Hokkaido University of Education

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TitlePutting Concept-based Learning Into Practice: Collaborative Resea

rch in English and Art

Author(s) TODD, Ivan; TOMITA, Toshiaki

Citation 釧路論集 : 北海道教育大学釧路校研究紀要, 第50号: 53-60

Issue Date 2018-12

URL http://s-ir.sap.hokkyodai.ac.jp/dspace/handle/123456789/10472

Rights publisher

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1 BACKGROUND

In 2012, Sapporo Sacred Heart School was designated an IB (International Baccalaureate) Research School by the Japanese Ministry of Education. At this time, Mr. Todd joined the school as head of IB English research, and focused on developing Concept-based learning, which is a key part of IB thinking (Todd, 2014a). Central to this approach to education is developing ‘the ability to transfer understanding from one experience or domain to another’ (Barnard, 2016). To achieve this, students were encouraged to see connections between all parts of the curriculum in their daily study (Todd, 2014b), and to see connections between different cultures when traveling abroad as exchange students. The culmination of this research was the production of a practical English speaking syllabus (Todd, 2013). In 2014, when the GEL (Global Education Leadership) Program was inaugurated at Hokkaido University of Education, Mr. Todd became the GEL Advisor at Kushiro

campus, and recognizing that the campus’s teaching philosophy (Tamai, 2017) overlapped significantly with the Concept-based learning element of IB education, continued to place interdisciplinary and intercultural connections at the heart of teaching practice.Mr. Tomita works as an artist (Tomita and Mori, 2018) and an art teacher (Tomita, 2011). As part of his research into painting and contemporary art, he followed movements in art education around the world, especially Scandinavia. This led him to pursue research into Imaginative Learning’, an approach developed by the Lincoln Center in New York.He has collaborated with teachers at Willowpark School in Alberta, Canada, which practices Art-Centered Education based on the Lincoln Center principles. While organizing a class for exchange students, Mr. Todd and Mr. Tomita noticed the overlap in their teaching ideas, and embarked upon the collaborative research presented here In an extensive review of Kushiro Campus research

釧路論集　－北海道教育大学釧路校研究紀要－第50号（平成30年度）Kushiro Ronshu, - Journal of Hokkaido University of Education at Kushiro - No.50(2018):53-60

Putting Concept-based Learning Into Practice:

Collaborative Research in English and Art

TODD Ivan 1 , TOMITA Toshiaki 2

GEL Program Advisor, Hokkaido University of Education, Kushiro Campus1

Department of Art, Hokkaido University of Education, Kushiro Campus2

概念理解型学習を実践する英語・美術の共同研究トド・アィヴァン1　　富　田　俊　明2

北海道教育大学釧路校外国人プログラムアドバイザー 1・北海道教育大学釧路校美術研究室2

Encouraging students to take a multi-disciplinary approach to teaching has been a recent goal for the Japanese Ministry of Education, and for Hokkaido University of Education (Kushiro Campus) in particular. One task for teachers has been to investigate how, in the four years of teacher training, this kind of thinking can be fostered in students. A teacher of English and a teacher of art, recognizing similarities in their fields of interest (respectively ‘concept-based learning’ and imaginative learning’), decided to collaborate and provide a model of inter-disciplinary teaching for students. Ideas from contemporary art were introduced into English classes, and the linguistic dimension of activities in art classes was deepened. The performance of students in class, post-collaboration questionnaires, and end of term test results all suggested that students respond positively to this kind of teaching. Ideas for how this kind of collaboration can be developed were also suggested, along with ideas for how an atmosphere of interdisciplinary study can be encouraged in both teachers and students throughout the campus.

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(Tamai, 2017), an interdisciplinary approach has been outlined by Kasai (2017), Hiroshige (2017), and Hotta (2017), emphasizing how certain topics can allow students the chance to cover a variety of subjects in the same lesson. In this paper we report on an attempt to deepen this interdisciplinary approach by directly connecting the content of two different syllabuses (English and Contemporary Art).The questions addressed were:

a) Is it possible for English and Contemporary Art courses to be mutually enriching?

b) Can students benefit from this kind of collaborative approach?

First of all, the background to this collaboration will be explained in more detail.

2 CONCEPT-BASED LEARNING

To encourage students to ‘transfer knowledge from one domain to another’, English teaching at Sapporo Sacred Heart was linked to topics in fields as diverse as Japanese language, ethics and environmental studies (Todd, 2014b). Connections were especially encouraged between students in different grades, and between exchange students (both to and from the school) and the rest of the student body. Exchange students were asked to keep diaries of their experiences, particularly moments of ‘culture shock’, the often difficult experiences of the difference between two cultures. These experiences were then used to help prepare younger students for exchange trips, becoming the source material for a Practical English Speaking Syllabus (Todd, 2013). In this syllabus, model conversations were created based on the exchange students’ experiences, and having practiced these as skits in class, students were then required to perform a spontaneous role-play in which they switched roles, and also switched location – from Japan to the West, or vice versa - enacting the cultural difference from the opposite perspective.As well as high levels of English, this activity required extremely high conceptual thinking ability, in order to:

a) Change the grammar in the conversation, for example from third person to first person.

b) Change the person whose role is being performed, for

example from host mother to exchange student.

c) Change the perspective on the cross-cultural difference in question, for example from a Japanese to a western perspective.

Illustration: A page from the Syllabus

This activity was continued at HUE Kushiro campus, helping students prepare for exchange trips by improving their English ability and sensitivity to cross-cultural differences. Students kept diaries of exchange trips, and to encourage a spirit of interaction between different grades, these were used as source material for younger students’ English practice.

3 CONNECTION TO THE GEL PROGRAM

In the GEL program, students have been encouraged to be sensitive to links between different subjects, and to seize all possible opportunities for developing their English ability. This is especially important when considering that a score of either 92 in TOEFL or 860 in TOEIC is required to complete the program. The nature of these two tests is very different, but this difference offers an opportunity to relate all aspects of daily life at

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university to English study.TOEFL is designed to prepare students for life at an English speaking university, the content being divided into a) academic and b) administrative parts. The academic part covers all fields of education; the administrative part covers all practical English requirements, such as registration and discussions with a tutor. TOEIC, by contrast, focuses on Business English. It is intended to prepare students for work in a multi-national environment. This contrast offers a chance for students to see every part of their daily life as an opportunity for English learning. If we consider a hypothetical daily schedule of a HUE student, every stage of the daily routine, including a part-time job, is linked to either TOEIC or TOEFL:

Time Activity Related English Test

9.00 Lecture about Elementary Education

TOEFL (a)

10.40 Meeting with tutor about coursework

TOEFL (b)

13.00 Discussion with student registry

TOEFL (b)

14.40 Science lecture TOEFL (a)19.00 Part-time job TOEIC

Based on these considerations, GEL students were encouraged to be sensitive to these connections and to keep extensive notebooks, in the following way:After each lecture, make brief notes in English about the theme of the lecture, and look up the English translation of key words and phrases.After meeting with a tutor or the student registry, make a brief summary of the content in English. After finishing part-time work in the evening, recall an important conversation with a boss, colleague or customer and write it in English (this type of conversation makes up parts 2 and 3 of TOEIC).One Kushiro student used this approach to great effect. Taiga Ogisho became the first student from the three GEL campuses to achieve the target score. He spoke about this in a GEL video conference in February 2018 (below), referring to his six months in Australia, and the importance of using all possible opportunities to improve vocabulary and fluency. He showed his 30 notebooks, in which he had recorded all the English words and study-related ideas over his three years on the GEL program. He encouraged students to see every part of their daily

life as an opportunity for English study, including leisure time, and recommended watching films in English as an especially helpful method.

Above: Taiga Ogisho explaining how he attained a TOEIC score of 920. The bag on the desk contains the 30 notebooks.

Below: The notebooks.

4 CONNECTION TO CONTEMPORARY ART

Mr. Tomita’s Contemporary Art and Culture Theory course is intended to be an arena in which students develop their creative potential. To facilitate this, well known ideas from contemporary art have been introduced and experienced directly by students. A central theme has been Joseph Beuys’ notion of ‘social sculpture’.in which society as a whole is regarded as one great work of art, to which each person can contribute creatively through thoughts, words and actions (Beuys, 1973).In class, students are introduced to Beuys’ ideas, and to overcome inhibitions to expressing creativity arising from the socialization process, an experiential approach is adopted, allowing students to directly explore Beuys’

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ideas. To give students a broad perspective, a number of guests from outside the university have been invited to classes.This approach is part of a broader teaching philosophy, Imaginative Learning’, developed by the Lincoln Center in New York, at the heart of which are the following Capacities for Imaginative Learning’:

Noticing DeeplyEmbodyingQuestioningIdentifying PatternsMaking ConnectionsExhibiting EmpathyLiving with AmbiguityCreating MeaningTaking ActionReflecting / Assessing

Mr. Tomita has collaborated with teachers at the Willowbank School in Alberta, Canada, which practices Art-based Education based on these principles. The collaboration presented in this paper arose from a similar recognition of shared principles.

5 ENGLISH-ART COLLABORATION

The collaboration started with Mr. Tomita visiting Mr. Todd’s English class. The three key points in the setting up of this class were as follows:

a) To deepen students’ understanding of concept-based learning, a multidisciplinary approach was taken. In previous classes, students had explored concept-based activities using English. Here, this understanding was deepened by connecting English to contemporary art. The theme of the class was Yoko Ono’s exhibition of 1966.

b) Instead of simply explaining the nature of her work, one of the pieces from Yoko’s 1966 exhibition was recreated in the classroom so students could fully experience it in the same way as visitors to the original exhibition (one of those visitors being John Lennon, with whom, thanks to his powerful reaction to the exhibits, Ono formed an instant and lasting artistic connection).

c) Instead of having the subject introduced by an English teacher, an art teacher was invited to the class to further

students’ understanding.

In the class, Mr. Tomita spoke of how he had been inspired by Yoko Ono’s work, and how her art placed the creative locus in the mind of the observer, allowing them to become part of the artwork. Part of Yoko’s exhibition was then recreated in class, allowing students to experience her work directly. The piece is called ‘Ceiling Painting / Yes Painting’. A single word is written on the ceiling, and to read it, an observer must climb a step ladder and use a magnifying glass. The word is ‘Yes’. Several students in the class climbed the ladder and read the word, but were told to keep it a secret (as shown below).

Next, two students who had climbed the ladder performed a role-play. When John Lennon read the word in 1966, he was moved by its simple and powerful message. Now students were asked to imagine John giving his impressions to Yoko after he came down the ladder. There was one condition imposed - they were not allowed to use the word ‘yes’ in the conversation. Students who did not yet know the word were asked to guess what it was by listening to the role-play. For all those taking part, this activity tests not only students’ English ability, but also their powers of imagination.In the next stage of the class, students chose their own special word. They wrote these in English on strips of paper that were placed on the wall. Students read all the words and chose the one they liked best.

6 COLLABORATION IN THE ART CLASS

This activity was developed with a separate group of students when Mr. Todd visited Mr. Tomita’s Class. Here, students wrote the special word in Japanese, and

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a follow-up activity was added. When all the words were placed on the wall, students chose three that they liked and wrote a short story including those words. Students then read each other’s stories and gave their impressions. An example is shown below:

ある風の強い日に、男と女が生まれた。2人は生まれつき人の声が文字になって目に見えてしまう。2人は見たくない声まで見えてしまい、心臓を悪くしてしまう。そのうち2人は見たくない声ばかり見えるようになる。「もう人間なんてやめたい!」と思う2人だったが、母の優しい声や友達の明るい声を聞き、落ち着きを取り戻す。いつしか2人は自分に関わる人々の声を見て、心臓も良くなったのだった。

The next stage of the collaboration involved another of Yoko Ono’s works, Instruction Piece, taken from her book Grapefruit. These pieces are suggestions for interacting with the world in a playful and imaginative way, for example:

Imagine the clouds dripping.Dig a hole in your garden to put them in.

Carry a bag of peas.Leave a pea wherever you go.

Mr. Todd once again joined Mr. Tomita’s Contemporary Art Class. After reading some of Yoko’s examples, students wrote their own Instruction Piece in Japanese and then read each other’s ideas. These were collected at the end of the class, and the teachers decided that they were suitable for an activity outside the university. At the time of the class, a Kushiro lyric contest was in progress. The band ‘Heat Boys’ were asking the public to contribute ideas for a Kushiro themed song they were writing, The students’ Instruction Pieces were deemed suitable material for this contest, and in the

next class, students were asked to select four that could be associated with Kushiro, and to put them in order to create a lyric. In the next stage of the class, students were told to make another Instruction Piece for the contest. The crucial difference with this second stage was that the theme was now clear – students were now deliberately making Kushiro-themed Instruction Pieces.Shown below are examples of the first stage of the process:

飛びなさい二度と地上に戻ってこれないように

ザクザクと白い雪を踏みしめた

たとえゴールしても走り続けなさい

あなたの思う綺麗な生き方をしなさいつららを一本だけ残して白い雪を踏みしめた音

濁った透明な坂の上に立つ

雪で照らされた小さな光は

暗闇の中で輝いて…日だまりがやわらかく街をつつみこむ

その栄光につめをひっかけろ

Below: stage 2 lyrics.

何も言えない真っ白な霧の中赤いカモメが鳴いている

湿った空気に海のにおいがした風に薫る湖のにおいが僕の背中を押した湖のにおいをかぎながら波の音を聞く

The same two-stage procedure was then used in the English class, with students’ freely made Instruction Pieces being appropriated for a Kushiro theme, followed by a stage of explicitly Kushiro-themed Instruction Piece making. Some examples are presented below:

Instruction Pieces from the first stage (those underlined are the ones students later chose as most fitting a Kushiro theme):

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Look at the sky and run away.

Imagine snow and flowers. What season is it? I don't know.

Wake up and go to bed again.

Step in a world you don’t know.

Open all the windows in your house. Sit in each frame.

Go to the forest. Listen to the sounds.

Imagine what a bear is saying. We can’t hear it.

Feel the wind.

Instruction Pieces from the second stage, with the Kushiro theme made explicit:

Step in the sea, the lake and the river. Feel the snow, the rain and the fog.

Lie down in the marshland.

Be alone on the bridge and look at the river.

Sleep in the snow until spring.

Pick up a stone from every park. Hold them.

7 INSTRUCTION PIECE RESULTS

When comparing the results of these classes, an interesting picture emerged. Beforehand, teachers had presumed that the second stage would produce better results. That is, when students knew they were making Kushiro themed pieces, they would use their creative powers to make lyrics of a higher quality than when they were allocating previously made pieces for a new purpose. In fact, the opposite pattern emerged. Both students and teachers thought that lyrics made in the first stage were of a higher quality – that when they chose ready-made pieces and put them together, the resulting Kushiro themed lyric was more powerful.

8 OVERALL RESULTS

Looking at the performance of students in class, post-collaboration questionnaires, and end of term test results, it appeared that students responded positively to this collaboration.In both the English and Art classes, teachers felt that the quality of work produced by students in the collaborative classes was of an extremely high standard, especially in terms of originality. A common problem with creative classes is that many students fall back on cliché, giving opinions, writing stories or producing works of art with little originality. Both teachers felt that in these classes, the level of originality was perhaps higher than they had observed in any of their classes in the seven years (Tomita) and three years (Todd) of teaching experience at Kushiro campus. This impression was reinforced by end of term test results (in the English class) and post-collaboration questionnaires (in the art class). In the English class, the average score in the end of term test was almost 80%, which is around 10 points higher than the previous highest for this class. As well as English grammar, originality was a key factor in marking the test, and the teacher’s tentative interpretation of these high scores was that, compared to previous years, an atmosphere had been established in the class which encouraged imagination and creativity, and that the English-Art collaboration was a key contributor to this.In post-collaboration questionnaires in the Contemporary Art class, students generally responded positively, and the opinions expressed led the teacher to conclude that students have a strong need to experience this kind of active, interdisciplinary style of education.

9 CONCLUSION

The questions addressed in this study were:

a) Is it possible for English and Contemporary Art courses to be mutually enriching?

b) Can students benefit from this kind of collaborative approach?

Based on the activities reported here, the answer to the first question appears to be ‘yes’. If we look at the rationale of the respective classes, this result is perhaps not surprising. A central theme of the Contemporary Art

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syllabus has been Beuys’ notion of a social sculpture to which each individual contributes through their thoughts, words and actions. By introducing ideas from English teaching, the linguistic component of this process can be enriched. From an English perspective, the recent focus in Japanese education has been on the ability to express original ideas, and we might expect this to be enhanced by introducing an artistic element into the curriculum. As regards benefits for students, we conclude that the challenge this kind of collaboration presents to students can be extremely rewarding, offering an extra stimulus to creativity and boosting their general motivation and standard of performance. Both teachers concluded that collaboration of this type should be pursued further, not only between their own English and Art classes, but between other subjects on the university curriculum. There were also hints about what kind of collaboration might be beneficial in the future. The results of the ‘Instruction Piece’ activity in which students made lyrics for the Kushiro-themed song contest, suggest that students are happy to make a conceptual leap’ – using material originally designed for one purpose for a separate creative project. If this is so, (and the preliminary stage of a follow-up project in English classes supports this idea), it suggests that making interdisciplinary leaps across the curriculum is precisely the kind of challenge that students need. Here we are reporting on two teachers with very similar educational outlooks who decided to collaborate, but shared outlooks may not be a necessary condition for collaboration. Putting together two seemingly unrelated subjects and asking students to suggest how they might interact would challenge them to make a new kind of conceptual leap and engage their imaginative capacities in a new way.The experience of Taiga Ogisho on the GEL program supports this view – encouraged to see links between English and all other parts of the curriculum, he responded by taking this idea even further and using every aspect of daily life as a potential learning opportunity, making his time as a student an immersive English project.We hope that in the future both students and teachers will continue to seek opportunities to make ‘conceptual leaps’ of the kind outlined here. Both the authors have been involved in facilitating overseas exchange trips, in which students place themselves in a different culture and have to integrate Japanese and western ways of thinking. It is possible to see a university campus, analogously, as

a microcosm of global society, in which students have the chance to ‘travel’ to other disciplines and integrate two different forms of learning. The final conceptual leap, as we prepare students for a life as educators, could be to encourage them to think as teachers and decide for themselves which kind of interdisciplinary challenge they would like to undertake.

References:

Barnard, Sebastien (2016), Concept-based Learning for Today’s Students , IB Community Blog. Retrieved April 16th.http://blogs.ibo.org/blog/2016/07/08/concept-based-learning-for-todays-students/

Beuys, Josef’s ideas first published in English in Caroline Tisdall: (1973) Art into Society, Society into Art , ICA, London

Lincoln Center (2007) Aesthetic Education, Inquiry, and the Imagination , Lincoln Center, New York

Ono, Yoko (1964), Grapefruit , Wunteraum PressTodd, Ivan (2013), Practical English Speaking Syllabus ,

Presented to the Japanese Ministry of Education as Part of the Official IB Research Report, Sapporo Sacred Heart School

Todd, Ivan (2014a), Using Concept and Content in an IB Syllabus ,カトリック女子教育研究所, p.128-140

Todd Ivan (2014b), 「高校３年生「ライティング」(IBの言語Bを意識した授業)」、 『国際バカロレア(IB)の趣旨を踏まえた教育の推進に関する調査研究』文部科学省に提出した研究報告書、札幌聖心女子学院, p.98-101

Tomita, Toshiaki and Mori, Akira (2018), A Letter From Rip Van Winkle , Forthcoming exhibition at Kushiro City Museum of Art, Nov. 11th – Dec. 23rd

広重、真人 (2017), 「教科横断的な地域活動（音楽つき大きな画面の絵本おはなし会）」、玉井康之『子どもの“総合的能力”の育成と生きる力』, 北樹出版, p.96-98堀田、誠 (2017) 「英語・コミュニケーションを育む学習活動 」、玉井康之『子どもの“総合的能力”の育成と生きる力』, 北樹出版, p.129-132境、智洋 (2017), 「地域を活かした横断的・総合的学習活動と生きる力の育成」玉井康之『子どもの“総合的能力”の育成と生きる力』, 北樹出版, p.92-96富田、俊明 (2011), 分析的視覚化としてのドローイング, 北海道教育大学紀要、教育科学編、p.49-64