sculpting time

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SCULPTING PLACE:

Redefining the Use of Museum Collections for Classroom Practice:

A Case Study in Constructivism

By Teresa M. Tipton

Berne International Graduate School

June 2002


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Abstract

Constructivism is being discussed as a new paradigm in education. Although not a new term,

its use has profound implications for restructuring schools, educational practices, and curriculum.

Research from cognitive scientists gives new impetus for educational reform efforts along

constructivist lines. While the call to reconstruct classroom interactions for more purposeful

learning is coming from many sectors, it is proposed that the constructivist model maximizes

brain processing for authentic learning experiences. This paper discusses the background and

concepts behind constructivism and its related paradigm, didaction, as new tools for

redesigning learning experiences in schools. Specific reference is made to its application in arts

education. A case study supporting constructivism as a postmodernist approach to thinking

about the use of museum collections in classroom practice, follows.


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Introduction

While contemporary scholarship in the field of arts education has moved beyond

traditional content and discipline-based (DBAE) methods of instruction in arts education,

schools have made little progress incorporating new paradigms and content into instructional

practice. New developments in Visual Culture and Postmodernism, for example, are taught for

the most part, as course content for undergraduates in select universities, and not in K-12

schools, nationally or internationally. Postmodernism as a new conceptual framework for

thinking and teaching about art, cannot be retrofitted into formalist curricula, requiring that new

structures be developed, as well as new content be taught within them.

This paper examines the call for reconstructing schools and curricula, specifically in

the field of arts education, using implications from contemporary research in cognitive

processing and brain-based learning as the impetus for change. In particular, I will make use of a

case study of a constructivist unit of instruction to examine the limitations of using traditional

models of arts education in classroom practice. Particular reference will be made to an case study

using constructivism as a way of redefining the use of museum collections in classroom practice.

Problem Statement

Since the Enlightenment, Western thinking has been based upon an epistemology in

which scientific models have been dominant. The scientific method and perspective as it has

evolved, reduces reality into sequential, interrelated parts in order to gain insight into objective

"truths. However popular and pervasively used, this model does not fit into a postmodern

paradigm. Instead of predefined order, postmodernism emphasizes the impact of social forces

that shape human behavior and knowledge, questioning the possibility of absolute truths (Doll,


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1993, as cited in Meban, 2001). Quantum physics also gives us new impetus to think in terms of

patterns instead of fixed entities. If we think of knowledge building systems of thinking instead

of fixed bodies of knowledge, we can understand more clearly the dilemma faced by education.

Our schools are set up to convey old models of thinking, knowledge and learning. And yet, our

research and our very models of how we understand reality have vastly changed. The

development of new knowledge-based businesses and learning organizations, stimulated and

supported by the advances in the use of hypertext and interactive multimedia technologies, have

already changed the nature of predetermined knowledge, as is currently taught in schools.

If our beliefs about truth, reality, and beauty are deconstructed, they reveal certain

operational paradigms, which uphold the importance of personal self-expression, devoid of any

social function for it. This epistemology has become the mainstay of modernism in arts

education. Developed in the 1930s, modernism required a new language for interpreting artistic

expression, for which formalism was adopted as the universal language of art (Clark, 1996).

Formalism attempted, in a scientific manner, to breakdown the properties of form to its essential

parts in order to provide both the basis for expression and the context for viewing art. The way in

which formalism is usually presented in schools is didactic in nature. Didactic, is a term defined

as containing elements of teaching for a moral purpose

(http://www.dictonary.com/wordoftheday/archive/2000/09/28.html). Traditionally, this has come

to mean a sequence of teacher-presented material for student learning.

Postmodernism as a concept and a conceptual paradigm, shifts us from a modernist

emphasis on examining specific works of art according to their formal elements such as line,

space, shape, color, content, media, etc., to a broader context for self-expression. Postmodernism


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creates a social critique that challenges assumptions about relationships between objects,

viewers, environment, and society.

The quintessential symbol of the assumptions behind what cultures think about art and

how they view art objects, is the museum. The museum represents a standardized dictum about

what is valued and how it is valued in societies. These standardized dictums, established under

formalism, are reinforced in our schools as curriculum. They define the content and meaning

of art and art objects, and hence their value, in a didactic form. The information in museums is

presented in a passive manner, in a sanctified space, under which conditions, certain goals and

outcomes are expected. A museum is held up by a community as a symbol of its artistic

heritage, as well as embodying its artistic wealth. As much as they uphold a structured formalism

in their approaches to presenting and viewing art, museums have also become a metaphor for

how we think about the meaning and value of art in our communities and our lives.

An approach to arts education that emphasizes the transformation of beliefs and values

through a socio-cultural context, as postmodernism emphasizes, does not fit into the transmission

model of current instructional practice. In educating students with a variety of perspectives from

todays visual culture, a postmodern approach to arts education emphasizes the importance of

employing images from sources that go beyond iconoclastic objects normally found in museum

collections and referenced for arts education activities and curriculum. Images from advertising

and video, for instance, in a postmodernist perspective, are given the same analytical importance

as objects found in museums.

In order to teach students about the complex forces that shape us, including our

conceptions about art and art-making, arts education should move beyond its didactic boundaries


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to include new models of education which encompass non-school and non-museum-based

resources and learning experiences.

We can assume that if the material of pedagogical concern has shifted, then so, too, must

its methods of being conveyed. And yet, educationally, we find ourselves in a current mismatch

between concepts, methodology, and expected student learning outcomes. How then, can we

create new models of classroom practice, according to new thinking and scholarship in a

postmodern context for arts education?

Literature Review

Postmodernism

Postmodern artists use narrative, allegory, metaphor, and juxtaposition of different

images, to deal with content such as social and political issues, art as a consumerist product, and

art as a critique of society and culture (Wolcott, 1966). While a modernist perspective relies on

Western conceptions of art, a postmodern perspective seeks a plurality of perspectives and

multiple interpretations of meaning. Postmodernist works of art deconstruct modernist aesthetics

of form, revealing the socially constructed nature of visual representation and judgements of

artistic value (Meban, 2001). In order to discuss postmodernist works of art, new aesthetic

criteria needs to be identified and utilized. While the field of Visual Culture makes use of

postmodern thinking, by using our visual field and our entire environment as source material for

making, experiencing, and critiquing art, it has yet to fully address the necessary related

structural elements in schools and curriculum to enhance delivery of its content.


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Constructivism

While constructivist may not be a new term, until recently, it may have been an

overlooked one. Certainly to Piaget, and his followers in early childhood education, the word

describes one of the stages in the development of cognitive processing, and hence thinking, in a

child. Today, constructivism presents itself as a new paradigm in education. Whether attributed

to Bruner, Piaget, cognitive scientists, or 17th

century apprenticeship guilds, constructivism gives

new impetus for educational reform efforts. While the call to reconstruct classroom

interactions for more purposeful learning is coming from many sectors, the responses are not

always beneficial to either teaching or learning.

Along the lines of mimetic tools for learning, Vermette, Foote & Cliff (2001, paragraph

7) present this primer for constructivism, explaining its variables in a simplified context.

CONSTRUCTIVISMS:

C is for Connections

O is for OptionsN is for Negotiation

S is for ScaffoldingT is for Time

R is for RubricsU is for Understanding

C is for CollaborationT is for Technologies

I is for InquiryV is for Variety

I is for Intentional TeachingS is for Student-Centered

M is for MotivationS is for Standards

Without going into each of these variables in detail, with the exception of the

metaphorical technologies, and rubrics which are a fairly recent assessment tool in


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education, it could be argued that the precursor of the constructivism primer was John

Deweys early work in education (Doll, 1999). Dewey believed that students make an experience

out of an experience (Dewey, 1963/1938), which is a basic tenet of constructivism.

Constructivism maintains that students make connections with their prior experiences in order to

develop personal meaning from life events. Constructivist learning is an intensely individual

process. Each individual structures knowledge of the world into a unique pattern, connecting

each new fact, experience, or understanding into meaningful relationships to the wider world

(Wilson & Daviss, 1994). This finding supports the postmodernist perspective that the social

context cannot be separated or removed from discussions about learning. Learning happens

within a non-linear but interconnected web of relationships and meaning, which are bound

together. It cannot be predetermined and fixed in the definitive ways in which our schools have

standardized assessment practices for measuring the achievement of student learning outcomes

according to subject and grade-specific scope and sequences.

As an educational practice, constructivism has come to symbolize more of a method than

a way of thinking about the process and purpose of education. Its underlying premises are

antithetical to current operating practices in the majority of schools worldwide. It proposes

redefining the classic teacher-student paradigm for learning into a model which emphasizes

student-centered and student-initiated content. Its success also relies on the incorporation of

reflective thinking as a part of the classroom learning environment. Such meta-level thinking as a

process for learners to engage in is necessary for the brain creating connections and patterns

from experience into cognitive structures (Solso, 1993). Under constructivism, the instructional

process is valued as an individual construct, instead of teacher-directed activities

predetermining the content and intention of learning. Bereiter (1999) argues that such


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knowledge-building behaviors are necessary for the future success of students operating in a new

knowledge age. In order for constructivism to emerge, learning is viewed less as acquiring

knowledge than it is a process of entering into relationships to develop it. In this paradigm, the

teacher must suspend belief in the value of their own authority and engage in a process of inquiry

with students to facilitates their own interests and learning patterns (Doll, 1993).

A constructivist emphasis in curriculum shifts the teachers role from conveyor of

knowledge in a passive format, to that of an active facilitator of learning from a student-centered

point of view. Students determine the direction and form of the learning process, constructing

meaning from the content as they go. Schools and professionals involved in alternative education

will not find anything new in these directives. Yet, the implication for most state or public

schools, is profound.

Abbott and Ryan (1999) also add that a constructivist approach requires that the

community outside the school play a greater role in student learning. They call upon

restructuring efforts to direct more resources to younger learners and to extend the concept of

"learning community" beyond the classroom.

Ironically, none of the current literature on constructivism mentions the influence of the

Russian Constructivists in the first half of the 1920s. These post-revolutionary artists and

teachers developed their own original artistic and architectural elements nearly independently of

trends in Western Europe (Khan-Magomedov, 1986). Using elements evolving from avant-garde

painting, the innovations carried over into twentieth century architecture by Russian

Constructivists form a metaphor for constructivisms related pedagogical aspects today.

At the basis of their work was the desire to create material objects that responded to new

social needs and corresponded to new discoveries in science and technology. Early


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Constructivists began experimenting by moving theories of art from pictorial to spatial

relationships (Khan-Magomedov, p. 135). By introducing the study of elements of art as

independent from stasis to active, operant properties, they developed a philosophy of architecture

and art whose purpose was integral to production efforts in the society as a whole. Not only did

the addition of communicative aspects in architecture play an important role in the design and

use of space for the Russian Constructivists, their relationship to social values represented a post-

revolutionary ideology. Khan-Magomedov (1986) points out that the processes and means of

expression in almost all new creative orientations eventually become formalized and stylized.

Russian Constructivism gave precedence to the use of utilitarian and technical developments in

architecture, elements that were extrapolated from discoveries of form while painting (Khan-

Magomedoy, p. 130). In architecture, this translated into the rationale for social change and

functional purpose as the basis of forms development. Today, societies are still grappling with

this dichotomy and need for integration in the way urban spaces are designed around buildings.

In arts education, we can look to the work of the Russian Constructivists as precursors to the

kind of experimental and innovative approach necessary in education today.

Didaction

Going one step further than constructivism, is the didactive model as defined by

Tochon (1990). Utilizing the open-ended approach of constructivism, Tochon looks to the

variability of elements in the junction between the creative, motivational elements that emerge

from their interactivity. While classical didactics in education develops cognitive goals in order

to master the conceptual aspects of course content, a didactive perspective works from a post-

constructivist and postmodern perspective according to which every methodology is ideological.


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Its intention is to create actions by the individual that express their own personal voice, with no

further process of appraisal than satisfying their own communicative goal (Tochon, p. 45). While

few other scholars have taken up the call for didaction as Tochon describes it, he clearly has

developed a conceptual paradigm that challenges current thinking and practices in education.

As early as the 1920s, Alexandre Vesnin wrote about the way in which some objects

create an organizing effect on awareness and others do not (Khan-Magomedoy, 1986), thus

setting the stage for an early conceptualization of the motivating principles within our

environment, to which our educational systems are largely unaware. Taking student-centered

learning and removing it from criterion-referenced outcomes as Tochon proposes, is clearly a

revolutionary way of thinking about education, especially in a climate of the increasing use of

standardized testing linked to models of student success, and hence funding, to schools.

Cognitive Science

Our ideas of learning are based in 19th

and early 20th

century thinking, and not the latest

developments in neuroscience. Instead of thinking of the brain as a computer, researchers now

see it as a far more flexible, self-adjusting entity--an ever-changing organism that grows and

reshapes itself in response to challenge, with elements that wither if not used (Abbott & Ryan,

1999).

As neuroscientists Chang and Greenough noted in 1978, two sets of neurons enable us tolearn. One set, they suggested, captures general information from the immediate

environment while the other constantly searches through an individual's earlier

experiences for meaning. Recent research at the Salk Institute suggests that this is a false

dichotomy. Instead of representing two distinct strategies within the brain, these are twoseparate parts of the same process (Quartz & Sejnowski, 1997) (p.67).


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Cognitive science helps us understand that the brains functioning is not purely

compartmentalized into separate regions of the brain, but that specific areas in the brain are

activated simultaneously (Solso, 1993, p. 32). In order to maximize learning potential in

students, this natural parallel processing must be reflected in our learning environments.

Congruently, the learning path itself is naturally non-linear (Doll, 1999). Developed through

active learning, constructivism implies that the learner is not a passive recipient but a generative

initiator. Each new fact or experience is assimilated into a pre-existing web of cognitive

structures in each person's mind (Abbott & Ryan, 1999). This ever-evolving web of

understanding, shifts and moves. It is not static nor is it cumulative in the hierarchical sense most

schools are structured. Nor does it fit neatly into parcels, as most curriculum is divided and

delivered to students in sequential segments.

If the neural structure of the brain is open-ended, then constructivist learning is the

direction our schools need to take in order to authentically encourage and enhance the dynamic

interaction between the environment and the individual brain. But an education system that

focuses on specific outcomes and national curriculum targets does not support genuinely creative

or entrepreneurial learners.

The most promising new developments in education involve restructuring schoolactivities and discourse so that they resemble in some fashion the workings of research

groupswhere real questions are being investigated and students are trying to contributeto progress on those questions Within the conceptual framework of folk theory of mind,

however, this kind of collaborative knowledge-building activity degenerates intocooperative learning. It becomes students helping each other learn. There is nothing

wrong with that, but it is not the same as collaborative knowledge building. Folk theoryof mind cannot support the distinction. (Bereiter, 1999, p. 20).

However, for the most part, whether public or private institutions, our schools are

structured in ways that do not always support or enhance good brain development. "Authentic"


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learning experiences are those which resemble "real life" practices and encourages learners to

engage in the processes of practitioners (Meban, 2002). The value of such experiences is

supported by research demonstrating that when learners are provided with authentic learning

situations, meaningful learning occurs (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989, as cited by Meban,

2002). By providing learners with opportunities to access practitioner knowledge and skills,

students gain an understanding of the elements that shape artistic practices. When experiencing

the work of a practicing artist, students gain a better understanding of how artistic practice is

actualized within the cultural context of a contemporary artistic community (Meban, 2002).

Todays learners will be the adults of our future world. The ever-increasing pace of

change has made the ability to learn far more important than any particular skill set. (Mintrop,

2001). If we are in need of aligning teaching and learning to optimize brain processing, new

school instructional practices and structures are necessary.

The Call for New Models of Education

Clark (1996) proposes a reconstructivist perspective, founded on the notion that arts

education is a means for social transformation through a critical analysis of social values inherent

in works of art. Reconstructivists believe that arts education should shift from a subject area to

become a pedagogical tool that can be used across the school curriculum for the purpose of

critical analysis, and ultimately, social reconstruction (Freedman, 1994). As Sullivan (1993)

states, "To get a realistic perspective on what is authentic practice there is a need to cast a net

beyond the classroom to incorporate the wider realm of professional art and the local context of

everyday experiences (p.16). How we think about the arts and education is changing.


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Yet, Howard Gardner (2001) notes that the field of arts education needs to stop justifying

itself according to the benefits to other subject areas. It is precisely this paradox that the field of

arts education finds itself in today. By removing the social function of its value as a part of the

character of its assessment, arts education has been relegated to whimsical agendas that regard its

worth as secondary to other academic pursuits. Faced with increasing budget shortages in

schools, arts educators have been placed in the position or justifying the importance of learning

in the arts according to success in other subjects. As a way to minimize cuts to arts programs,

staff, and budgets, in schools, many institutions and organizations have devoted advocacy and

research efforts to this point of view. In a climate of seemingly diminishing resources in schools

for arts education, innovations in the field are less likely to be tried or embraced.

If knowledge is generative instead of fixed, it has enormous implications for us in

education. It means that knowledge within the field and that of other fields is not static and

cannot be solely conveyed. If new knowledge is being constructed individually, collectively we

are also creating new knowledge systems, as the current growth in knowledge-based

businesses indicate. Our challenge as educators is to design instructional and pedagogical

systems to reflect the natural process of learning, in order to better prepare our students for the

world in which they will be working, earning, and living. What is needed is a new paradigm,

what Deliss (1992) calls a blueprint for a visual methodology. If we apply the concept of

constructivism to the language used to describe this new paradigm, it will shape shift according

to the perspectives brought to it. As Deliss describes, the modern aesthetic paradigm, based on

contradictions of opposites (primitive/modern, western/non-western, etc.) is no longer adequate

to describe todays hypertext environment where developments in quantum physics shift our

thinking from dichotomies to both/and paradigms. Such is the environment that challenges us in


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schools to develop non-linear instructional practices. Opening up the museums of mankind as

she recommends, in order to dialogue with objects in new ways, led to the following sculpture

project in Beijing, China.

A Case Study

Background

A museum in and of itself implies something about conservation, whether a

contemporary idea, trend, or historical heritage. Beijings most famous and only National Art

Museum houses potential, not objects. A grandly massive structure, it stands ready to reveal

traveling national and international exhibitions, but has none of its own. Sadly, more of Chinas

treasures and artifacts from the past 7,000 years, can be found in museums elsewhere around the

world. Source material for a unit to on developing sculptures with sixth grade students in

Beijing, had to be created from the grassroots, to the places people ordinarily go to fill their

collections

There are social, political, and cultural aspects of visiting museums. How objects are

acquired, selected, and displayed; how they are ascribed importance; how they are interpreted for

the viewer, not to mention how the buildings themselves are designated, financed, and

maintained, are all issues of growing cultural and international concern. (Karp & Levine, 1991).

Certainly, we can trace the evolution of museums to the Victorians in England, whose obsessive

acquisition of objects has led to the current preponderance of object-focused museum collections

around the world. (Yanni, 2001). If we agree with postmodernism that what we see is

conditioned by social norms and restraints, then the museum itself represents a way of seeing in

a culture, as much as the objects in them come to be seen in a certain way. As Solso (1993)


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describes, what we see is to a large degree determined by our knowledge of what we should

see (p. 74). This case study presents an alternative approach, using artifacts in a non-linear way

to allow students to construct their own view of their importance and use.

Design and Implementation

Ideas, like people, often happen in unexpected interactions. Moments of serendipity when

people, experiences, and ideas combust into an unexpected aha, are always spontaneous and

unanticipated. What emerges from these moments of interactivity, is greater than any one

individuals efforts or ideas. Such ahas form the basis of the artistic process, supporting

Tochons call for didaction, where new ideas and forms are given creative imagination to their

possibility.

This project emerged one cold, winter day in February 2001, over cups of steaming hot,

green tea, as three artists and teachers Chen Ying, Qin Pu, and myself met and talked for the

first time in Qin Pus studio amidst his drawings, photographs, and maquetes. Qin is Director of

the Sculpture Institute of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, a place of national significance for

of some of Chinas most famous projects. The site develops both sculptural and architectural

designs by national and international artists. Qin, himself an artist of national merit, oversees the

sculpture branch of the facility where large and small sculptures all across China are designed as

models and then fabricated into true-to-scale sculptures and monuments. Using both traditional

and synthetic materials, the Institute develops projects for public, governmental, and private

sources.

As an art teacher at the Western Academy of Beijing, I had met Chen Ying at the

National Museum of Art during a visiting Henry Moore exhibition. Chenar, in turn, introduced


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me to Qin Pu, who in addition to his role as Director, is also a longstanding Sculpture Professor

of the Institute. Qin shared photographs of his recent sculpture projects around China, drawings

and notebooks from the age of nine year to the present. On his drawing board was a design for a

private commission to design a sculpture park, laying the foundation for an idea that would

emerge later in a local context. I was excited by what I saw and wanted my students to

experience what Qins work and the Sculpture Institute represented. Qin was interested in my

idea to bring sixth grade students to his studio and to view the entire sculptural process from

design to fabrication. What began an initial idea for a field trip, grew into a larger, collaborative

project that took shape over the course of our subsequent interactions.

Our project began as an enrichment of an instructional unit on clay. Students worked on

vessels with lids, as archaeological remains from either the future or the past. Early finishers

created their own projects, one of which was a design for a sculpture. I let this idea become the

next project, which grew into a competition for a student-designed sculpture. Over time, the idea

to professionally fabricate it into a large-scale sculpture by Qin Pu and the workers of the

Sculpture Institute, was born. With the support of a Teacher Grant from the schools Parent

Teacher Association (PTA) and additional funding secured by the Director, John McBryde, it

was possible to fabricate one design as a large-scale sculpture in marble.

Sixth grade students worked during their art classes once a week for a 90-minute block

over a six-week period on aspects of the project. Because of our use of various computer and

digital technologies, it also evolved as an integration with the Information Technology (IT)

curriculum taught by Ivan Beeckmans. Both of us teachers were interested in ways of engaging

students to use computer technologies artistically while learning important skills combining text

and imagery. Qin Pu had been experimenting with embossing text from computers onto clay and


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subsequently firing it. I wanted students to see what he had done with the concept as inspiration

for their own work. As a culmination to our interrelating projects during this unit, we planned a

combined field trip to Qin Pus Sculpture Institute as well as a visit to a contemporary art gallery.

I wanted students to experience the process of creating art through all of its aspects, from idea

and fabrication, to exhibition.

In the design competition, participating students created a two-dimensional and three-

dimensional model for a freestanding or functional sculpture to be placed outdoors on the

existing school grounds. Students were given the choice of the sculpture being free-standing or

functional as playground art. Modeling the components of a professional design process for

public art, students created renderings in charcoal of their sculptural designs, placing their design

into the intended installation site in gardens or playgrounds of the school. In art class, they

developed a small-scale model of their sculpture in clay. Early finishers were given the choice of

taking a digital photograph of their intended installation site and integrating their drawings with

it, skills they were learning with PhotoShop in the Information Technology (IT) curriculum.

When fifth grade students saw the work by sixth graders, they asked to participate in the

project as well. As a result, fifth and sixth grade art classes were given the option of entering

their sculpture designs into a competition for inaugurating a school sculpture garden. Several

models were selected by Qin Pu as finalists work by Alexandra Crossman, Christopoor

Brandjes, Kevin Liu, Ji Yun Lee, Jascha Doeke, and Brittany Maki. Because of eventual changes

in the installation site and engineering needs of the sculptures base, Brittany Makis model of a

dogs head resting on the ground, was chosen. Qin imagined Brittanys whimsical design as a

giant slide made out of various types and colors of marble. He chose this particular model as it

provided the most diversity in its use, from leaning, sitting, climbing, resting, and playing safely


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on it. It was this vision that eventually led to the sculpture that was fabricated and installed on

the new school site.

The final part of the project was an integrated IT and Art field trip in June to the

Sculpture Institute and the studios of some of Chinas most famous sculpture artists. To prepare

them for viewing contemporary art, students worked with both teachers on a Pop Art unit,

introducing students to the ways in which art is used to comment on culture and society. They

looked at how Andy Warhol in the past and artists in China today are using repetition of imagery

and changing its context to create new meaning for art. At the Sculpture Institute, students were

able to observe the work of artists in the foundry, experiencing their process from developing

small models to large-scale sculptures, with a view into how artists use technology today as part

of their art. Qin and I had arranged that students view his studio, but when they arrived, they

were also able to meet and talk with some of the other famous artists working on current public

art projects around China today.

After the Sculpture Institute, students visited the China Art and Archive Warehouse, a

private gallery where they experienced the final step of the artistic process. At the gallery,

students viewed contemporary pop and conceptual art, including a 40 square meter digital

photograph, a postmodern metaphor using Chinese symbolism to emphasis the importance of

feeling in an impersonal world. They met the curator for the show and drew in sketchbooks from

the works of art in the gallery. Using skills they were learning in a digital video class, students

took turns using digital and video cameras to record and document their experiences, editing and

selecting imagery from the field trip for the school website, uploaded afterwards in their IT class.

A display of the different steps of the process was created and the computer products displayed

on monitors as part of the end of year student art exhibition.


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All of these experiences supported a constructivist approach to education. Authentic

learning experiences with working artists, and experiencing the various functions and aspects of

the arts facilities they visited, gave students a realistic view of how it is to work as a professional

artist. Instead of passively viewing objects on display in museum settings, they were actively

engaged in developing their own understanding of where such objects originate from and how

they arrive there.

During the ensuing summer, Qin worked on translating the selected student design into a

one and a half meter slide for the school playground. A representation of the best of the

collaborative process, the importance of vision, and why the arts are important to us as students

and adults the selected sculpture transforms the school grounds as a work of public art. With

the vision, support, and openness of the school, its PTA, and school head, John McBryde, this

project was financially possible. Equally as important, was the way in which the project evolved.

As an example of constructivism, it emerged as a dialogue between teachers, artists, and

students. Students were an integral part of the design process, directing and guiding its eventual

destination. As an interactivity between process and intent, it was not conceived of and

implemented in advance, but as an ongoing process of the elements of art emerging into form.

Without the openness to let each idea emerge and take shape, this project would never have

happened..

Conclusion

If inquisitiveness is what drives children's learning, and constructivism explains how an

individual progresses from inquisitiveness to new knowledge, (Abbott & Ryan, 1999), then why

is it so controversial? Creating new ways of thinking about what is possible in arts education and


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in educational pedagogy requires shifting from the current behaviorist model of curriculum in the

classroom, to one based on the principles of the open-ended principles of constructivist learning.

Constructivism is an operative term, not a fixed entity. If what we consider "knowledge"

is changing, even our understanding of what constructivism is and what it can do will also

change. As educators, we find ourselves in the same position as students, in need of new skill

sets, not just knowledge. Yet, our school structures are decidedly slow, if not also antagonistic, in

embracing new ways of structuring and designing learning experiences. Perhaps our schools are

not fully equipped or ready to embrace didaction. But constructivism helps us redefine the way

the teacher interacts with the content, the student, and materials for learning. It allows us to open

up the learning process to self-organizing systems of thinking and doing. Based on the fact that

our brain weaves together relationships, constructivism asks that our teaching practice mimic it.

Constructivism gives us the context and tools to redesign the way the variables are arranged in

school settings, giving us a new direction in forging relationships between teachers and students,

our understanding of knowledge and learning, and ultimately the world at large.


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