Rethinking the Volume Acquisition Process at 6-7 years old
Author(s):
Rubèn Pineda Ricart (presenting / submitting)
Conference:
ECER 2015
Network:
29. Research on Arts Education
Format:
Paper

Session Information

29 SES 10, The senses and the body

Paper Session

Time:
2015-09-10
15:30-17:00
Room:
557.Oktatóterem [C]
Chair:
Discussant:
Ana Reis

Contribution

This paper develops research questions and develops the pedagogical aims that serve as the foundation for the author's doctoral dissertation. The research is implemented in an integrated school (students from 3 to 18 years) in Barcelona, which has created an innovative learning environment. This is an intra-curricular space that, based on trans-disciplinary artistic practices and multi-grade learners (6 to 12 years old), becomes a complement to the formal curriculum that remains still stuck in a fragmentation of learning subjects (Crahay, 2006). Within this framework for an innovative learning environment, the author developed and is now implementing an ongoing workshop that focuses on mathematical concepts, by using the notion of volume as a basis for experimentation and contextualization. This activity seeks to localize new ways for introducing drawing, and other exercises involving space and volume, in learning situations that precede student's development (Vygotsky, 1996).

The project (ongoing each year) involves students working in a collaborative space, throughout the entire academic year. Every day, three multi-aged groups (6-8; 9-10; 11-12) comprising 18 students each participate in the workshop. Their participation lasts six weeks, at which point another three groups are incorporated into the project. The total number of participants during every academic year is over 300 primary school students.

Through the design and implementation of this project, the research asks: how can we intervene in an innovative educational context to improve students' intelligences (Gardner, 2003), skills and diverse abilities (spatial, logical, abstract, and mathematic), in order to generate deep understanding and construct, collaboratively, alternative epistemologies of space and thought?

To address this question, the workshop is developed as a transversal teaching-learning framework where, for example, drawing and applied arts acquire a more valued role in education (Arnheim, 1993) and where mathematics are explained, through experiments and practice, in a contextualized manner (Pineda & Callís, 2014). Geometry and volume, as the activity content, play a key role in this study of relationships. Through the implementation of the workshop, the project aims to: 1) foster a critical awareness of spaces, and how they affect us, how we perceive them, and how we live in them, in terms of an emancipatory educational process (Freire, 1972) and, 2) activate a continuous inquiry into invisible learning (Cobo & Moravec, 2011) and innovative learning environments (Istance, 2009), for 3) to explore and contribute to understanding ways in which art practice can be used as a tool for promoting trans-disciplinary learning.

By understanding the process of children‘s acquiring, understanding and expressing modes to visualize reality, the author is trying to articulate new alternative pedagogies and exercises, including explaining drawing methods near perspective laws and technical design for helping 6-8 year old children to develop the volume concept.

Method

In the first year of implementation, the workshop engaged students in the construction of a scaled model of the school and surrounding campus, in a cooperative, collaborative and accumulative manner. This process invited students to observe the centre, and then develop and activate resources and skills in order to analyze, measure, define, represent and, finally, recreate it volumetrically. In the second year, throughout the construction of scaled models of historic buildings with 9-12 year olds, the author and the students, configured as an Action Research group (Carr & Kemmis, 1974) started a praxis. The approaching methodology contains a/r/t/ographic (Springgay et al., 2007) elements thanks to the multiple roles existing in the case study (here interpreted as: ‘Architect’, Researcher and Teacher). Narrative Inquiry (McAdams, 1993) and Longitudinal Study (Menard, 2002) are also used to build a subjective and objective -respectively- account for the doctoral dissertation. In the third year, in addition to critically rethinking the school space with 11 and 12 year olds, in order to later transform it, we have focused the line of research to look at what processes occur while 6-8 years old students acquire the volume concept, although the whole research framework -including 9-12 years old students- is helping in situating the main line of research in an European context (Ives & Gardner, 1984). In this ongoing fourth academic year the aims are to produce new theory as well as confront it with existing bibliography. Usually it’s well accepted in the field that the volume concept acquired at Primary School occurs through a maturity process (Piaget, 1964) in 10-12 year olds, a theory that has been under looked within Art Education. Aligned to them, Luquet (1978), Lowenfeld (1961), Kellogg, (1979) and Estrada (1987) state several stages to explain this -supposed natural- discovering and development of graphic skills and maturation of tridimensional thought by the children. Because volumetric drawing isn't taught to 6-8 years old, little is known about the real potential of students in this age group. Through the codification (Bazeley, 2003) of the proposed exercises -being sensitive to the student's demands (Charmaz, 1994)- which generates evidences, and the comparison of these findings with the preexisting categories, the author is trying to find new core categories and ground new theory (Strauss & Corbin, 1998) to go further in understanding that natural discovering processes of the children for accelerating and deepening this maturity transition.

Expected Outcomes

By sharing the progress and initial results of this doctoral research process, the author provides insight into how art can be introduced in the school not only as content, but as a creative practice that contributes to the development of alternative pedagogies. Some data obtained in the fieldwork with 6-8 year olds reveal there is no difference in the visual comprehension of the volumetric drawings between adults although there is a tendency to assimilate that drawing production in aerial view. They explain that they see like adults but don’t have the visual tools to express what they could see when they confront a volume exercise. In other cases, children produce and explain in their ‘flat’ drawing using 3 concepts: earth, sky and air. This third element (air) could be seen as the key to deeply understanding children modes to deconstruct the 'seen' reality and offers clues for how to intervene by offering visual drawing tools. Other proposed exercises like X-ray drawings and built perspectives offer new chances for rethinking the Volume Acquisition Process among some failed attempts, which are also valuable (Mangel & Samaniego, 1984). What are the children thinking when attempting to solve a volumetric problem? Expected outcomes are that it's possible and even necessary to teach -in linked ways- the different representational conceptions (perspective, orthographical projection and others) for a better comprehension and to improve the representational skills for a reliable expression (Edwards, 1984) of the 'seen' and thought reality, in order to achieve the full development of the children. Through this way, drawing can become a visual thinking tool: it will be its cause, evidence and effect.

References

Arnheim, R. (1993). Consideraciones sobre la educación artística. Barcelona: Paidós. Bazeley, P. (2003) Teaching Mixed Methods. In Qualitative Research Journal, 3: 117-126. Carr, W. & Kemmis S. (1974). Teoria crítica de la enseñanza. La investigación-acción en la formación del profesorado. Barcelona: Martínez Roca. Charmaz, K. (1994). Discovering chronic illness: Using grounded theory. In B. Glaser (Ed.), More grounded theory methodology: A reader (65-93). Mill Valley: Sociology Press. Cobo, C. & Moravec, J. W. (2011). Aprendizaje invisible. Hacia una nueva ecología de la educación. Barcelona: Laboratori de Mitjans Interactius. Crahay, M. (2006). Dangers, incertitudes, et incomplétude de la logique de la compétence en éducation. Revue Française de Pédagogie, 154: 97-110. Edwards, B. (1984). Aprender a dibujar con el lado derecho del cerebro. Madrid: Blume. Estrada Díez, E. (1987). La expresión plástica infantil y el arte contemporáneo. Doctoral thesis not published. Freire, P. (1972). Cultural action for freedom. Londres: Penguin education. Gardner, H. (2003). La inteligencia reformulada. Las inteligencias múltiples en el siglo XXI. Barcelona: Paidós. Istance, D. (2009). Education Today. The OECD Perspective. Paris: OECD Publishing. Ives, S. W. & Gardner, H. (1984). Cultural influences on Children’s Drawing. A developmental perspective. A Robert W. Ott i Al Hurwitz (Eds.): Art in Education. An International Perspective: 13-30. Pennsylvania: University Press. Kellogg, R. (1979). Análisis de la expresión plástica del preescolar. Madrid: Cincel-Kapelusz. Lowenfeld, V. (1961). Desarrollo de la capacidad creadora. Buenos Aires: Kapelusz. Luquet, G. H. (1978). El dibujo infantil. Barcelona: Médica y Técnica. Mangel, M. & Samaniego, F. J. (1984). Abraham Wald's Work on Aircraft Survivability: Rejoinder. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 79: 270-271. McAdams, D. P. (1993). The Stories We Live By: Personal Myths and the Making of the Self. Michigan: W. Morrow & Co. Menard, S. (2002). Longitudinal Research (2nd ed). Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications. Piaget, J. (1964). Development and learning. A R. E. Ripple i V. N. Rockcastle (Eds.), Piaget Rediscovered. A report on the conference on cognitive studies and curriculum development: 228-237. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. Pineda, R. & Callís, J. (2014). (Arquitectura)Matemàtiques=(Matemàtiques)Arquitectura? A Perspectiva Escolar, 378: 41-47. Barcelona: Rosa Sensat. Springgay, S., Leggo, C., Irwin, R. L. & Gouzouasis, P. (2007). Being with artography. Sense Publishers. Strauss, A., & Corbin, J. (1998). Basics of qualitative research: Techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks: Sage. Vygotsky, L. S. (1996). El desarrollo de los procesos psicológicos superiores. Barcelona: Crítica.

Author Information

Rubèn Pineda Ricart (presenting / submitting)
University of Barcelona
'Arts and Education' Doctoral Program
Barcelona

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