Today's blog is a reflection and response to Patricia Amburgy's article in the September 2011 issue of The Journal of the National Art Education Association
Diversity, Pedagogy, and Visual Culture
By Patricia M. Amburgy
The Journal of the National Art Education Association
September 2011, Volume 64, No.5
Patricia M Amburgy is a professor of Art Education at Pennsylvania
State University.
Her article in the September
2011 issue of The Journal of the National Art Education Association address the
education of pre-service art educators as it relates to a course she teaches
entitled Diversity, Pedagogy, and Visual Culture (A ED 225).
As a high school art teacher I was intrigued
by this article in that I wanted to know more about how today’s art education
students are being trained.
I find it
interesting that there is now a great focus on teachers being “agents of
change”
[i]
where it relates to social justice.
In
this article I will address some of the key points form Amburgy’s article as
they relate to teaching high school students.
When I was in undergraduate school (1993-97) the focus was on
teaching how to think and speak about art, make art and critique art. This was approached by my professors in terms
of generalities; not any specific social relationships. The format of describe, analyze, interpret
and judge for critiquing a work of art were laid out but there wasn’t much
focus on relating what students saw in an artwork to contemporary visual
culture specifically. The focus was on
art from history and what we can learn about history through examining the
art. Visual Culture is a relatively new
paradigm in art education that I am playing catch up with. Even in making that statement I realize that
it’s not necessarily true. It’s a new
terminology and a revived focus on how art documents, comments on, and judges
and influences a particular culture or society.
It’s looking at contemporary art in everyday life, not just in a major museum
or by dead artists. It’s realizing that
we are constantly bombarded with visual messages and we have to either accept
the dominant message or see if there is any hidden meaning behind the image. That hidden meaning varies depending on who
is the viewer. This focus on visual
culture is changing the focus of art education. No longer is it acceptable to
just teach media, art making techniques, or art history. Art education now is more about teaching
students to think for themselves, make judgments while being tolerant and
accepting of diversity, and to how to become agents of social change.
Amburgy’s article is about the course she teaches, but it
also exemplifies what the current beliefs about the “what” art teachers should
be focusing on in their instruction, but not the “how” to incorporate it into
practice. Those things I will have to
figure out for myself.
While reading this
article I kept asking myself, “How can I relate this to teaching high school
student?” To do this I need to break down the article into specific points for
further investigation and reflection.
Point 1: One of
the missions of the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education
(NCATE) is to “prepare knowledgeable, skilled, and caring professional
educators to become critical, reflective practitioners, researchers and
artists, and agents of change for social justice in diverse contexts of
educational practice.” (Art Education, 2009-2011).
[ii]
My first reaction was to think, “So
now we are expected to rid the world of social injustices while also teaching
children how to make art?
This sounds a
lot like politics in the classroom, and that could get a teacher into trouble
in a public school.”
Then I thought some
more about that mission statement and realized I’m already doing that with my
instruction and have been all along.
I
just have not been focusing my art instruction exclusively on the social
implications of the images we are bombarded with everyday.
This reminds me of a quote by Picasso in
reflecting on his painting
Guernica,
“
Art is not made to decorate rooms.
It is an offensive and defensive weapon against the enemy.”[iii] Contemporary art has become more
political, often subversive, but that doesn’t mean that all art has to be
political to be a catalyst for social change.
I’ve taught
units on documentary and commentary art with a focus on how artists use their
art to comment about an event or a social injustice.
However, I’ve always used Guernica as the
main artwork and compared it to representations of Goya’s Third of May and
Velazquez’s Surrender of Breda to investigate the difference of documentary and
commentary artwork.
[iv]
While I still think using those
paintings is a good idea, maybe it’s time to bring in some new, more
contemporary images that students may be more able to relate to.
This means more research on my part.
But isn’t that part of NCATE’s mission as
well?
Point 2:
In describing her course content Amburgy
explains constructions of diversity.
As
it relates to her class, “
diversity
includes all aspects of people’s identities that help define who they are.
Aspects of identity include ethnicity, social
class, race, gender, sexual identity, age and ability, among others.”
[v]
I recently began a unit on identity with my 3D Design class. We created a class word web about all the
things that contribute to shaping a person’s sense of identity. I found it interesting that no one brought up
gender or sexual orientation in any of the discussions. So many other contributors were identified
easily and with only some debate. To me,
this shows that as a group no one is comfortable bringing up sexual orientation
as a contributor to who a person is.
Which is interesting because the students in the halls of my school (especially
the girls) don’t seem to have a problem expressing their sexual orientation
what ever it may be. It’s a little
different for the boys. Peer judgment is
much harder on them than it is on the girls.
I didn’t push the issue in class and sometimes I wish I had. On one hand I feel like I missed an
opportunity for enlightenment. On the
other hand if the students are not ready for such a discussion then as their
teacher I don’t think I should force it on them.
Amburgy goes on to explain that one
of the course objectives is for students to understand how visual culture
contributes to placing people in “categories of privilege and social power, and
keeping others in disadvantaged or subordinate positions.”
[vi]
Diversity has many implications in
life and education. The focus in public
schools has been on teaching awareness and acceptance of diverse populations of
people without judgment and with equality in social and educational
opportunities; so long as everyone conforms to the accepted school behaviors. We are expected to embrace diversity. We are expected to individualize and
diversify our instruction to meet the needs of all the students. Yet, in reality
that doesn’t happen. The need in
education to classify and target certain populations is accepted in the name of
meeting the needs of students. This
doesn’t always help the students as much as the administration thinks it
does. What it does do is offer more
services to students on either extreme of the ability spectrum and just pushes
through the kids in the middle. There
seems to be this expectation that all students’ educational curriculums need to
be aimed at all students going on to college and university. Some students have more of an aptitude for
specific skill instruction that is not necessarily “academic”. Not all students will have what it takes to
succeed in a university, and forcing them into a structure of courses with that
expected end could set them up for failure.
This in turn perpetuates the separation between privilege and disadvantage. You are at a disadvantage if you have no
skill or education. If your education
stops at high school because you have become disillusioned with learning because
your abilities were non-academic than you will be disadvantaged in life.
What all students need is to learn
how to think for themselves. If students
can learn how to interpret the barrage of images and information they interact
with everyday then they are more likely to succeed in their chosen path in
life. Knowing how to interact with all
types of people and to be able to decipher, interpret and utilize information
for a new purpose are important skills that are being left out of core area
instruction. This is where the arts are
necessary. Through the utilization of a
visual culture approach students can be guided to develop their own conclusions
about the intended or implied messages sent through the visual media they
interact with every day. Through
breaking down contemporary and historical imagery students can learn how to
decipher, make connections and construct their own opinions. I am glad to see this becoming a focus in an
undergraduate art education curriculum.
Point 3: “Visual
representations are constructions, not mirrors of reality.”
[vii]
This reminds me of another Picasso
quote. “Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth.”
[viii] I
used this quote as a writing prompt in my Advanced Art class last week.
It led to an interesting discussion about what
is presented as real but is not, such as images of models in magazines.
These images are presented as the ideal forms
of beauty.
The projected “truth” is
that beauty is attainable by those who buy the advertised products.
This discussion led into how the media
influences our sense of beauty and “fitting in”.
Yet, the reality is that most all of those
images have been digitally altered to smooth out skin and hair, accentuate the
essential features and trim down the body.
It is the lie that makes us realize the truth.
The truth is we all don’t have body editors
to “fix” our appearance.
IN education
the lie is that everyone, if given the same instruction and opportunity, will
be prepared to go on to university after high school.
Deciding for one’s self what is “truth” is an
important skill for anyone in general.
Point 4: There
are three essential concepts that govern Amburgy’s course. In their simplest form; visual
representations will characterize groups of people, offer positions from which
to view them, and that viewers make their own meaning in multiple ways.7 Within those three concepts she discusses how
reoccurring imagery, or “stories” are important in shaping the viewer’s
understanding of the normal and abnormal, and the desired and the undesired
within a society. How can I putting these concepts to work in my own art
instruction? The answer to that would be
use the 5, 5, 5 method of instruction.
If there are five artists, five artworks, and five groups of students
each investigating 1 artist and 1 artwork then the entire class will have the
opportunity to learn from each other’s presentation. I call it 5,5,5, but really it is four small
groups and 1 large group inquiry. I
model the process of inquiry by asking questions of the entire class to
facilitating discussion. Then the
students have those same questions again to work on in small groups as they
relate to their specific artist/artwork.
Each group presents their artist/artwork for a larger group
sharing. The hard part is finding the
artists and artworks that are appropriate and engaging for a high school class,
constructing the questions that lead to critical inquiry, and getting students
to participate in both the inquiry and the discussion. I’m not sure which of those three is the most
difficult. No one ever said teaching
would always be easy.
While Amburgy has the ability to devote an entire course to
opening the eyes of her students to the importance of visual culture, as a high
art schoolteacher I do not. What I do
have is the opportunity to incorporate instruction in visual culture into my
own curriculum as to teach my high school students how to think for
themselves. From reading Diversity,
Pedagogy and Visual Culture I get a glimpse into how the instruction of
undergraduate art education is changing.
It is evolving into a more holistic approach to educating the student. In the contemporary art classroom there’s more
than just art being made. When there is
diversity in instruction, which includes visual culture, in the k-12 art
curriculum then there is thinking, investigating, art creating, discussion,
reflection, personal expression and new knowledge being constructed by
students. The more I read, the more I
learn. This leads to the reconstruction,
and new construction, of learning opportunities for my students. With these learning opportunities I hope that
I can be a positive “agent of change” in the lives of my students.
[i]
Reference to the terminology used by the National Council for Accreditation of
Teacher Education in their mission statement and quoted later in the text.
[ii]
Patricia Amburgy quoted this selection from the NCATE mission statement in her
article and cited its source as from the Journal of Art Education 2009-2010.
