Art Transforms Education

New England Journal of Higher Education, The, Summer 2005 by Sloan, Katherine, Nathan, Linda

A Boston Pilot School Puts Student Learning Center Stage

Is the MFA really the new MBA? Bestselling author Daniel Pink and other thinkers are challenging us with that question these days. According to Pink, the United States and other developed countries are quickly moving beyond an Information Age that required essentially linear, logical and analytical skills which could be measured, at least in theory, by SAT and MCAS scores alone. As outsourcing becomes ubiquitous, as computers can do routine, sequential tasks far faster and more accurately than the besteducated human being can, and as individuals in an affluent society look for beauty and meaning in their lives, Pink argues that we have moved to a Conceptual Age in which "mastery of abilities that we have often undervalued and overlooked marks the fault line between who gets ahead and who falls behind." The abilities that matter most for this new economy are artistry, empathy, passion, seeing the big picture and the transcendent-right-brain skills that we have always associated with learning in the arts.

Slowly, business and civic leaders are realizing that to compete successfully with China, India and other emerging nations in an instant worldwide economy, we must develop creative, innovative thinkerspeople who can harness and transform science and technology and envision solutions to seemingly intractable social and civic problems. "To flourish in this new environment," argues Pink, "we will need to supplant well-developed high-tech abilities with aptitudes that involve the ability to create artistic and emotional beauty, to detect patterns and opportunities, to craft a satisfying narrative and to come up with inventions the world didn't know it was missing."

These, and the capacity to empathize, are fundamental human traits. But in our rush to do things faster and cheaper than the rest of the world, we have let this rightbrain, artistic side of our lives atrophy. It is time, Pink argues, in our schools and colleges and in our businesses, to re-emphasize the right-brain thinking we all possess.

Disjunctive

At the very time that innovative thinkers such as Pink and others are calling for a new emphasis on creativity, much national and state-level debate centers on very limited definitions of student success and emphasizes curricular content that can be easily assessed by quantifiable tools. The quantifiable measures required by many state education laws and the federal No Child Left Behind Act are actually driving out the kind of learning and pedagogy that help develop the very right-brain thinking that these futuristic thinkers are calling for.

Does a disjuncture always have to exist between the politically driven agenda of the bureaucracies that control our schools and a meaningful pedagogy that could empower a diverse generation of young people to thrive in the new worldwide economy?

A report issued by the American Association of American Colleges and Universities last year suggests otherwise. Greater Expectations: A New Vision for Learning as a Nation Goes to College calls for sweeping changes in higher education. As college-level education becomes almost universal, colleges and universities must address for the first time the experiences of a student body that is vastly diverse in aspirations, prior learning experiences, economic and ethnic backgrounds and learning styles.

Greater Expectations calls for a major pedagogical shift from teacher-centered to learner-centered education; to integrated and collaborative, rather than solitary, isolated learning; and to a coherent, sequential curriculum that is developed and refined over time by a group of colleagues responding to the real learning experiences of their students. The report calls for a movement away from time-based, piecemeal measures of learning and toward portfolio, outcomes-based assessment. It calls for empowering students to become engaged and responsible for managing their own learning process. It insists that the teacher become primarily the mentor or coach and the student the performer, writer, creator and thinker.

Many of the characteristics identified in Greater Expectations as critical for the future success of undergraduate education emphasize the "right-brain thinking" that Pink and others call for. Interestingly, the pedagogical methodology outlined in the report is at the heart of the Critique method used widely in studio courses in the visual arts, music, theater and creative writing. The Critique essentially puts the student at the center of the learning process. It expects the student to be a passionate and committed creator, and requires the student to produce a coherent and increasingly sophisticated body of work, subject to rigorous analysis and assessment by faculty-mentors, student-peers, and often outside experts.

Studio work

Creativity or imagination is central to the arts, and fostering this capacity in students through the Critique is at least as important as developing mastery of skill or technique. The Critique emphasizes the process as much as product and progressive assessment as much as summative measures. The Critique also seeks to develop creative problem-solving skills. The time needed to achieve these ends varies widely from student to student. So completing a uniform number of class minutes or semester weeks becomes far less the measure of assessment than the quality of a final portfolio of creative work. During the learning process, the student produces a progressively complex body of work for all to see. Students also learn to become articulate about their work. They must be able to defend their thought processes, explain the materials used, and the artists and traditions that have influenced it, both orally and in writing. Faculty engaged in the Critique method serve less as teachers in the traditional sense than as mentors, coaches or expert observers. Often, students and faculty from other courses participate in the Critique, so that student work becomes transparent.