Does Training in the Arts Help You Think?
The short answer: Yes, good art teachers impart important thinking skills. At least that's what Ellen Winner (pdf), a psychology professor at Boston College, and Lois Hetland, a professor of art education at the Massachusetts College of Art found in research they began in 2001 and are now reporting in Studio Thinking: The Real Benefits of Visual Arts Education (co-authored with Shirley Veenema, and Kimberly M. Sheridan).Winner and Hetland are carrying out their project (second and third phases are yet to be completed) under the auspices of Project Zero, an educational research group at the Harvard Graduate School of Education whose mission is "to understand and enhance learning, thinking, and creativity in the arts, as well as humanistic and scientific disciplines, at the individual and institutional levels."
In an article Winner and Hetland wrote for the September 2 edition of the Boston Globe, they outline the "studio habits of mind" that they observed high school arts teachers cultivating at the Boston Arts Academy and the Walnut Hill School, where they observed arts classes during the 2001-2002 academic year.
Winner and Hetland say,
Though we both have a long history in arts education, we were startled to find such systematic emphasis on thinking and perception in the art classes we studied. In contrast to the reputation of the arts as mainly about expressive craft, we found that teachers talked about decisions, choices, and understanding far more than they talked about feelings.These are the eight habits of mind the researchers observed being taught in visual arts classes:
- Development of artistic craft — skills needed to work with various tools and various arts media, and practices for taking care of tools and materials.
- Persistence — notably, perseverence through periods of frustration to completion of well-conceived and well-executed work projects.
- Expression — moving "beyond technical skill to create works rich in emotion, atmosphere, and their own personal voice or vision."
- Making connections between school work and the world outside — seeing "their projects as part of the larger art world, past and present."
- Observing — perceiving clearly, without letting preconceived notions impair accuracy.
- Envisioning — "forming mental images internally and using them to guide actions and solve problems. ... We noticed teachers giving students a great deal of practice in this area. What would that look like if you got rid of this form, changed that line, or altered the background? All were questions we heard repeatedly, prompting students to imagine what was not there."
- Innovating through exploration — "Teachers encourage students ... to experiment, take risks, and just muck around and see what can be learned." Instead of worrying about mistakes, "let mistakes lead to unexpected discoveries."
- Reflective self-evaluation — Students "were asked to step back, analyze, judge, and sometimes reconceive their projects entirely." Teachers asked students, "Is it working?" I myself have always thought of this as the fundamental question to consider when you've created something, even if it's something that might not seem particularly artistic, such as a business report. Related questions: "What isn't working? Is this what I intended to do? Can I make this better? What's next?"
For a more detailed summary you can see the chapter (pdf) Winner, Hetland, Veenema, Sheridan, and Patricia Palmer published in New Directions in Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts.
Labels: Arts, Critical thinking, Risk management, Teaching
posted by Karen Nelson @ 11:27 PM
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