Sunday, November 16, 2008

Perceptual Development and Education

This weeks reading on connecting developmental theory with gestalt struck a chord with me because of some work I did last year with the kindergarten class at the ECC. The consideration of the student’s perceptual identity was particularly important for me because I would conduct art lessons with them once every two weeks or so. Whenever there was “art time” when I was in the classroom, I was put “in charge” of this as well.
All of the specific lessons I did were related to the subject matter governing the curriculum at the time. For example, during the month or so when the student’s were learning about the human body, we explored the art of making pictorial diagrams of different parts of the human body. Another good example is a lesson me and another teacher guided together, where we created origami airplanes, jet planes, and rockets to creatively understand the ideas of flying machines.
When I was reading this chapter I found the majority of what Arnheim was saying about the inclination toward simplicity to be true. However, in the first half of the reading I couldn’t help but be reminded of the countless times when the students would beg me to draw something for them, or draw an example for them. They were seemingly frustrated at their level of motor functioning, and wanted to draw reality as they saw it. This disconnect was elaborated on in his section on “obliqueness”; “Obliqueness is always perceived as a deviation, hence its strong dynamic character. It introduces into the visual medium the vital difference between static and dynamic shapes, still undifferentiated in the earlier phase.” (Arnheim pages 187-188) The process of mastering obliqueness seems to be cognitively understood first, and after a time of exploration (which includes some frustrating “failures”), realized physically in the child’s artwork.
The next definitive elaboration on the mental strife a child goes through during perceptual growth is in his section on “educational consequences”. Experientially, I understood the difficulty he speaks of on the part of the teacher. This difficulty generally being; knowing the balance between showing your student how to do something and allowing them figure it out on their own. “…to teach everything and to teach nothing.” (Arnheim page 204) This balance is definitely hard to achieve, but as I believe Arnheim to be saying, the stress should not be placed in your identity as a teacher, but in the reactions to your student’s identity. “…all teaching should be based on an awareness that the student’s visual conception is growing in accordance with principles of its own, and that the teacher’s interventions should be guided by what the individual process of growth calls for at any given time.” (Arnheim page 205) Arnheim then goes on to discuss the conflict between social urges and the demands of what is best for the development of the individual. I found this to be the hardest confliction to react to as a teacher. I suppose Arnheim’s advice for me would be summed up by this quote, “Such social motives must be distinguished from the cognitive motives that arise from the state of the student’s visual development. The former must not be gratified at the expense of the latter.” (Arnheim page 205) For me, the most interesting part of that last quotation is the word “gratified”. My maternal instincts with the student’s were to do just that. I found it intuitively sound to want to instantly boost a student’s level of confidence by showing them how to do something instead of allowing them to painstakingly figure it out for themselves. The idea that as a teacher one must separate themselves from this natural response a bit (but not entirely, as Arnheim does stress the idea of balance) for the betterment of their student’s comprehension is hard to swallow at first, but nonetheless a very efficient model.

No comments: