Creative learning

Blink us your story through the rhythmical confrontation with darkness. Do you have the complex of being Apollo? Or has monotony marked your existence and defeat has taken hold of your soul? In privileged position, your voyeurism is insatiable. Promise you won’t tell our secrets and let temptation debouch the purity that overflows. Unlike, yield electricity dance through your corporeity and guide us, with certainty, towards the final outcome.

dios paz tú cruz fin yo ser más dios paz tú cruz fin yo ser más túcruz, diospaz finser, túyo finyo, serpaz diosser, mástú.

Poem in Spanish based on the structure of the Danish poem “regn søvn blå kys” by Søren Ulrik Thomsen and inspired by the painting “Mendel Levin Nathansons ældste døtre, Bella og Hanna” by C.W. Eckersberg. The poem has been written considering the possible perspective/thoughts of the caged bird of the picture.

Education must provoke a mobilization at all levels of the human nature: intellectual, affective and corporal. However, in formal education there has been a tendency to ignore the knowledge of the body, whose power and importance has been reduced to its functional use. Therefore, the main premise that governs physical education states that it is necessary to exercise the body in order to obtain the best possible performance out of it. In this way, “the body becomes invisible, ritually erased by the relentless repetition of the same sensations and the familiarity of the sensory perceptions" (Le Breton, 1990: 93 in Coterón & Sánchez, 2010).

But we must know that apart from its obvious necessity as a means of development in the environment (manifested through the motor skills), the human body has multiple possibilities of expressive type. The pedagogical tool to develop the expressive dimension of movement is none other than “the physical expression”. The moving body expresses, as a mechanic of the daily doing, messages of permanent form through the gestures, the postures, the look and the changing positions of its corporal form. And not only that, but, in other cases, the language of bodily movement deliberately seeks expression and communication from the creative capacity and need (Coterón & Sánchez, 2010).

Physical expression gives a place to the inner experience, since each one can express oneself and it involves the exploration of the intimate space between the self and the others; a work on theatricality, gestuality and physicality, a work of deeply self-exploration (Mateu, 2006: 90 in Coterón & Sánchez, 2010). As teachers, we must help our students to improve this type of communication by encouraging the awareness of one's own body and the acceptance of oneself and others. Achieving this goal involves the correct and conscious use of communication and body expression techniques, individually or in groups (Departament d'Ensenyament, 2015).

References:

Coterón, J. & Sánchez, G. (2010). Educación artística por el movimiento: La expresión corporal en educación física. Aula, 16, 113-134.

“But Mr Pine, what are you afraid of?”

“I’m afraid of... a nice cup of Japanese gree tea!”

Fragment of the Japanese folk tale “Manju”

“You may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone's soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose. That tale will move them and drive them and who knows that they might do because of it, because of your words. That is your role, your gift.” ― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

Stories fascinate everyone. Through reading a novel or watching a movie one is able to challenge the limits of the world: one can become another person or multiple people at a time, reside in unimaginable worlds, live a thousand experiences and feel emotions in a way never before experienced.

This pleasure in situations of storytelling is amplified by the fact of being a, mostly, social act. There is a permanent interaction between the storyteller(s) and the audience, as well as between the audience itself. The emotional journey through the story and the later repercussions are shared.

Illustration titled “Alternative Ending” by “Asaf & Tomer Hanuka”.

A meaningful learning is a process of the attribution of sense —which involves establishing relationships between what is learned and personal goals and expectations— and the building of meaning —by reviewing, modifying, restructuring and enriching prior knowledge. This is a gradual process, as it occurs through the establishment of more or less substantive relations (depending on the quantity and relevance of the links) between the previous knowledge and the new contents to learn (where it differs from mechanical learning in which arbitrary associations occur). The execution of meaningful learning implies, therefore, an evolution on the part of the apprentice —the agent of the ultimate responsibility of learning, since the teacher and the contents only function as mediators— towards the execution of representations of the world closer to the cultural definition (Coll, 1990).

This construction can take place in three different ways, that can be worked separately or combined: basic empirical learning, discursive learning and aesthetic learning. The first two ways, to a greater or lesser degree, are worked on a regular basis in schools. However, the aesthetic learning, developed in the early childhood years and understood as a “method where you transform your impressions of the world into aesthetic form expressions through aesthetic mediation in order to be able to reflect on and communicate about yourself and the world” (Austring & Sørensen, 2011: 106), in general does not receive the appropriate treatment (Austring & Sørensen, 2012).

The working group of which I was a part during the session in which a reflection was made on this type of learning came to the conclusion that at present there is a misinterpretation of aesthetic tasks, since we confuse it with the art education —defined as technical training of the production of form— and with the education of art —teaching art to shape an empathetic, imaginative, responsible and democratic citizenship (Siegesmund , 2013). With the aim of integrating these three pedagogical treatments of art, the school must help develop the creatively and reproductive capabilities; ie capabilities that allow us to transfer the culture from generation to generation and at the same time to move forward and improve (Vallvé, 2011). In order to efficiently develop the creative capacity, it is important that the school does not seek to harmonize artistic experience through technical explanations, but must be aware and competent in the act of identifying the need for silence and allow autonomy and subjectivity of children (Bosch, 2009).

Reference:

Austring B. D. and Sørensen M. (2011). Æstetik og læring. Grundbog i æstetiske læreprocesser (Aesthetics as Learning Media — A Textbook on Aesthetic Learning Processes). Copenhagen: Hans Reitzels Forlag,.

Austring, B. D. & Sørensen, M. (2012). A Scandinavian View on the Aesthetics as a Learning Media. Journal of Modern Education Review, 2(2), 90–101.

Bosch, E. (2009). Per què oferim educació artística als escolars? In Bosch, E. (2009): Un lloc anomenat escola. Barcelona: Graó.

Coll, C. (1990). Aprendizaje escolar y construcción del conocimiento. Barcelona: Paidós.

Siegesmund, R. (2013): Art Education and a Democratic Citizenry. International Journal of Art & Design Education, 32, 300-308.

Vallvé, LL. (2011). Patrimoni i Creativitat. A Fons, 74, 9-11.

Human actions tend to conform to practicality. We focus our efforts on responding to the demands of daily routine. This means that the potentiality of our senses is reduced and our aesthetic capacity is appeased by the craving for speed and immediacy.

 When we travel around the city we select the shortest and most opportune way and we walk through it tirelessly, forgetting the option to explore other routes. At the same time, as we execute our march, we let our minds wander through the never-failing thread of our chores and the torments of our soul. Our eyes only pay attention to the circulation of vehicles and the products of consumption exposed in the windows of the stores.

We do not perceive the movement of our body, the contact of our feet on the asphalt, the caress of the wind (with more or less violence, specially here in Denmark) on our persona. We ignore the song of the birds, and the polyphony of the street conversations. We omit the changing light along the seasons, the days, the hours; as well as the transformation of nature. And we disregard the architectural differences of the dwellings and the lives and histories that have passed and pass inside them.

As teachers, we must encourage our students to do things meaningfully, so that they appreciate the beauty surrounding them and of which they are and have to be actively involved. Two of the activities carried out in this module help us to promote this purpose: the photography inspired by street artist "Slinkachu" and the creation of a track in the city attending a particular theme.The first projects promotes the appreciation of details in the street that because of their small dimensions normally go unnoticed in our eyes. The second, on the other hand, prompts us to establish connections between different places in the city and to reflect on the city as a whole.

        Circular

        Attentive

ExacT

Its thirst for the circularity of life prevails.

Come or go, do and undo:

exacting eyes subject your will,

whilst the soul surrenders

                              drunked of love

                                          to its attentive caress.

“People in the 21st century live in a technology and media-driven environment, marked by access to an abundance of information, rapid changes in technology tools and the ability to collaborate and make individual contributions on an unprecedented scale.” (Anderson, 2010: 25). This reality exposes the need to stop giving priority to the memorization of data and prioritize the empowerment of those skills linked to the capacity to create adequate responses to the demands of society.

For this, it is important to equip pupils with strategies of idea-making. The first phase of this process of creation involves the act of brainstorming, which “is a tool used by teams to bring out the ideas of each individual and present them in an orderly fashion to the rest of the team and whose key element for success the no evaluation or judgment of the ideas that are being generated (Osborn, 1948 cited in The Pfeiffer Library, 1998).

During this module, in different sessions and with different objectives, we have developed various activities linked to the brainstorming process. Two of these tasks were linked with the procedure of association through the combination of different pictures to came out with an idea or story and the spotaneous association through the throwing of a ball while standing forming a circle. Finally, during one session we discussed the CIE (Creativity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship)-model —called KIE-model in Danish— and implemented one task consisting in writing down several movements paired with something about learning for their later discussion and evaluation in order to select one of them and create an pedagogical activity.

References:

Anderson, J. (2010). ICT Transforming Education. A Regional Guide. Bangkok: UNESCO.

Written on the 27th of April with P.K. as a response to the task regarding “The rearrangement of the headings of The Mirror” 

The Philosophy for Children, also internationally known as P4C or PwC  is a pedagogic movement that arose in the 1970s in the US as an educational programme. It was developed by Matthew Lipman (1922-2010), professor of philosophy at Montclair State College, who thought that children weren’t learning in schools because they weren’t taught to think nor were given the opportunity to develop their innate facet of philosophers. Such that Lipman expressed the need to rethink the child, conceiving it as a rational agent with the ability to reason philosophically. He, thereby, opened a space for the emergent field of what is now known as philosophy of childhood (Vansielegheim & Kennedy, 2011) to ensure that children were taught to reason, think, to be critical, creative, careful, and to develop social skills and attitudes necessary to become part of a democratic society (Bleazby, 2011).

Lipman created some specific pedagogical novels for the work of the philosophy in schools besides guidebooks for teachers. In each session, children read together a fragment of the philosophical novel and this motivates enquiry. From there, some minutes will be given for individual reflection and then the different opinions and points of views will be communicated. As the dialogue progresses, the teacher can introduce questions related to the subject being treated and the students have to create connections among the various issues raised and construct new ideas collaboratively.

Nowadays, the concept of philosophy for children is much broader, as it also serves to designate other practices that, without using Lipman's teaching materials, pursue the same goals. All these practices have one essential element in common: the use of dialogue. P4C puts the focus on analyzing the ambiguous and problematic concepts that can be concrete or abstract, but that are generally embodied in contexts of everyday life (Splitter & Sharp, 1995 cited in Daniel & Auriac, 2011) with the intention of encouraging the epistemic curiosity of the children and engender critical thinking.

From the constant reflection based on the interactions, a process of subjectivation is originated in which the students become aware of themselves while they are constructed as Subjects (Touraine, 1995). This provokes that the knowledge of the options available at their fingertips are amplified so that the "me" has more options to choose from, which could lead to "I" to behave differently as how it was socially expected to act (Mead, 1967). And so, slowly, the children enter into the world of reflexive modernity characteristic of the risk society in which we live (Beck, 1992).

This subjectivation implies the desire of the individual to be the actor of his own existence (Touraine, 1995), which involves an active action from the transformation of those elements of society that prevent the subject to have guaranteed the equality of opportunities and results and consequently P4C can be defined as a transformative and not reproductive educational practice. Because, as Dewey declared,  “reflection involves not simply a sequence of ideas, but a consequence” (Dewey, 1933: 4 cited in Vansieleghem & Kennedy, 2011).

References:

Beck, U. (1992). Risk Society, Towards a New Modernity. London: Sage Publications.

Bleazby, J. (2011). Overcoming relativism and absolutism: Dewey’s ideals of truth and meaning in philosophy for children. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 43(5), 453-466.

Daniel, M. F. & Auriac, E. (2011). Philosophy, critical thinking and Philosophy for Children. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 43(5), 415–435.

Mead, G. H. (1967). Mind, Self, and Society from the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 

Touraine, A. (1995). Critique of Modernity. Oxford: Blackwell.

The school education can be defined as the set of practices that are conducted by a social group to ensure the development of its newest members. This development consists of a dual process: individualization  —understood as the construction of the self-identity— and socialization —which is the process of joining the society.

For children to come to be what they are school must make an integral and holistic education involving all areas and requiring the work of all intelligences. This will make it easier for students to identify their “element”,  a concept which Ken Robinson (2009) defined as the area where our abilities and desires  converge with reality. To encourage self-knowledge Vallvé (2011) proposes putting together thought, feeling and action, and states that the tool that best allows this union is art. Art promotes self-knowledge from two dynamics. On the one hand, the act of creating enables expression through different languages. On the other hand, observation and interpretation allows to project and identify in the work pieces the own emotions and feelings (Read, 1982).

This act of discovering oneself is increased if the work of art that has to be created is intended to describe the artist (self-portrait), as was the case of the collage that we had to create through digital tools. To perform this type of work, one must execute a journey of exploration of the self-identity: question one’s inner life and one’s relationship with the world. Once this hard and long psychological procedure of self-awareness has been carried out, it is time to consider the act of production. It is the moment to freely, without prejudices, liberate ideas of how to develop the self-portrait and “make the unseen visible and reveal the unrecognized” (Isitman, 2012).

References:

Isitman, O. (2012). Giving art education to students from different disciplines. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 51, 15-18.

Read, H. (1982). Educación por el arte. Barcelona: Paidós Educador.

Robinsons, K. (2009). The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything. London: Penguin Books.