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What We Know
Learning how to respond to their own art and the art works of others, opens
students to a multitude of cognitive actions, including perception, and
awareness of and sensitivity to media and critical thinking. Students develop
perception and sophisticated understanding of the social, historical and
cultural contexts in which works of art are produced through viewing art from
different times. (Anderson, 2004). Accumulated research confirms that the
response to art is an attentive act, one that scans for significant and
meaningful details and patterns in the world (Reimer, 2004). Students shift
from an experiential to a reflective strategy when they encounter
works of art so that the process of perception becomes a subject of thinking
(Efland, 2002). This is an important component of metacognition-thinking about
thinking. Recent neural research suggests that art experiences impact important
connections between affective and cognitive concepts. For example, looking at
visual art in a museum setting can enhance students’ abilities to decode and
understand illustrations of visual concepts from other domains such as science
(Tishman, MacGillivray, and Palmer, 1999). Modern advertising and popular media
offer a wide range of appropriate and interesting materials for students to
analyze. (Stankiewicz, 2004).
Critical Thinking
Critical thinking is not a fixed ability, but can develop over time,
especially when classroom instruction is modified to encourage students to
develop critical-thinking dispositions. Perkins and Tishman (2000) view
critical thinking not only as a capacity but as a dispositional construct, or
habit of mind, with characteristics including thinking ability, inclination to
use critical thinking and sensitivity to the contexts in which critical
thinking is most appropriate.
Freeman and Parsons (2001) have found that children develop their own
intuitive theories of art that guide their responses to it. These theories take
extensive time to develop and are often unarticulated. Gradually, students
develop more sophisticated perceptions and understandings of the relationships
among pictures, artists, subjects and viewers. The authors believe that visual
thinking blends with other languages as students move through various
operations and develop their theories of the arts within cultural contexts.
Somerville and Hartley (1986) found evidence that arts learning can impact
the following components of critical thinking:
- Identifying categories and the criteria for assigning members to them;
- Understanding part-whole relationships;
- Developing rules for sequencing procedures;
- Understanding the evolution of conventions of representation;
- Developing self-concept through an individual style.
Incorporating art as a strategic tool for building these skills can help
change a rigid, rule-based learning approach into one that is interpretive,
imaginative and analytical along a wide spectrum that includes language arts
and science (Efland, 2002).
Analysis
When they learn how to respond to art, students develop skills in analysis,
including sensitivity to the elements that are essential to the qualities of
specific artworks. For example, students in a program focused on Shakespeare
learned how to actively read complex texts and developed skills beyond their
specific work with Shakespeare’s plays. They were able to transfer these skills
to math and physics texts and other literature (Seidel, 2000). The students
came to see any text as a puzzle to take apart and fit together again. These
findings can be applied to teaching theatre at any age level, including young
children.
Evaluation
Evaluation, the process of forming judgments of merit, worth and value, is a
skill that has its roots in artistic modes of thinking but transcends multiple
disciplines. Children must be free to form their own judgments and to accept
responsibility for their decisions. Students progress socially and cognitively
through arts learning when they are encouraged to construct their own
interpretations of meaning, rather than simply accepting those that come from
texts or from teachers (Anderson, 2004). Arts learning helps student form
multiple perspectives and understand the layers in relationships (Burton,
Horowitz, and Abeles, 2000).
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