Critical Thinking and Problem Solving through Art

How is problem solving/critical thinking taught through art? What are some different strategies you have used to promote problem solving/critical thinking?

Problem solving and critical thinking has been much more apparent to me while teaching at the elementary level compared to secondary. These young students are still learning the essential elements of art and its production. There’s a lot of basic discovery and exploration of medium

The main way that I try to promote problem solving skills and critical thinking is by giving students the time and opportunity to explore these mediums. As students work with new materials, they will encounter various new problems or difficulties. Students should be provided with adequate time to try to find solutions to these problems or struggles. Even working artists sometimes have to practice a new material or subject to anticipate any problems. It’s important that students understand that mistakes are okay to be made, and are an important part of everyone’s learning.

When we look at slides of artwork in class, I like to ask some basic open ended questions to think about how the work is made and its purpose. How do you think this artwork was constructed? How long do you think it took the artist? How would you do this project differently? These are all simple, open questions to get the students thinking. There are no right or wrong answers, but the questions target specific essential questions for them to be thinking about while working. With a question about the construction of an artwork, students will come up with their own solutions, hear the ideas of their classmates and also hear about the solutions the artist chose. I think students really understand some of these skills better when they’ve considered the struggles famous artists had with their work. Students need to see that they’re not alone in these struggles, and that age or ability has nothing to do with success.

Lastly, as students come to me during projects with questions, I will share some of those problems with the class, and ask for possible solutions. Students respond differently to seeing the struggles of their peers, I think it’s much easier for them to relate to their friends’ difficulties. This group problem solving is also great for establishing a stronger sense of community in the art room. Students should be helping each other and have confidence that there’s a big group of people who can collaborate and help them with their problems.

Professional Development

I haven’t had much experience with professional development, but the few times I have gone to a meeting, I’ve found it extraordinarily helpful. As a student teacher, it allowed me to get to know some of the other teachers in the building and what they were teaching, and really gave me a great sense of the community I was working with. In my future occupations, I think this will be a great opportunity for me to make those important connections with my peers.

The professional development meeting I sat in on was really discussion based. This was really great because I got to not only get to know a lot about the teachers, but I learned about their teaching styles and different techniques they us in their classrooms. The questions that lead our discussion brought up a lot of critical points, most of which I was familiar with. Those ones I wasn’t familiar with though were really relevant to what was happening in the school and education in general. It was nice to hear the topics I had previously discussed, because it brought those ideas to the front of my mind and made me truly reinvestigate them.

I haven’t observered much of this, but I’ve often heard that professional development in schools can often focus more around core academics. This can make it hard to relate topics because art education is such a different type of learning environment. I’ve also noticed a lot of teachers don’t take professional development seriously. I was very excited to go to professional development at my observing schools, but was kind of disappointed by the lack of enthusiasm. All of the topics we discussed were relevant to bettering everyone, and it felt like some teachers didn’t feel that way and didn’t participate much.

Classroom Technologies

The major technology I use in my classroom is the Internet. I like to provide my students with a PowerPoint for each project with a lot of examples. Most of the time, surfing the web comes up with more than enough images and information that I have to cut slides to save time. It’s much easier and quicker to whip up a presentation using the Internet than organizing slides or writing an elaborate written explanation. I’ve been lucky that I’ve had access to a digital projector in classrooms I’ve worked in, and I really hope that I have one in my future classroom. A projector is pretty essential for viewing presentations as a group rather than individually on computers.

I think students respond well to PowerPoint presentations. I try to provide a lot of diverse examples to get the students thinking, trying to show a wide variety of abilities, styles and techniques. Without the Internet, I have to rely on textbooks and examples I have made. This can really limit student’s understanding of their options, because too often students try to copy elements from the examples.

The Internet is a great resource for students too because they can quickly research reference images, textures, techniques and information about other artists and movements. Sometimes students abuse this ability and trace or copy an image from the Internet exactly. This is probably the biggest problem with the Internet, other than students wasting time. But if the student is struggling to find a specific photo or piece of information, as long as they’re still searching, they’re filtering a lot of information. Filtering out bad info versus good or helpful info can be just as much of a learning process as rendering an image.

I was also recently introduced to Artsonia.com, where teachers can upload images of student work that anyone can access online. Combined with email, this is a great way to reach out to parents, faculty and the community and share the great work the students are doing. Students can also look at work from other schools and get ideas of what other students are doing and what artists their age are capable of.