Drawing to Learn in the Preservice Classroom

• In Event: Arts-Based Research as Pedagogy

Abstract

As an artist, educator, and researcher, I draw to see and to understand, to play with ideas and observations on paper until something unexpected and unforeseen turns up. My research focuses on drawing and cognition. Working visually allows for thoughts that are not ready to be put into words to emerge. Over decades as a practicing artist I’ve come to trust the process, to dive into the blank page and see what I might discover.

My students, for the most part, don’t start out with this confidence. Even the future art educators I teach are surprisingly reluctant to engage visual methods as a serious way to study and learn. Most seem more comfortable reading and writing rather than making as a way to master new skills and understandings. When entering the art education program, they often believe that art is a means of self-expression rather than investigation and construction of knowledge.

Over the past five years, in my Curriculum and Instruction methods classes, I have replaced text-based assignments with text/image projects, such as task-analysis comics, field observations in sketch-note form, layered and illustrated curriculum maps and final exam as artist book. As I accumulate student examples and get better at explaining why this way of teaching and learning is significant, my students express more sense of pride and ownership in their work, and adapt some of their assignments for use in student teaching.

One of the first assignments is a task analysis in the form of a "how-to" story comic based on a classmate's verbal description. Task analysis is essential to teaching. Practicing mindful, reflective listening is also a key skill for a good teacher. Sequential drawing, i.e. comics, is a useful way to show processes, time and change. I ask students to consider a recent experience where they learned something new. I ask them to think of a fairly simple, discrete task or skill that does not need to be art-related. They pair off with someone in the class and take turns interviewing each other and actively listening to her/his story.

This assignment has proven to provide a strong foundation for a variety of other visual arts-based research methods later on in the semester. Field observations in the form of illustrated sketchnotes rather than simple text are more interesting and fun for my students to create and for myself to evaluate and grade. Designing learning segments visually surfaces relationships and connections that otherwise might go undetected.

My students sometimes complain that visualization is often more time-consuming than text-only based assignments. They also sometimes question the criteria by which these less conventional assignments are evaluated. These questions tend to resolve as I collect more and more student exemplars that demonstrate a wide range of acceptable approaches. And I’ve been pleasantly surprised at the effort and creativity my students are able to muster at the end of the semester when presented with an artist book project as a take home final exam.

Author

• Andrea Kantrowitz, SUNY - College at New Paltz