Developing Art and SOLE pedagogy to Support Metacognition and Voice: a Self-Organising Research Journey

Author(s):

Helen Burns(presenting / submitting)Melanie Horan

Conference:

ECER 2016

Network:

29. Research on Arts Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

29 SES 05, Arts-based Research

Paper Session

Time:

2016-08-24

13:30-15:00

Room:

NM- J114

Chair:

Catarina Silva Martins

Contribution

This paper discusses action research, led collaboratively by a primary teacher and academic researcher as an instance of academically supported practitioner enquiry. The research focuses on the integration of SOLE (Self Organised Learning Environments) and arts-based pedagogies in order to support children’s cognition, metacognition and ‘voice’. Potential for transforming learning via art lies in its symbolic and interpretable nature and (particularly in contemporary art) the typical lack of imposed narrative, permitting the referencing of personal life-worlds which we apply in using works of art as ‘keys to understanding’ (Efland 2002). Dealing with metaphor, art necessitates ‘cognitive breakthroughs’, going ‘beyond the given and compelling our own thinking to go beyond the given.’ (Lipman, 2003). Considering this, does individual learning benefit from manipulating and creating art metaphors to describe learning and result in developing related knowledge and skill? This would constitute metacognition (Flavell 1979), or ‘reflective and strategic thinking about learning’ (Mosely et al. 2005). Metacognition is most likely to develop through the articulation of thinking in a community of enquiry (Wall 2012). Experienced in a gallery, art can provide a context for a community of enquiry, elsewhere, it can provide a focus and a tool which is also likely to stimulate thought and discussion. Ideas can be shared visually, overcoming barriers imposed by prose and supporting the ‘voice’ (Rudduck 2006) of young children. Using art to generate discussion should increase metacognition and support the transition towards self-directed learning. Is such ‘art as experience’ (Dewey 1934) when integrated with technology-enhanced pedagogy which is designed to support the emergence of self-organised learning, more potent in supporting the development of metacognition and voice? What might this pedaogy look like?

SOLE pedagogy nurtures a ‘self-organising system [which] is a set of interconnected parts, each unpredictable, producing spontaneous order in an apparently chaotic situation…The SOLE environment encourages the “edge of chaos” effect, since it is neither strictly ordered not totally chaotic’ (Mitra, 2014). This learning context and the processes it engenders seems akin to the interpretive and subjective cognitive processes inherent in visual arts experiences. This paper focuses on the relational dynamics present in an ‘Art and SOLE’ pedagogy, including the collaboration between the professional and academic researchers involved, and discusses whether and how such an approach is beneficial in its intended aim; to support learners and researchers to ‘think for themselves’ about their learning.

The context is Broadwood Primary School in Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK. The subjects are 23 Year 2 children (aged 6-7), comprising a diverse range of individuals in terms of ability, culture and socio-economic status. Their teacher instigated the relationship with the academic researcher due to concerns that many children were ill equipped to succeed with attainment targets given their inability to enquire or self-direct, which she thought was largely due to over-emphasis on literacy and numeracy in the education system . The research objective was:toexplore whether and how developing Art and SOLE pedagogy might support children to become self-organising, metacognitive learners with ‘voice’.

The children are taking part in Art and SOLE sessions for an hour each Friday afternoon, between November 2015 and July 2016. The researchers take a cyclical approach involving planning, action and reflection in order to develop effective pedagogy. The research method mirrors ‘self-organised’ learning, providing a loose structure through which findings ‘emerge’. Expectations are that children will develop their ability to think flexibly, be more confident in enquiring, taking risk, answering questions and when introduced to metacognition as a focus within the pedagogy, develop an understanding of how they learn and strategies for learning. This process would be valuable in generating creativity across European settings.

Method

A ‘Practitioner Enquiry’ (Stenhouse 1981, Baumfield et al. 2013) approach will use Action Research in classroom sessions and gallery visits in order to develop and reflect on the emerging pedagogy. Reflection will involve dialogue between the teacher-researcher and academic researcher who will compare their perspectives and arrive at a plan for the next successive research cycle. The focus of the pedaogy will increasingly move towards an exploration of thinking skills through art and SOLE but the exact nature of this is largely unpredictable and part of the reason for the research. ‘Visual methods’ (Prosser and Loxley 2008) will be used to capture data generated through the learning experience, which, combined with observational data (video), email journals between the teacher and academic researcher and artwork produced by the children, will undergo grounded theory analysis as the research cycles come to a close. The teacher and academic researcher will co-produce a case study of the pedagogic development, identifying key factors for success and key challenges inherent in this context, in sufficient depth so as to be transferrable to other UK and European settings. Tools are likely to include ‘pupil views templates’ (Wall and Higgins, 2006), to capture children’s reflection of their speech and thought throughout the activities they take part in. The templates should provide insight into children’s metacognition and allow us to track the development of their understanding of and attitudes to art, the use of technology and the light touch facilitation which is key to SOLE activities, relating this to their learning. We may also use visual forms of self-assessment, completed in or added to personal sketchbooks, which will track children’s goals and achievements in their own eyes, thereby focusing them on their learning and adding benefit by being simultaneously a research tool and a tool to nurture children’s learning. We speculate that working in this way, with these ‘catalytic tools’ (Baumfield et al. 2009) and using the pedagogies described, may result in contemplation of where the research begins and ends and where the distinctions between researcher and the ‘researched’ lie in a setting which attempts to remove the hierarchical role of teachers as ‘experts’ and encourages the democratic and collaborative pursuit of emergent learning.

Expected Outcomes

We would hope that a major outcome is the development of an integrated Art and SOLE pedagogy which is supported by substantial data analysis to be transferred and applied in other contexts. Within this, we hope to generate an understanding of the relational dynamics at play, which is useful in considering learning through technology in terms of what art offers to this, and vice versa. If we can use the pedagogy to generate metacognition and voice we would consider this a substantial and valuable impact of the work, making it useful in international as well as UK contexts, particularly in light of the need to support creative thinking in European economies (which is now being reflected in EU research priorities) but more broadly, to add to the current argument for ‘cultural value’ and the value of the arts in learning, for well-being, responsible citizenship and democratic participation. A further anticipated outcome is reflection on the process of collaborative, practitioner enquiry in a context which favours and promotes self-organised learning. We are interested in whether the pedagogic content and concepts of self-organisation being developed through the research also impact on the research experience and therefore on research rigour and quality. We recognise that this is small-scale, intensive and detailed research in which quality results from a naturalistic approach which is embedded in practice. In combination, the anticipated outcomes described above might form the foundations for further research on a much larger scale, so that an extended outcome might be the implications of the work in these terms.

References

Baumfield, V., Hall, E., Wall, K., (2013) Action Research in Education, Sage Baumfiled, V., Hall, K., Higgins, S., Wall, K., (2009) Catalytic tools: understanding the interaction of enquiry and feedback in teachers’ learning. European Journal of Teacher Education, 32:4 Dewey, J. (1934) Art as Experience. Perigee Efland, A., (2002) Art in Education. Teachers college Press Flavell, J.H. (1979) Metacognition and cognitive monitoring: a new area of cognitive developmental inquiry. Cognitive Development. 34: 906-911 Lipman, M. (2003) Thinking in Education. Cambridge University Press Mitra, S. (2014) The future of schooling: Children and learning at the edge of chaos. Prospects. 44:547-558 Mosely, D., Baumfield, V., Elliott, J., Higgins, S., Miller, J., and Newton, D.P. (2005) Frameworks for Thinking: a handbook for teaching and learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Rudduck, J. (2006) The past, the papers and the project. Educational Review. 58:2, 131-143 Stenhouse, L. (1981) What counts as research? British Journal of Educational Studies, 29(2): 103-14 Wall, K. (2012) “It wasn’t too easy, which is good if you want to learn”: An exploration of pupil participation and Learning to Learn. The Curriculum Journal, 23:3, 283-305 Wall, K., and Higgins, S., (2006) Facilitating Metacognitive Talk: a research and learning tool. International Journal of Research and Method in Education, 29(1), 39-53

Author Information

Helen Burns (presenting / submitting)

Newcastle University

Education

Whitley Bay

Melanie Horan

Broadwood Primary School/Newcastle University

Newcastle upon Tyne

Search the ECER Programme

Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
Search for authors and in the respective field.
For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.