CREATING "ARTSTORIES" AS SITES OF SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTIVISM, PERSONAL EXPRESSION, MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION, AND UNDERSTANDING

 Pamela Harris Lawton
University of North Carolina at Charlotte
U. S. A.

The arts provide a universal language to communicate ideas, feelings, cultural traditions, and histories that cross boundaries of race, age, gender, culture, religious affiliation, and ethnicity. Through artistic expression we can build bridges that connect us all as members of the human family. An arts-infused curriculum can help students identify similarities that allow them to understand, appreciate, and even celebrate racial, ethnic, and cultural differences. [paragraph 1]

The arts are an ideal venue for teachers committed to the complex, multi-layered, change-oriented goals of multicultural education. Davidman and Davidman (cited in Goldberg, 2001) posit that multicultural education comprises the following distinct but interrelated goals:

(1) providing educational equity; (2) empowering students and their caretakers; (3) valuing cultural pluralism in society; (4) promoting intercultural/interethnic/intergroup understanding; (5) developing an expanded multicultural/multiethnic knowledge base for students, teachers, administrators and support staff; and (6) supporting students, teachers, staff and administrators who think, plan and work with a multicultural perspective. (p. 19) [paragraph 2]

Goldberg (2001) points out that artistic connections may be made to much of the content of Davidman and Davidman’s goals. She suggests seven general principles that highlight the connections between learning through the arts and the goals of multicultural education. These seven principles are:

1. The arts expand expressive outlets and provide a range of learning styles available to children. Because children learn best in a variety of ways, an arts-infused curriculum provides more opportunities for successful learning experiences for children whose learning styles tend toward the visual, spatial, kinesthetic, and auditory.
2. The arts enable freedom of expression for second language learners. The arts are a universal language that do not require proficiency in the English language to be understood. As such learning through the arts empowers students who may feel deficient because of their limited English language abilities.
3. The arts provide a stage for building self-esteem. Learning through the arts gives students more opportunities for personal expression and making real-world connections between their lives and their learning, which makes learning more meaningful and affirms their place within their community and their world.
4. The arts encourage collaboration and intergroup harmony. Many arts activities encourage group work. Working together with others increases both positive sense of self and respect and appreciation of others' skills and creativity.
5. The arts empower students and teachers. Through sharing art projects and creative approaches the students/teacher exercise their own unique creative voice and this increases feelings of self-esteem and confidence. The discipline and concentration required to complete an art project helps students learn to work both independently and within a group to find creative solutions to complex problems/ideas.
6. The arts deepen teacher’s awareness of children’s abilities and provide alternate methods of assessment. Observing students as they work on creative solutions to problems and ideas gives the teacher a clearer picture of a student’s abilities. It gives opportunities for students with behavior and academic problems a different way of demonstrating their understanding of an assignment providing a broader scope from which to assess students.
7. The arts provide authentic cultural voices and add complexity to teaching and learning. Through the arts students have more tools to study and understand cultures different from their own in a more authentic way. Arts activities bring "life" to the people, places and events studied. [paragraph 3]

I applied these seven general principles to my own teaching in an arts method course for pre-service K-8 classroom teachers. Most pre-service teacher education programs require students to complete at least one arts methods course in one arts discipline. From my perspective as an art educator, one methods course in one arts discipline is insufficient preparation for the development and implementation of a holistic curriculum that integrates the arts with personal, cultural, and academic learning experiences. An effective teaching strategy to help pre-service classroom teachers understand and appreciate the importance of an arts-infused curriculum is to provide them with practical arts learning experiences that support the theories of creativity, multicultural education, artistic and cognitive development, and multiple intelligences. [paragraph 4]

If we expect future teachers to motivate students to learn and attain academic success, we need to prepare them to use the arts to enhance their teaching. We need to provide teachers with opportunities to explore art forms as art makers before attempting to teach them how to incorporate the arts into academic subjects. We need to help them conquer their own fears and feelings of inadequacy as creative beings. [paragraph 5]

At Temple University where I piloted my "Artstories"¹ curriculum (Lawton, 2004), Dr. William Yalowitz, a performance artist and community arts educator, revised the required art education methods course to include the visual arts, theatre, and dance. For the past six years K-8 pre-service classroom teachers had practical experiences integrating three different art forms into their academic curriculum, all within the scope of a one-semester arts method course. [paragraph 6]

The course, Arts and Learning in the K-8 Classroom, is co-taught by a visual art educator and a performing arts educator using Merryl Goldberg’s (2001) Arts and Learning: An Integrated Approach to Teaching and Learning in Multicultural and Multilingual Settings as the core reading requirement. We begin the course with a discussion about positive and negative arts learning experiences to get the aesthetic pulse of the students; their fears and insecurities about art making, performing, and creativity. The discussion leads to listing characteristics that exemplify good and bad arts learning experiences. This helps the students to reduce barriers to creativity and develop positive arts learning and teaching strategies. [paragraph 7]

We discuss theories of creativity, artistic development, multiple intelligences, and the pivotal role of arts in multicultural and special needs education. Authentic assessment strategies for arts activities are examined and at the end of the semester students design a curriculum unit of five lessons that integrates one art form with an academic subject. [paragraph 8]

Students spend six weeks in each arts workshop and complete the semester with two sessions of dance. I begin the class with my core group and for six weeks we work on an arts project. At mid-term they leave and spend the next six weeks with the theatre instructor and I work with the theatre instructor’s core group. The structure for the arts activity is open, the only requirement being that the students complete one project that involves a variety of arts processes. The theatre component is an ancestry history project combining theatre and history. Students assume the persona of an ancestor, usually one at lease two generations removed, such as a grandparent. They are required to select a vignette from that person’s life to re-enact. They conduct oral history interviews; research the person through photos, memorabilia, objects, and stories; and learn theatrical techniques in each workshop. [paragraph 9]

Before I taught the course, the arts workshop encouraged students to make collages and sculptures and write poetry around a theme based in social studies. As an artist/teacher/researcher, I often look to my own artistic interests and practice for inspiration in my teaching. As a printmaker with an interest in storytelling and narrative, my work consists of prints, assemblages, and artist’s books encompassing family stories, events, and artifacts. [paragraph 10]

My approach in this course was to have students create their own artist’s book based on a personal story of connection to a particular social, moral, or political issue. Students had to select an issue that was important to them and the story behind its importance and then create an illustrated artist’s book using old books as the foundation. [paragraph 11]

Students were asked to research a visual artist who uses their art as a medium to express their concerns about a social, environmental, political, or moral issue and to present that artist to the class with their completed artist’s book. By creating these "artstories," students recognized that art is a form of communication that can be empowering for the artist and the viewer. Art can be a form of social protest and social reconstructionism.

Social change or social action begins with critical thinking—questioning assumptions and suggesting change urges reconstructing social values and lifestyles. (Weisman and Hanes, 2002, p. 177) [paragraph 12]

In Contemporary Issues in Art Education, Gaudelius and Speirs (2002) advocate an issues-based approach to art education. They describe the school community as a microcosm of the world, where children are exposed to different cultures, social ideas, and opinions. Thus, the school is often, even more than a family, a socializing agent of our youth. This social network applies to the lives of college students. One role of a teacher is to help students understand that how they interpret and respond to social issues within their immediate community reflects upon their attitudes about the world and ultimately shapes the future of the society in which they live. [paragraph 13]

Mary-Michael Billings (cited in Gaudelius and Speirs, 2002) believes there is a difference between a thematic curriculum and an issues-based one. According to Billlings, a thematic approach is the presentation of a subject that has been expressed with visual imagery, whereas an issues-oriented approach is the presentation of a matter of general concern with the goal to create a visual statement on the issues. Billings argues that learning is more meaningful when connected to real-world experiences and encouraging pre-service classroom teachers to think this way will help them in planning lessons that motivate students to learn.

A curriculum that focuses on relationships between subjects promotes learning that applies to several disciplines at the same time, and may allow teachers to streamline curriculum. The value of using art at the beginning for the integration of other subjects creates an atmosphere of acceptance, experimentation and imagination. (Attenborough, 2002, p. 88) [paragraph 14]

One of the primary reasons I require a narrative/written component to an art piece is because the story connects the content and context of art-making to the social and moral concerns of the students. The resulting artstory is both a personal artwork and a social statement. The process and the resulting product are intended as a catalyst for social awareness and change. 

Through stories people speak for themselves, sharing narratives can lead to questioning ideology and politics that control teachers and students countering the master narrative. (Barakett & Sacca, 2002, p. 46) [paragraph 15]

Another important consideration is “student choice” particularly in a creative endeavor. While each student was working within the same structure of an artist’s book, several different techniques were demonstrated and then the students decided the topic and perspective of their book. Some students created a personal art piece and their approach to the narrative was very revealing and emotional. Others wanted to create a book that could be used as a classroom resource on a particular issue such as bullying, diversity/multiculturalism, and protecting the environment through recycling. These students did not deal with personal issues but created works similar to an illustrated children’s story book. [paragraph 16]

By the end of the six week segment every student demonstrated great pride in what they had created (see three examples below²). Even those students who felt that they had no creative abilities prior to taking the class were filled with a sense of accomplishment and empowerment. They began thinking differently about creativity. They felt more confident about their art making skills and the opportunity to incorporate the arts in their teaching. Most rewarding for me was watching students who had negative visual arts experiences prior to this class completely reverse their attitudes and behavior. [paragraph 17]

Through this activity students began to learn about each another, work in cooperative groups, understand and appreciate different viewpoints, think creatively, and apply concepts from their artistic experiences to the development of lessons for their future students. [paragraph 18]

Artstory Book by Lauren Farrell

Artstory Book by Eirini Dovas

Artstory Book by William Buck

Endnotes

1.  Details of "Artstories" are published in my previous work.

2.  I wish to thank three student artists--Lauren Farrell, Eirini Dovas, and William Buck--who are willing to share their works with the readers.

References

Attenborough, D. (2002). There's more to it than just looking: The art museum as an integrated learning environment. In Y. Gaudelius, & P. Speirs (Eds.), Contemporary Issues in Art Education (pp. 84-96). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall

Barakett, J., & Sacca, E. (2002). Narratives empowering teachers and students: Educational and cultural practice. In Y. Gaudelius, & P. Speirs (Eds., Contemporary Issues in Art Education (pp. 39-50). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Gaudelius, Y., & Speirs, P. (2002), Contemporary Issues in Art Education. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall

Goldberg, M. (2001). Arts and learning: An integrated approach to teaching and learning in multicultural and multilingual settings. New York: Addison Wesley Longman.

Lawton, P. (2004). Artstories: Exploring intergenerational learning connections through narrative construction. In A. LaPorte (Ed.), Community connections: Intergenerational links in art education (pp. 29-44). Reston, VA: NAEA.

Weisman, E., & Hanes, J. M. (2002). Thematic curriculum and social reconstruction. In Y. Gaudelius, & P. Speirs (Eds.), Contemporary issues in art education (pp. 170-179). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Pamela Harris Lawton, Ed. D., is Assistant Professor and Coordinator of the Art Education Program at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. As a practicing artist, art educator, and researcher, she uses her artistic practice to inspire her teaching and to inform her research. As an artist-teacher, she tries to facilitate students' learning and increase their art-making confidence by stressing the importance of the creative process. (Contact this author at phlawton@email.uncc.edu;contact the editors of EMME at emme@eastern.edu.)

Recommended Citation in the APA Style:

Lawton, P. H. (2005). Creating "Artstories" as sites of social reconstructivism, personal expression and multicultural education and understanding. Electronic Magazine of Multicultural Education, 7(2), 18 paragraphs. Retrieved your access month date, year, from http://www.eastern.edu/publications/emme/2005fall/lawton.html