One
of my main teaching struggles comes from knowing what to teach first. This is
not a problem that is exclusive to my art teaching, but my teaching in general.
In this blog I will focus on my Exploring
Drawing and Illustration course.
You
have learners, you have times and dates and you have content which needs to be
covered. However, when teaching unaccredited courses, you are left without a
module guide or instruction from an awarding body. There are no assessments,
with learning outcomes to be met either, meaning that you are left with an
abundance of material and nothing to guide the structure.
The
first tool I use to help guide how the course will proceed is by starting with the
need to carry out initial assessments to gage each learners starting point,
week one is the best time for this to take place. Working within adult
community learning the starting points between learners can be vast. I use two
types of initial assessment; one based on theory and the other on practical
skill (Education and
Training Foundation, 2019).
Within
the first, I ask the group to complete a match and pair game around the theme
of types of line drawing techniques.
They must match the name of the line drawing technique to an image example and
a written description – while the learners participate in the task, I take note
of each learners’ contributions to assess their knowledge, I will also as
one-to-one questions relating to the task. I find this to be a useful activity
as it works in a more than one way; firstly, as the initial assessment, but
also as an ice breaker activity, encouraging learners to converse in the first
ten minutes of the session in a way which is not intrusive (Hartley
and Dawson, 2010).
If
a learner becomes stuck during the match and pair, I will get them to share the
part of the puzzle that they have with the group and prompt them to ask their
peers if anyone can suggest what it might correspond to. This allows me to make
use of any more knowledgeable others within the group (Vygotsky, 1978),
allowing all learners to complete the task. This
is a benefit by having a group of learners of mixed ability work together
(Seethamraju and Borman, 2009).
Depending on the size of the cohort I may split the group up
and have the same activity being completed in smaller groups – with the use of
random allocation, as at this point, I do not know the learners enough to use
any other grouping method (Hartley and Dawson, 2010). Ideally sized between
3-6 learners (Wheelan, 2009). This ensures that all learners can actively
participate in the task.
The
second initial assessment is based upon the line drawing techniques outlined previously.
However, it looks as assessing their practical skill set. The importance of the
theory task coming first is that the assessment introduces the techniques to
all the learners, which is particularly important for those learners that have
not come across the techniques before. Once the first assessment is completed
it provides them with a crib sheet on what the line drawing techniques are and
what they look like.
Going
forward after the first session my aim to create a manageable chunk of leaning,
drawing on mastery learning (Bloom, 1971). While in longer courses these chunks
would materialise as different units which might take place over an academic
year, I look at these as each week of the course. The Exploring Drawing and Illustration course can run as either five
weeks or ten weeks.
The
subject matter of Drawing and Illustration is broken down into small chunks
which then need to be timetabled into a logical series. This requires me to
step back and consider what skills need to be covered first. This is what led
me to cover the basics on line drawing in week one; on both lengths of course,
as these techniques are referred to in every subsequent session. If I did not
cover these first and simply referred to continuous line drawing without
covering it this could leave learners without any prior knowledge confused and
at a disadvantage. As there are no previous qualification requirements to enrol
on the course it cannot be assumed that they have covered these in a previous
course. As a way of managing a group of learners who can vary in ability individual
learning plans are utilised.
At
the start of each session learning objectives are set out, which tell the
learners what it is they will be able to do at the end of the session, for
example learners are told in the first session that they will be able to:
The
learning objectives are also set to Booms revised taxonomy (Anderson, Krathwohl and
Bloom, 2001) to encourage higher-order thinking skills, starting with lower level
cognitive skills (Bilon, 2019).
Session two for
both course lengths covered using view finders, this is covered early in the
course as it is a method that learners may want to continue to return to
throughout the subsequent weeks. Using a view finder can help the learner to
better frame objects/the picture and to block out any distractions (Guptill, 2014). Week three sees the
introduction of the grid drawing technique, again as this may be needed going
forward. Other skills introduced early in the course include pencil measuring –
week four.
While it would
be useful to learners to be introduced to all the skills in the first week, I am
conscious not to overload them with material and to instead introduce them in meaningful
patterns of information with the intention that this is mean they are more
likely to retain the information (Miller, 1956). After these skill sets have
been covered, the running order for the rest of the sessions becomes less
important, as the skills are less basic.
The rest of the
course differs depending on the length of the course. Within the five-week course
the final week, week five (week ten of the ten-week course), is dedicated to
creating a final piece based on the new skills they have learnt. While in the
ten-week course for the remaining weeks other topics are covered such as;
drawing with anything but a pen and creating repeat patterns.
References
Anderson, L.W., Krathwohl and Bloom, B.S. (2001) A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing: a revision of Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives. Longman.
Bilon,
E. (2019) Using Bloom's Taxonomy to Write Effective
Learning Objectives: The Abcds of Writing Learning Objectives: A Basic Guide.
Kindle Edition.
Bloom,
B.S. (1971) Mastery Learning. New
York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Guptill, A.L. (2014) Watson-Guptill; 60th
Anniversary ed. Edition.
Hartley, P. and Dawson, M. (2010) Success in
groupwork. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. (Pocket study skills).
Miller,
G.A. (1956) The magical number of seven,
plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information.
Psychological Review, 63, 81-97.
Seethamraju,
R. and Borman, M. (2009) Influence of
group formation choices on academic performance. Assessment and Evaluation
in Higher Education 34(1).
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society:
The development of higher psychological processes.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Wheelan,
S. A. (2009) Group size, group
development, and group productivity. Small Group Research 40(2).
