I thought I'd post a few of the things that came up in our productive discussion about why the writers wrote the book Studio Thinking. These are just the things I recorded in my book, so I hope others who were with me can add more that I missed.
1. The Studio Habits are a new language for things we are already doing, or aiming to do, as art teachers. However, they may be more than a language. They can be a focus or an awareness for teachers around how to ENSURE the product of art education is the child and not the artwork. If an arts teacher is actively and consciously teaching all of the habits, then the product is definitely the child. SHOM makes teachers more reflective about their practice.
2. The Habits may be a new way to look at grades or to grade student work, or even to enter grades. If we grade based on the habits and not only on skills the students have grasped, then we may have a truthful way to enter more grades for students, as CPS is requiring at the high school level.
3. The Studio Habits may be a good way to bring the arts to other subject areas by empowering non-arts teachers to look at teaching the arts in a new way, with a new set of criteria. For instance, many content area teachers seem to always say that they can't teach art because "they can't draw". Well, SHOM would be a way for them to understand how they could teach art or creative concepts, without knowing everything about the craft. More like understanding... art is communication.
4. SHOM would be a good way to frame/think through a lesson or unit, by focusing on certain habits.
5. The SHOM have the potential to help (arts) teachers build a common vocabulary around things that are meaningful and things that we want to assess. This common language will make discussions and collaborations among us easier, and will also be a way for us to market and share what we do.
6. If shared with students, SHOM will be a way for those art students to understand that even though they may not be good at the develop craft portion of the habits, that they have gifts in other areas that are of EQUAL importance to the creative mind and to artistic endeavors.
What did I miss!??
Door number three was very thoughtful! Nice work.
ReplyDeleteIn the piece we gave you on your way out called "Why Do We Need Studio Thinking Anyway?" Hetland talks about helping students "think with support" and that to me is the essence of what we are doing by embracing this framework.
Here's a section from the piece -
"I refer to the middle level (liquid level) as “thinking with support.” It interests me, because it is the equity level. All students, regardless of ability, can work at this level. And by working at this level, learning happens. That’s why it’s so helpful to use the Studio Habits if you’re interested in teaching equitably. Too many students don’t ever get to work at the “thinking with support” level in their educations. Many schools never ask them to, and so they just stay at the “rote and ritual” level of memorizing, repeating, and performing on cue, becoming pawns in a game that keeps them below the status and responsibilities of being active, responsible decision-makers."
This seems in line with the conversation we were having behind door number two about specific terms. We were talking about 21st century thinking skills among other things. If we can provide students with language to talk about artistic processes that could be quite forward thinking. Access and equity to language to describe your experience is key for our students. Teachers clearly need common language to move beyond an isolated practice. It's good to be in conversation together!!
2. ...If we grade based on the habits and not only on skills the students have grasped, then we may have a truthful way to enter more grades for students, as CPS is requiring at the high school level.
ReplyDeleteI do not know if more grades at the high school level are specific to certain schools or being expected overall? I wonder, as I've not heard this at this point in my school. Liz, do you have any other info on this? I'm curious.
I think the habits can easily supplement and enhance existing grading methods that teachers have in place, but it will take time to implement new grading methods overall. In certain courses, IB and AP Art for example, we cannot change the evaluation criteria as the IBO and College Board set this. I think students of all ages will be receptive to new approaches being phased in, but I expect some confusion and/or frustration with grading routines that are changed completely mid-year. We are looking at implementing a bi-weekly SHOM reflection that would replace a project & process reflective critique format that we have used in the past. The students should address all habits based on the current project(s), but focus on two in-depth. The questions become how we grade the reflections: participation? Critique? Both? Our hope is that this will increase thoughtful reflective practice in the electives and ultimately carry over into stronger (and more thoughtful) AP and IB artists.
6. …SHOM will be a way for those art students to understand that even though they may not be good at the develop craft portion of the habits, that they have gifts in other areas that are of EQUAL importance to the creative mind and to artistic endeavors.
ReplyDeleteThis caught my attention because it is very similar to the philosophy behind IB Art. Reflections and connections to concepts in art, both past and present, through investigation are as important to the portfolio process as technical proficiency with individual studio pieces. Being able to discuss successes and areas where improvements need to be made are extremely important to the overall creative process.
HI Beth, :)
ReplyDeleteI wrote about the topic of grades because some members of our group who teach high school were saying that at their schools they need to enter, I believe it was, four grades a week per student in order to not get in trouble with admin. Jennifer Barron at Kennedy was talking about that, as well as a few others. It definitely sounds intimidating and so ridiculously time consuming on the part of the teacher. Maybe Jennifer can post a bit more about her experience with grading.
You bring up lots of good points I had not been thinking of. We should all discuss how the reflections should be graded if they need to count for a grade, and also what the next step is after students write them.. do we write back like Kitty or do students save them and then look at them again when the project is complete??
When I was writing about entering grades using SHOM, I definitely had Art 1 classes in mind and not A.P and IB. You are right that their curriculum/grading methods are set in something more like stone. From the little I know about the IB art program, I have loved it from the start and was jealous I did not take it as a student. It is much more aligned with the habits, and I think it would be a good idea if at some point we looked at the IB (International Baccalaureate) curriculum, through the lens of SHOM. I think there would be some rich connections.
In some ways, IB may be the closest thing we have to what some of those high schools in Boston are able to give their kids.
Right. The IB program's approach to assessing student work is important as noted in the Qualities of Quality: Understanding Excellence in Arts Education report. Hetland is one of the authors of this very thorough report on the state of arts education in the U.S. both during and after school. Here's an excerpt from the report talking about the IB program -
ReplyDelete"Speaking about the IB program, Doug Boughton explained to us that the key to quality of IB arts instruction is in its assessment structure. “The assessment typically in the IB program is portfolio, where the criteria for
assessment drives the program and those criteria are the things that express what’s really important to [teachers] about education – for example, imagination and creative behavior, the capacity to pursue an idea or to develop a theme, the capacity to express ideas but in so doing, improve technical skills in multiple media, which is somewhat
less important, really, than to pursue ideas.”
I think it's worth having a conversation as a group about the IB program's approach to assessment. SHoM gives us a more balanced approach to see what is really going on beyond just the technical skill.
Thanks for bringing this forward in the conversation, Beth and Liz.