Mind the Gap: can the study of art in a museum context help young students with their own reading and then creative writing?
Hello, my name is Rebecca Lefroy. I teach 7th, 8th and 9th grade at Lexington Christian Academy and am going to be talking about some research that I conducted in my previous school, in part for my Masters in Education.
Although, as you can probably tell from my accent, I’m British, I was fortunate enough to actually do quite a lot of my growing up in Brussels and so completed the IB (International Baccalaureate) at an international school there. My experience of the IB was hugely positive; I thrived on the creative, holistic and interdisciplinary approach to teaching the arts. I was therefore rather surprised when I started my job as an English teacher in the UK and discovered that there are distinct gaps between the arts – we teach in different buildings; have completely distinct curriculums; and the subject names sit inside closed boxes on students’ timetables. I asked myself: why the gap?
My interpretive case study therefore arose from two main perceived problems with our secondary English teaching:
There seems to be a superficial gap between the arts subjects in secondary schools;
Younger students tend to be taught a “checklist approach” to reading and writing rather than encouraged to view a text in a holistic way, exploring more abstract concepts.
I wondered whether some of the more abstract concepts which younger students so struggle to grasp – for instance, perspective, symbolism and style- be taught through some other, perhaps more accessible, art form – such as art in an art museum? And could what is learned then be transferred back to the English classroom?
I found Eilean Hooper-Greenhill’s (1999) approach to museum learning compelling – “the audience is always ‘active’, whether or not museums recognise this”. Furthermore, I was inspired by Cremin and Myhill’s (2012) argument that teachers should avoid formulaic recommendations when looking at students’ creative writing and instead see writing as a design process which encompasses both word and image. Similarly, Barrs and Cork (2001) take a more holistic view of creative writing and suggest that exposure to high quality literature can help students develop a wider repertoire of styles and a stronger sense of voice. Thus, I wanted to see whether learning about abstract concepts through art in an “active” environment as well as exposing students to high-quality literature that “plays” with design could push them in their own reading and writing.
The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, UK was an excellent place to carry out the basis of my research and provided a very positive learning environment for the students. It’s a very grand building set right in the middle of the Cambridge colleges and they have a very extensive educational program. So, one afternoon, with about 20 grade 6 students in toe, we packed our bags and headed to the museum. We spent about 2 hours in the museum and through engaging, interactive activities, we explored how artists can use perspective, symbolism and style in their work and what effect this has on the viewer. For our work on perspective, we used Alfred Elnore’s On the Brink; for symbolism, Salvator Rosa’s L’Umana Fragilita (Human Frailty); and for style, Monet’s Springtime.
Compared to being in an English classroom, the students were much more willing to share their ideas, admit mistakes and take risks in the art museum. Interestingly, they also had more confidence in interpreting art for themselves than they did a written text in an English classroom. Through follow-up interviews, I found that, for some, this was because they found art an easier form to analyse because of the framing of the piece – “it’s all there in front of us” one interviewee told me – and partly because they felt more empowered to express their own interpretations of the piece in an open art museum space without ...
