Pedagogy
I will be approaching my problem of practice from a Cognitivist point of view. From this perspective, I feel that art reflection is an abstract idea for my students because they cannot make the connection to between the application of vocabulary when art making to discussing their own work. They are not seeing the deep structures when using their vocabulary across contexts. My problem of practice is that my students are currently only integrating their vocabulary on their reflections on a surface level. In other words their knowledge of the vocabulary is shallow. According to Willingham (2009), “...deep knowledge means understanding everything...”
So how can I help my students understand everything so they might transform to having deep knowledge of the vocabulary and apply it across contexts? Through my Cognitivist approach I plan to help students expand their knowledge of the art vocabulary through practice. Considering my content and technology, I believe that students could use their online blog space to practice using the vocabulary. I will have students critique their classmates work before writing their own reflection. That way, students would get practice using the vocabulary before reflecting their own work. One of the benefits of practice is that improves transfer (Willingham, 2009). It is my hope that the extra practice will improve transfer from art making to art reflection. Additionally, by asking students to critique and discuss their classmates’ artwork they would get more experience with this. Willingham (2009) recommends using a lot of example to provide experience (p 102). By participating in an online critique student would see more examples of their classmates using the vocabulary as well as getting a chance practice using it themselves. I plan to provide my students with a lot of experience because I will be implementing this activity at the end of every project throughout the quarter.
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So how can I help my students understand everything so they might transform to having deep knowledge of the vocabulary and apply it across contexts? Through my Cognitivist approach I plan to help students expand their knowledge of the art vocabulary through practice. Considering my content and technology, I believe that students could use their online blog space to practice using the vocabulary. I will have students critique their classmates work before writing their own reflection. That way, students would get practice using the vocabulary before reflecting their own work. One of the benefits of practice is that improves transfer (Willingham, 2009). It is my hope that the extra practice will improve transfer from art making to art reflection. Additionally, by asking students to critique and discuss their classmates’ artwork they would get more experience with this. Willingham (2009) recommends using a lot of example to provide experience (p 102). By participating in an online critique student would see more examples of their classmates using the vocabulary as well as getting a chance practice using it themselves. I plan to provide my students with a lot of experience because I will be implementing this activity at the end of every project throughout the quarter.
NEXT PAGE