Post Secondary Art Pedagogy
Art in Society: A Multi-Layered Collaborative Methodology to Arts Curriculum at Samford University
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Joseph Cory, Joseph Hopkins
Changing contexts around the arts in the 21st century have created new challenges to arts education. As higher education adapts to this new landscape, many universities have struggled to break down institutional silos in order to create a meaningful art curriculum both within its arts and general education programming. The School of Arts at Samford University has responded to these challenges by creating a collaborative multi-disciplinary curriculum designed to engage students in a conversation about the role of the arts in society. Through these conversations, both arts and non-arts majors explore a multi-layered methodology to the arts that include vocational readiness, entrepreneurial thinking, historical analysis, and philosophical inquiry into the arts. This presentation will discuss the curriculum, the collaborative idea behind it, and qualitative data describing an increased student awareness of the arts in relationship to cultural identity, national policy, and other societal concerns. I will argue that by exploring these issues through this curriculum, our students have gained a greater understanding of the impact the arts have on society and how they can utilize the arts for the betterment of it. Employing a multi-layered collaborative approach to arts education will help institutions navigate the new challenges they face within arts education and reward students by preparing them to play an active and creative role in society.
The Impact of Non-formal Learning in Arts Education: An Extensive and Heterogeneous Mosaic of Educational Possibilities
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Núria Obiols-Suari
This study is based on the commission to the University of Barcelona by the National Council for Culture and the Arts (CoNCA) of the Generalitat of Catalonia, and its main objective is to analyse the offer of non-formal arts education in Catalonia. To this end, approximately 4,500 establishments were recorded and sampled proportionally by territories, involving the analysis of 50% of the offer with explicit educational objectives. This analysis considered the types of establishment, their activities, and their target audience, among other information. The results indicate that education in the arts field has a highly significant presence in non-formal education, with dance, music, and drama is the most important specialties. An analysis of the main characteristics of the leading establishments revealed that they show a high degree of variety.
The Creative Process and Self-Discovery: Expressiveness in Sculpting and Teaching
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Gail Mc Eachron
To what extent do we need to develop new creative tools, [theory], and research approaches to redefine classical disciplinary classifications? Theorists such as Torrance (1961), Csikszentmihalyi (1990), and Sternberg (2010) have provided helpful insights into the creative process and self-discovery in the fields of education and psychology. In the arts, Wood, Hulks, and Potts (2012), and Chicago (1997) have defined the changing status and role of sculpture and painting since the end of the 19th century. Integrating the insights from the disciplines of art, psychology, and education has the potential to inspire. When discussing the role of educators in developing creativity, Amabile (1989) argues that Western styles of teaching emphasize talent, skill and hard work, with less emphasis on intrinsic motivation. Amabile proposes that the creativity intersection is where students’ domain skills and creative-thinking skills overlap with their intrinsic interests. Chant, Moes and Ross (2009) support the need for developing creativity in education and point out that the U.S. has been slower to develop such programs despite the fact that greater attention to the arts has emerged in other countries (e.g., Regio Emilia; Maria Montessori in Italy; Global Schoolhouse Project in Singapore; MacQuarie University in Sidney, Australia). This proposed paper explores elements of the Torrance Incubation Model that arouse student expectations, extending their learning experiences (Bing & Hui, 2009) as a means to access the intersectionality among intrinsic motivation, creativity, and the cognitive and affective domains. Syntheses of the various theories will be explored.
