important articles to me. Again, as it’s only my 3rd year teaching, I don’t have a lot of experience with assessment, and I feel as though assessment was briefly brushed on during my time in undergrad. Wiggins article was insightful and a sort of lantern to the path of assessment through rubrics. I’ve used them before, but I always just sort of copied pieces of rubrics I’ve found online, not really understanding the importance of the sometimes arbitrary criteria. On page 154, Wiggins does a clear and simple breakdown of the guidelines for a rubric. These guidelines to evaluate work are: where to look for performance success, what - the quality of the work, how - to score and what the score meaning is, and how to distinguish and describe levels (p. 154). Reading this article was truly eye opening for me. I felt like I was reading a version of “Rubrics for Dummies”! Of course I understood the basics of a rubric, but I was unaware of terms such as descriptors, criteria, and indicators. It was interesting to note that descriptors include concrete examples and refer to standards (p. 154). To some it may sound silly, but the vocabulary within this article taught me a lot that I didn’t know or didn’t realize about rubrics. For example, Wiggins (1998), explains criteria should be inferred to the overall goal. The standards are selected to represent excellence in student performance (p. 156). It was also interesting to note about expectations. For example, you wouldn’t want your criteria to perform to your expectations because students can meet or exceed expectations, but still not meet the standard (p. 156). This also applies to local norms and patterns. What may be excellent for my demographic of students would fall short compared to state or national standards (p. 158). Building off of this, Wiggins (1998) questions: at what point is good, good enough? This is where concrete examples are necessary for students to know what is expected and how much.  

After reading about how the art curriculum should be comprehensive, and students should be learning about how art has impacted multiple cultures and societies, it can seem as though rubrics might be stifling or limiting. However, Wiggins points out that for rubrics to be successful, they must follow a logic and that “no performance can be mastered by following rules, itineraries, or recipes - mastery occurs through feedback in relation to criteria and standards” (p. 162). This article points to rubrics as the tool to just that. They aren’t constructed to be a rigid set of rules for cookie cutter projects, but rather allow for a dialogue and standard between individualized pieces.  Wiggins goes in further to explain the difference between holistic and analytic rubrics and how they differ. Regardless of what style of rubric you use, Wiggins notes “the best rubrics make clear how process and product go together” (p. 169).  To have your criteria and information clear, you have to limit the subjectivity (Wiggins, 1998).  To reiterate, this article was a light at the end of the tunnel for me. It has given me insight to the depth rubrics can have, and how specific they need to be to truly be beneficial. Similarly to the other article by Wiggins, I don’t think he is speaking specifically to arts educators, but instead to anyone who is interested in learning more about rubrics and their function within the classroom. From my reading and notetaking, I didn’t notice a bias in the writing. The article is clear and straightforward. The only questions I have are how a holistic rubric would function or look like specifically in an art classroom.