COURSE TITLE: Cultural Literacy by Means of Art Education

COURSE TITLE: Cultural Literacy by Means of Art Education

Course outline

COURSE TITLE: Cultural Literacy By Means Of Art Education

DEVELOPED BY: Erich Mistrík, visiting scholar to University of Michigan, November 2005, professor at Comenius University, based at Professional Development Award granted by Mr. and Mrs. Ronald and Eileen Weiser, former US Ambassador to Slovakia and his wife

DESIGNED FOR: Faculty of Education (teacher training college), Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia, preparation of prospective elementary teachers – master degree, or helping teachers – bachelor degree

ABSTRACT: The course will prepare student-teachers for handling cultural differences within elementary classes (age 6-10). They will be able to do it with the help of broadly understood art means. The course will develop their teacher professional competencies via theory and practice of early literacy development, reading comprehension, and aesthetic development.

LEADING IDEA: “Individual literacy is best conceived as a process of participatory appropriation that takes place within a community of practice.” (R. Serpel, 2001)

KNOWLEDGE IN THE BACKGROUND:

  • Key competencies necessary for life should come out from:
  • Learning to know.
  • Learning to live together.
  • Learning to do.
  • Learning to be. (J. Delors’ Commission on Education for the Twenty-First Century report to UNESCO, 1998).

RATIONALE:

Rationale for the course

After the fall of communism Slovakia faces great problems in accepting differences (ethnic as well as cultural, political, economical, social ones, etc.). It also faces problems in integration of minorities into the regular day-to-day life of the country.

Roma population is the most deprived minority within Slovakia. Frequently, these children entering schools are not able to understand Slovakian language. They do not know how majority society is structured and how people communicate within it. For many of them early schooling years work as complete and forced transfer from one culture to another. Early schooling must also take this into account particularly because there are new minorities emerging within country – Vietnamese, Chinese, Albanese, etc. Therefore, the course puts together education for democratic citizenship, for multicultural education within pre-service elementary teacher training.

There is growing need for teacher training renewal within Slovak school system. Training prospective teachers needs the shift from merely academic preparation to professional teacher competencies development. Academic preparation was useful for the former, mostly subject based schooling, teacher competencies development are needed for competency based curriculum that is under development within the country now.

Rationale for the course content

Culture comprehension is necessary for child in order he/she is able to participate in life of society as autonomous and responsible citizen. For participation he/she needs to communicate with the help of tools that are available within particular culture, i.e. child needs to know symbols and signs used for communication. Being responsible and autonomous citizen, a human being needs to organize one’s own life by him/herself, including use of free time that is available respectively. As a part of communication and participation it is important to document one’s own life with variety of its meanings, situations, activities – also documentation could be done only with the help of cultural signs, traditions, tools. All the activities mentioned help children from ethnic or other cultural minorities to integrate into life of society, i.e., to come through process of acculturation.

Rationale for the use of reading comprehension theory

Reading comprehension development includes text into holistic instruction, i.e., speaking, reading, listening, looking to pictures, writing, reasoning on text, and constructing the meaning by child with the help of teacher. Thus, the text is able to form basis for developing models of meaning. Child can learn from text how meanings are generated, how they work in society, how communication on meaning goes on, etc. Processes of acculturation and/or enculturation use symbolic structure of culture in a very similar way - as basis for developing one’s own structure of symbols. Therefore, an analogy can be seen here:

Reading comprehension
ends in / Understanding symbolic structures
ends in
knowledge, / knowledge of cultural tradition,
vocabulary, / deepening/broadening use of symbols,
advanced language development. / creating/developing new symbols.

Reading comprehension could be seen as social transaction of symbols and meanings, where differences between meanings exist as well as commonly shared meanings. Language is not only a tool for communication but it forms ways how children approach to the world.

Rationale for the use of arts

The arts are understood here in their broader sense, i.e., not only as plastic arts, classical music, poetry, novel or drama. Arts comprise here also fashion, culture of gestures, etiquette, i.e., rich variety of symbols used by human being. Arts are not just set of expressive languages. Through the arts child could be introduced into cultural tradition of his/her society, as well as to traditions of other societies. Arts are but not considered here only the useful tools for acculturation, they form basis for knowledge, for ways how child approaches to world.

COURSE AIMS:

  • Course will develop students-teachers’ professional competencies in order to help minority kids in their respective integrations into society, and to influence understandings of minorities within majority kids.

COURSE GOALS:

  • Course will deliver knowledge on reading comprehension, on cultural literacy, on art education, and on process of acculturation - what they are, how they work, where they come from, what could be done in order to these processes natural.
  • Course will develop skills for effective practice in class for handling processes of developing cultural literacy and of acculturation.
  • Course will provoke students to develop their attitudes toward differences. At the end of the course students will value differencies, they will be able to reflect upon differences, they will be able to handle their respective prejudices or at least to become aware of the prejudices.

COURSE OBJECTIVES:

  • Students will reflect upon relevant knowledge, which will include knowledge on processes of acculturation, on reading comprehension, on cultural literacy, on early aesthetic development of a child.
  • Students will train skills needed for cultural literacy development and for working in multicultural setting.
  • Teacher will show some methods useful for cultural comprehension development.
  • Student themselves will try to develop new methods.

PROCESS:

Main phases (regular university term in Slovakia has got 12 weeks)

  1. Situation (1week). Introductory task: Thinking experiment – developing situation in which need for integration within multicultural setting occurs. Final task: Find problems to be solved in such a situation and choose one for the whole term work?
  2. Resources (1 week). Answer the question: What kind of resources and knowledge do we need to understand the situation? Students look for and collect resources individually.
  3. Knowledge (6 weeks). Lecturer offers relevant knowledge and students reflect upon the knowledge in discussions.
  4. Resources (1 week). What kind of resources and knowledge do we need for the solution of the problem stated above? Students look for and collect resources individually.
  5. Methods (2 weeks). Teacher shows some methods for effective reading comprehension development and for aesthetic development.
  6. Proposals (1 week). Answer the question: Which ways could we solve the problem chosen in the beginning of the semester? Students have been developing proposals for solving the problems in variety of forms. The last week of semester is devoted to discussing the proposals.

Individual classes

Week 1 – situation

  • Discussing real situation in Slovak schools
  • Variety of family income
  • Cultural variety
  • Ethnical variety – “old” minorities, “new” (emergent) minorities, special case – Roma minority
  • Possible transfer of a child from school (region) to another one
  • Multicultural features of current Slovak schools – current status and possible changes in the near future
  • Developing model situations for the course work:
  • Students divided into groups of 3 (will work as teams all the time)
  • Task: Try to design the class of either 1st or 2nd or 3rd grade as precisely as possible – town/village/region, ethnic structure, number of kids (girls, boys), social structure, social dynamics, etc. The class should be composed of majority as well as minority kids (e.g., Slovaks, Hungarians, Vietnamese, Roma)
  • What kind of problems/conflict between kids can occur? Discussions in groups and then in the whole class.
  • What kind of problems does teacher face while handling the situation in your designed class? Discussions in groups and then in the whole class.
  • Choose one of the problems for the rest of semester to work on.
  • Final assignment: Answer the question “What kind of resources and knowledge do you need to understand your situation designed?” (Resources – e.g., information, knowledge, data, reviews, interviews; bring them to the next class)

Week 2 – resources

  • Discussion on resources brought by students from the following points of view:
  • Relatedness to class structure.
  • Relatedness to cultures of children.
  • Possibility to collect them by “real” teacher.
  • Final assignment: Make changes in you resources in order they reflect the situation you had chosen and could help you in the future work.

Week 3 – basic terms

  • Presentation of the basic terms necessary for the course and discussion on them:
  • Reading is holistic process in which child uses his/her complex skills, constructive process in which child constructs meaning in relation to the text, strategic process that depends on child’s strategy used, and interactive process in which child interacts with text as well as with its author. (N. L. Cecil, 2003).
  • Literacy is: “The ability and the willingness to use reading and writing to construct meaning from printed text, in ways which meet the requirements of a particular social context.” (K. H. Au, 1993, p. 20)
  • Reading comprehension means understanding of literary text. Individual is able to read “behind the words”, i.e., to construct meaning of the text with understanding cultural background of the text.
  • Culture is a set of artifacts, meanings, values, activities, ways of behavior and institutions developed and shared within a society (community), and based on cultural traditions from the past.
  • Cultural literacy is an understanding of basic cultural symbols, traditions, human behavior valid within culture. Cultural illiteracy – misunderstanding…
  • Culture comprehension is an understanding of structure of symbols appearing within particular culture. Individual can construct meanings of the symbols and understand their interrelations with other symbols.
  • Arts are expressive activities that end in some kind of visible structures (either material artifact, or a schema of activity, or a gesture, or changes in human body, etc.). The expressive activity uses iconography common to culture, and is valued, approved by society.

Week 4 – child’s development + literacy development

  • L. S. Vygotsky’s ideas on role of parents and child’s social/cultural surroundings in emergent literacy – literacy viewed as higher-order tool for culture to live.

(Hiebert, E. H., Raphael, T. E., 1998)

  • Stages of child’s development within ages 4 to 10:
  • According to J. Piaget:

 The pre-operational period (2-6/7) – child believes that the world is controllable him/herself, differentiation of person from world, child begins to develop use of symbols, starts differentiate between fantasy and world

 Concrete operational period (7-11) – child operates with concrete objects in logical ways.

  • According to E. Erikson:

 Early childhood (2-6) – child develops balance between egocentrism and responsibility.

 Elementary and middle (6-10/12) – systematic use of tools, transition from home perspective to “world” one, i.e., peers perspective, inclusion into group of peers.

  • Stages of language development:
  • Early schooling age(5-7) – use of metalanguage, conscious awareness of sounds, structure, meanings created by language, child is able to express his/her thoughts about language, about his/her own personal speech.
  • Primary school age (about 8) – understanding of the complex expressions, understanding of metaphors, ability to differentiate subtle and different meanings of words.
  • Stages of early literacy development.
  • Books and print awareness.
  • Phonological awareness.
  • Comprehension and response to the text.
  • Decoding and word recognition.
  • Spelling and writing. (M. S. Burns, P. Griffin, C. C. Snow, 1999).
  • Literacy learning is embedded in oral language (E. H. Hiebert, T. E. Raphael, 1998)

Week 5 – child’s cultural development

  • Development from visual literacy through oral to written one and to higher stage of visual literacy.
  • According to B. Sinatra, 1986:

 Primacy of visual literacy.

 Secondary development of oral literacy.

 Further development of written literacy.

 Final enriching of visual literacy.

(R. Sinatra, 1986)

  • According to W. Löwenfeld, 1938:

 Pre-schematic (4-6) – development of visual idea, emotional structure, emotional use of color and of space.

 Schematic (7-9) – awareness of space.

 Dawning realism (9-11) – child expresses his/her personal experience with an object.

  • According to Schuster, 1992 and Mistrík, 1999:

 1st stage (3/4-6) – the very beginning of differentiation of symbols and reality, start of discrimination of details within picture and within melody + understanding the picture/melody as the wholes, the inherited abilities connect to fantasy and to starting symbolic activity.

 2nd stage (6-10/12) – analytical approach to pictures, to movement, to melodies, use of memory (i.e., awareness of other products in the field and conscious reproduction possible already), ability to consciously synthesize different artistic tools.

Week 6 – symbolic activity

  • Symbols – to represent something what is not present (how symbol works in itself, structure of symbol, function of symbols within culture…).
  • Systems of symbols – iconography.
  • Development of an individual from egocentric behavior through deferred imitation to symbolic play.
  • Use of symbols as parts of stories, narrations  acquiring stories leads to acquiring symbolic systems.

Week 7 – the role of art education today

  • Classical art education – introduction of child to prevalent cultural tradition
  • Current (postmodern) art education – development of aesthetic taste flexibility, of multicultural awareness, of multicultural tolerance
  • Role of art education for elementary stages - to introduce children to cultural tradition, to make children understand cultural tradition, to develop their ability in use cultural tools for expression, to start opening children for other cultural traditions, to develop flexible aesthetic tastes.

Week 8 – reading comprehension/culture comprehension development

  • Strategies for comprehending: making predictions, tuning in to prior knowledge, visualizing, making connections, monitoring understanding, generalizing, evaluating, asking and answering questions (N. L. Cecil, 2003)
  • Improving the Reading Comprehension of America’s Children. 10 Research-Based Principles developed by CIERA in 2001.
  • Forms and patterns of instruction for reading comprehension: phonemic awareness, phonic instruction, word meaning, reading comprehension (N. L. Cecil, 2003)
  • Phases of aesthetic learning according to R. A. Smith, 1989:
  • Phase one (K-9) – development of elementary sense of aesthetic qualities in surrounding world, use of innate abilities of a child.
  • Phase two (10-12) – development of understanding artworks as structures, ways of expression and style, perceptual training.
  • Cultural patterns and how individual acquires them (R. Benedict, 1934), assimilation, accommodation, role of individual activity.
  • Processes of acculturation = socialization into other culture then the child’s natural one, understanding symbolic structures of other culture, acquiring ways of behavior, acquiring cultural patterns
  • Final assignment: What kind of resources do we need for solution of the problem chosen from the class situation above? (Bring them to the next class.)

Week 9 – resources

  • Discussion on resources brought by students from the following points of view:
  • Relevance to problems selected.
  • Relevance to different cultural situation of the children.

Week 10 – methods

  • Basic principles for drawing effective literacy comprehension methods according to P. D. Pearson, T. E. Raphael, 1999:
  • Students discuss these methods and try to develop analogies within art education.

Week 11 – methods

  • Teacher will describe and show some methods useful for reading comprehension development, e.g., semantic map, reasoning about short stories, developing and playing short drama – exposing words with gestures and movement, constructing jokes…
  • Also some methods inappropriate for such lessons, e.g., letter naming, drill and repeating exercises, auditory discrimination worksheets…
  • Teacher will describe and show some methods useful for aesthetic development, e.g., playing with colors, with sounds, with expressive movements, developing and playing short drama, singing, discussing gestures, making funny costumes, creating short verses…
  • Also some methods inappropriate for such lessons, e.g., drawing according to pictures, karaoke, memorizing poems, repeating stories precisely…
  • Final assignment: Prepare your own proposals for cultural literacy development. One or two groups will be asked to prepare proposals for inappropriate lessons.

Week 12 – proposals

Discussing proposals prepared within groups. The main points of view:

  • Appropriateness to cultural literacy development goals.
  • Appropriateness to children in class.

Assessment

Students will be assessed either via portfolio or via activity plan or via reflection upon one’s own teaching practice.

LITERATURE (SELECTION):

Au, K. H. (1993). Literacy and Instruction in Multicultural Settings, Belmont: Wadsworth.

Baron, D. (2001). Literacy in Everyday Context, Literacy and Motivation, pp. 23-37

Benedict, R. (1934). Patterns of Culture. Boston: New York, Houghton Mifflin Company.

Best Practices in Literacy Instruction, (1999). L. B. Cambrell, L. M. Morrow, S. B. Neuman, M. Pressley (Eds.). New York: The Guilford Press

Block, C. C. (1999). Comprehension: Crafting Understanding, Best Practices in Literacy Instruction, pp. 98-118

Britsch, G. (1926). Theorie der Bildenden Kuns. München.

Broudy, H. S. (1988). The Uses of Schooling, New York: Routledge.

Cecil, N. L. (2003). Striking A Balance. Best Practices for Early Literacy, Scottsdale: Holcomb Hathaway.

Dewey, J. (1980). Art as Experience, New York: Perigee Books.

Eisner, E. W. (1998). The Enlightened Eye, Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall.

Goldberg, M. (1997). Arts and Learning. An Integrated Approach to Teaching and Learning in Multicultural and Multilingual Settings, White Plains: Longman.

Hiebert, E. H., Raphael, T. E. (1998). Early Literacy Instruction, Orland: Harcourt Brace.

Literacy and Motivation, (2001) L. Verhoeven, C. Snow (Eds.) Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Löwenfeld, V. (1939). The Nature of Creative Activity, New York: Harcourt, Brace and comp.

Nutbrown, C. (1977). Recognizing Early Literacy Development: Assessing Children’s Achievements, Liverpol: Paul Chapman Publ.