How do schools provide a rich, challenging curriculum? It’s worth taking a look at some of the ways subject leaders go about their work in practice. This time in Art.
Jo Baker explains the delicate balance between skills, trust and confidence, and how senior leaders can be part of this symbiosis.
Jo says teaching art is about relationship-building and mutual trust. Art teachers must make students comfortable with people seeing their work and offering criticism in good faith. Without the confidence to have a go and get things wrong in a safe space, it's hard to explore creatively.
‘We want students to be confident that they can ‘do’ art. Every single art department will design the curriculum in a different way. The national curriculum for art is so short and general that art departments can choose to teach any medium. Each art department has their own approach, because art teachers have diverse specialisms. The art curriculum is shaped by the teachers’ specialisms. The combination of teachers’ specialisms within an art department means that each art key stage 3 curriculum will be unique. Art is essentially skills-based in key stage 3, but you have to encourage creative exploration.
‘If a student is asked to do a drawing, they can feel vulnerable. People can see the result of their artistic efforts and make a judgement about it instantly. That is why students feel quite vulnerable. If a student were writing a paragraph in English, it is quite a private matter and it takes some scrutiny before anyone can judge the quality of the writing; but the instant a student begins to draw, it is open for anyone to judge. As an art teacher, you have to make each student feel comfortable enough for people to see their work and offer criticism. Your students need to be able to accept that criticism in good faith, knowing that everyone is there to help each other improve.
‘At key stage 3 we teach drawing, painting, printing, ceramics, 3D and graphic media and some photography. Each year we build on each of those media. Take the drawing and painting curriculum in Year 7: we will teach the fundamentals and then revisit those skills in Year 8 and build on their techniques and skills, and similarly in Year 9. We take them right back to the beginning and start by looking at the relationship between light and objects.
In Year 7, for instance, we use this image of a tube, a sphere and a cube to teach the importance of light source direction. The tube’s shadow is going to the left, but it is a relatively short shadow and so the light must be coming from above and to the right. Quite quickly, students become experts in seeing. Some students say, ‘Well, I can’t draw’ and I say, ‘You can’t draw – yet!’ I show them how light touches objects; and if they can master the light and the dark, they can master the drawing of objects.
In the next two images, they are learning how to draw spheres in charcoal and then coloured chalk. They are demonstrating an understanding of the light and how it touches 3D objects.
The final piece in this introductory 3D objects unit is rods in space.
This builds their confidence. They are amazed at and enthused by what they have drawn. Then we build upon those basics. If they can draw a sphere and understand the relationship between the sphere and the light source, then they can draw and paint an apple.
‘We are applying the same techniques, but the students’ work is becoming more and more refined each time. The more they do, the more they are confident to have a go at doing the next step and the next step. Once they have drawn a cylinder and a sphere, they are able to draw a can. Then once they can draw a cube and they can understand how light touches all of these objects, they can draw and paint basically any organic object. We build from Year 7 to Year 8 with a more detailed still life, but they are using the same toolkit techniques. In Year 9, we study landscapes, but the students are still using the same techniques. So it builds up, bit by bit by bit.
‘We take them through the process of learning how to draw step by step. We wait some time before we ask the students to be ‘creative’. There are parallels with other artistic forms. Take a musical instrument. If you give someone a brand new musical instrument and say, ‘Hey, create a song!’, they would need to learn how to play that musical instrument before they could compose a song on it. There are certain technical hoops to jump through. It comes back to building confidence.
‘If students are successful at stage one of the drawing process, they have a go at stage two. I emphasise early on that being good at art is not a God- given talent. Certainly some individual students have more talent than others – it is like some people can play football better than others, some people can bake better than others. But you can certainly get better and better and better at anything. But you cannot get better unless you do it. I try to instil in them that if they want to get better at art, they need to do art.
‘It is important to have a sixth form area at the back of your classroom, or, better still, a different sixth form studio. I have a sixth form area, and main school students see the senior students’ more mature work. We have work in various stages of progress around the classroom. The younger ones see the graft that goes into a work of art. When students arrive in Year 7, they think they either can or cannot ‘do’ art; they change their minds subliminally when they see the hard graft that goes into being good at art. They say, ‘Oh that’s changed then; they’ve changed the background.’
‘My catchphrase in the classroom is, ‘Nobody’s died.’ If a student says, ‘I really want to change that but it’s so good and I dare not do it,’ I encourage them not to be so precious about their work. Quite often they say, ‘I’m scared of going wrong’ before they even begin. I say, ‘No one’s going to die...what’s the worst that could happen?’ I promote this attitude relentlessly in Years 7 and 8.It is simply marks on a piece of paper. If you can put the marks in the correct place once, you can do it again. I am not flippant about it, but I do not want them to be full of teenage angst about their art; it is just a process I try to encourage.
When it comes to discussions with line managers about the art curriculum,
it’s important to show the artwork to explain the subject. Pictures often say a lot more about what we do than when I try to explain it verbally. It is important that the line manager observes me teaching different classes. At key stage 4 and 5 they are likely to see coaching individuals. Key stage 4 and 5 can be more workshop-based, whereas key stage 3 is a more traditional approach, with teaching from the front with a demonstration, before the students mimic what they have been taught. It is important for line managers to see upper school classes and for them to leave their prejudices at the door, and just notice what each individual student is doing instead. The line manager needs to go and ask the students about what they are working on, flick through their books, and ask the most important question: ‘What are the skills that enable you to do that?’
It’s important that the line manager is guided by the subject leader. They need to get used to the difference between subjects, because those micro climates in each curriculum area are what make all the different subjects really interesting.
Two documents that are helpful for a line manager to read about art:
- NSEAD A&D Quarterly
- Story of Art, E Gombrich
And then look at the department displays regularly!’
For more discussion about leading art in secondary, you can watch the conversation with Jo and John Tomsett and me on Myatt & Co (£/free trial).
Until next time
Mary
And when you’re ready, you might find these helpful for curriculum development in your school
Huh Curriculum Leaders Course: UPDATE: Bookings are now closed for the January - February 2023 cohort. More info on the June course to follow
The spring Primary Subject Networks now available to book, live and recorded (£/free trial). Due to demand we are planning secondary subject networks, details to follow