Developing Design through a Creative Problem‐Solving Process: A Group Community Art Project

For the past few years, creativity has gradually become an important element in the national cultivation of talent in Taiwan. Although traditionally art education is closely linked with creativity, the academic research on general art education is very insufficient. Therefore, the goal of this research is to investigate how creativity could be cultivated in curriculum planning for general art education at technology universities as well as what students’ learning process was when they participated in a course's creative activity. The research applied the theory and steps of creative problem‐solving (CPS) on a general art course to design a group practical activity combining with the local community. This involved converting the steps of creative problem‐solving into different stages of group design activities with the goal of constructing a design process equivalent to the process of problem‐solving. The main research results revealed that students could experience the problem‐solving process through group design activities and develop their divergent and convergent thinking at the same time. Moreover, the cooperative learning model is the most appropriate teaching strategy for students from non‐art‐related departments when cultivating their creativity.     

Art and Creativity in the Global Economies of Education

Creativity: what might this mean for art and art educators in the creative economies of globalisation? The task of this discussion is to look at the state of creativity and its role in education, in particular art education, and to seek some understanding of the register of creativity, how it is shaped, and how legitimated in the globalised world dominated by input‐output, means‐end, economically driven thinking, expectations and demands. With the help of Heidegger some crucial questions are raised, such as: How can art maintain its creative ontological and epistemological potential in the creative economies of globalisation? Is it possible for art and the creative arts to act as a process of ‘revealing’ and ‘becoming’ and ‘throwing light’ on the world while working within the market economies of innovation and entrepreneurship where creativity has become a generalised discourse? What matters in this discussion is to find a way to argue for the sustainability of art education as a creative mode of enquiry through which self and the world may be better understood, identity might be realised as difference and being‐in‐time might be possible.     

Collaboration in Visual Culture Learning Communities: Towards a Synergy of Individual and Collective Creative Practice

A visual culture learning community (VCLC) is an adolescent or young adult group engaged in expression and creation outside of formal institutions and without adult supervision. In the framework of an international, comparative research project executed between 2010 and 2014, members of a variety of eight self‐initiated visual culture groups ranging from manga and cosplay through contemporary art forms, fanart video, graffiti and cosplay in five urban areas (Amsterdam, Budapest, Chicago, Helsinki and Hong Kong) were studied through interview, participant observation and analysis of art works. In this article, collaborative group practices and processes in informal learning environments are presented through results of on‐site observations, interviews and analyses of creations. VCLCs are identified as inspiring, collaborative spaces of peer mentoring that enhance both visual skills and self‐esteem. Authors reveal how identity formation is interrelated with networking and knowledge sharing. Adolescents and young adults become participants of global communities of their creative genres through reinterpretation and individualisation of shared visual repertoires. In conclusion, implications for art education from the VCLC model for creative collaboration are suggested.     

Autonomy of Artistic Expression for Adult Learners with Disabilities

When an art tutor adopts the role of assistant to a disabled artist it is difficult not to move from helping with the physical handling of materials on the one hand into the actual creative process on the other, thus influencing how the artwork looks. Ecas is an Edinburgh‐based charity which promotes opportunities for physically disabled people to be self‐fulfilled and to participate in all aspects of society. They run, among other things, traditional art classes and computer classes. The use of computer technology (CT) in art seemed to offer the chance for self‐fulfilment for disabled artists by increasing control over artistic choices and providing for self expression with only minimal assistance required from others. Ecas decided to fund a research project in the form of a ten‐week pilot course and the data collected during the trial confirmed these possibilities and it was clear that adult learners with disabilities could benefit from CT in order to have greater autonomy in the creation of their art than before. In particular the program Corel Painter IX.5 and various graphics tablets proved to be a powerful arsenal for self‐expression without having to wait for a tutor to tape paper to a board, replenish paint, change brushes attached to a head pointer or any one of the many and varied problems disabled students had with traditional art materials.     

The ‘Night Owl’ Learning Style of Art Students: Creativity and Daily Rhythm

This article explores the deep‐rooted ‘night owl’ image of art practitioners and calls for attention on a consideration of the time for learning in art. It has been recognised that the human body has its own internal timings and knowing the ‘time’ pattern is important for better productivity in conducting creativity‐related activities. This study surveyed 230 art students and 251 management students in a university and examined if there existed any cross‐disciplinary differences in terms of self‐confidence of creative ability, preferences of a particular time for creativity tasks, and routine patterns for daily activities such as getting up, going to bed and working. The results reveal that the art students have more confidence in their creative ability than the management students; about 58 per cent of the art students feel more creative after 10 p.m., as opposed to 29.2 per cent of the management students; and there exist significant differences between the two groups in terms of what time they get up, go to sleep and prefer to work.     

Agency and Social Construction: Practice of the Self in Art and Design

Learning in the arts has the potential to be a co‐constructive means of inquiry for students, which enables experience of the self in relation to practice. This research explores a practice‐based investigation of agency as self‐definition, amid normative social constructions of the subject. The focus for data analysis is a project taught to BTEC Level 2 Art and Design students in a deprived area of North London (2010–12). A dialogue is presented between the implications for Sartre's theory of free‐will and a Foucauldian critique of social construction. Applications for this comparative theory are discussed here as a form of resistance to the compression of learning identities in art and design, and across the curriculum. This is an approach which encourages emancipated self‐representation, acknowledging cultural diversity, for a discursive environment viable at all levels of study. In exploring the data, a positioning of free‐will with social responsibility is identified as an inclusive forum for creative understanding, and the tolerance of difference.     

Wellness at Universities: A Group Art Therapy Approach

Art therapy process groups can be used at university counseling centers (UCCs) to treat the mental health needs of higher education students. The authors, art therapists employed at a UCC, developed an art therapy group to engage undergraduate students in creative self‐expression to increase social connection and learn healthy skills to improve insight and emotional well‐being. Such groups offer unique benefits to participants and would be a valuable addition to current UCC services.     

Critical Theory and Visual Practice in the Art School

This paper reflects upon the recent debates concerning the relationship between theory and practice in British art schools. Much has been done during the last two decades by artists, academics, writers and exhibition curators to bridge the traditional polarization between thinking and making. Underlying this venture is the keenly felt conviction that our task as teachers is to work with our students to develop creative practices which make a difference – particularly in relation to how we might use the arts to reformulate the ways in which we articulate our sense of self in a wider social and political context. In the last thirty years we have witnessed a sea change in art schools. The formerly inward looking reclusive art school culture is now inhabited by groups and individuals who are engaged in the everyday concerns of consumer culture and are committed to, first of all, harness creative production as an agent of change and, second, reject the notion that art practice is divorced from theoretical concerns.     

Facilitating Meta‐learning in Art and Design Education

Art and design programmes are educationally unique in that students themselves play a central role in determining their own learning needs. To be successful in their study, art and design students are required to operate with a high degree of independence and self‐direction. Developing the skills for greater self‐reliance requires students to become aware of their conceptions of the subject of study, and of themselves as learners in a particular learning context. Developing greater self‐awareness as a learner and becoming more independent in one's learning is captured by the concept of meta‐learning. In this article I present an alternative strategy to prevalent diagnostic approaches to assist in developing a student's capacity for meta‐learning in the subject context of art and design. An inquiry cycle was created to provide a structure within which to facilitate generative thinking about learning through engaging with fundamental questions related to the subject of learning (art and design) rather than the learning subject (i.e. the student). This method represents a departure from existing approaches to engaging students in meta‐learning. A pilot study used to trial the effectiveness of this strategy is also presented here. The inquiry map, and the conceptual base upon which it was developed, were found to be useful ways to structure reflective thinking about learning and to assist in developing a student's conception of the subject.     

Factors associated with middle and secondary students' perceived science competence

The aim of the present study was to gain a better understanding of students' perceived science competence by examining potentially related beliefs and perceptions in a diverse sample of middle and secondary students (N = 1289). Results of hierarchical regression analysis showed that students' perceived science competence was related to: (a) students' age, gender, and ethnicity; (b) students' mastery and performance–approach goals; (c) students' self‐perceptions of their ability to generate creative ideas (i.e., creative self‐efficacy); and (d) students' perceptions of teacher support and press (i.e., challenging academic demands). Of all these factors, creative self‐efficacy was found to have the strongest positive relationship with students' perceived science competence. Implications for subsequent research are discussed. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 44: 800–814, 2007     

Reverse Ekphrasis: Teaching Poetry‐inspired Chinese Brush Painting Workshops – in English

The artistic practices of ekphrasis and reverse ekphrasis – integrating poetry and painting in their unique forms – have been long‐standing conventions both in the East and in the West. This article attempts to rationalise the new functions of the age‐old concept of reverse ekphrasis (i.e. graphic representation of verbal representation) as reactivated for the purposes of today's university‐level art education, and as exemplified by the international workshops of poetry‐inspired Chinese brush painting that I taught at The University of Central Lancashire (UCLan), UK, from 2012 to 2016, using English not only as a convenient contact language for art education, but also as a powerful vehicle for poetic self‐reflection, intertextual adaptation and intermedial transformation. To be more concise, my teaching approaches featured CREATE – Contact (C), Reverse Ekphrasis (R, E), Adaptation (A), Transformation (T) and Enrichment (E). The international workshop participants’ creative painting outcomes proved that, as brush painters, they could draw inspiration effectively from poetry written in English and/or poetry translated into English, so as to increase their personal capacity for artistic self‐expression and intercultural communication through Chinese‐style brush painting.     

Self‐Initiated Art Work and School Art

This article deals with the forms and contents of self‐initiated art works: the kind of learning that takes place in the production of self‐initiated art works as well as the relationships with school art. We interviewed 52 Dutch students (aged between 10 and 14) from different schools of primary and secondary education, and their art teachers. The students showed examples of their home art as well as their school art. Based on interviews and the works presented, four main categories of self‐initiated art works can be distinguished: applied art, popular culture, personal experience and traditional art. Learning outside school is partly incidental and informal (learning by doing, copying), but involves intentional learning as well. Students are aware of the differences in style, materials and themes between their spontaneous, self‐initiated art work and the work they are required to make in school. Moving the domain of self‐initiated art into schools may jeopardise it, but art teachers should neither ignore nor dismiss it. They should be aware of children's self‐initiated visual culture and relate to it in their lessons.     

Learning in the visual arts and the worldviews of young children

This paper reports a research study into the effects of rich, sustained visual arts instruction on 103 inner city 9‐year‐olds in two major US cities. We use the lenses of social learning theory, theories of motivation and self‐efficacy, and recent research on artistic thinking to investigate the programs' effects on children's self‐beliefs and creative thinking. The study enlisted a pre–post measure, treatment‐comparison group design along with structured observations of participant and comparison group classrooms. The arts students made significant comparative gains on a self‐efficacy scale and on an ‘originality’ subscale of a standard creativity test. These effects are attributed to children's engagement in art and to the social organization of instruction including reinforcing peer and student–adult relationships. Relationships between self‐efficacy beliefs and tendencies to think originally are explored.     

Assessing highly‐creative ability1

This paper presents a psychological perspective of the educational dilemma of assessing highly (high‐level) creative ability (with some connections to contemporary philosophical debate). Assessment of highly‐creative ability is a topic of longstanding debate involving questions of what constitutes creativity; whether the creative mental process is essentially intuitive or essentially rational; whether creative ability could or should be reduced to quantifiable parameters; and whether the most important aspects of creative achievement reside in the initial thinking (invention of ideas) or in the subsequent process of development of the idea (making a work of art, design, etc) or in the end product (the work of art or design itself). The debate is fueled by various philosophical, psychological and educational perspectives, all of which are continuously evolving. As a consequence, learning objectives and assessment criteria are ambiguous and confound the enhancement of creative ability that is the primary purpose of higher education. This paper traces the research and development path that led to an innovative ‘authenticative assessment’ approach to assessing highly‐creative ability that offers a promising solution.     

A Consideration of the Relationship Between Creativity and Approaches to Learning in Art and Design

Creative intelligence is relevant to all aspects of the school curriculum, yet it is through art and design that pupils may come to experience the significance of creativity as a means of exploring innovative and original ideas which offer credence to the individual and affect approaches to learning. This article analyses creativity and the creative process and addresses the links between creativity and intelligence by examining the implications such factors may hold for the teacher when developing approaches to learning in art and design. It focuses in particular on the use of sketchbooks within the context of a number of Art and Design GCSE courses and explores how students have been provided with opportunities to develop creative responses to set tasks. In addition, it sets out to challenge the notion that the requirements of GCSE assessment criteria inevitably restrict creativity and lead to non‐creative formulaic practice.     

高职院校雕刻艺术设计专业中雕塑教学探析

雕塑教学是夯实雕刻艺术设计专业造型能力与创作能力的主要课程,雕塑教学对专业基础的训练至关重要,而它的成效是当前雕刻艺术设计专业发展的基本问题。论文在雕刻艺术设计专业大的教学背景下,提出雕塑教学融合雕刻工艺种类、提升造型能力、拓展创作能力、注重因材施教、引入数字教学等方面进行探究,在造型形式语言和创作构思方面强调个体化发展,推进雕刻艺术设计专业特色优质化培养模式。     

Self‐acceptance and Behaviour Control in Creatively Gifted Young People

An investigation was made into the relationship between self‐acceptance, locus of behaviour control and the level of adolescents’ creative thinking abilities. From a sample of 250 pupils, aged 13–14 years, 30 creative and 30 control non‐creative pupils were selected, their scores on several measures were compared, and the results then analyzed for locus of control and self‐acceptance. Comparisons were also made between the boys and girls. The young people with a high level of creative thinking ability (fluency, flexibility and originality of thinking) were found to have significantly higher levels of internal control and self‐acceptance when compared with the less creative control group. Girls showed a higher level of internal locus of control than boys.     

Personality Dispositions,Expectancy and Context in Attributional Thinking

The purpose of the study was to explore the relationship between attribution and selected personality dispositions, as well as self‐serving attribution. Four hypotheses were formulated: (1) Attributions for positive events correlate differently with the five personality dispositions than attributions for negative events, (2) factor analysis and cluster analysis of attributions for positive and negative events and the five personality dispositions will generate a general bipolar expectancy factor, (3) self‐serving attributions will dominate irrespective of subcultural context, and (4) the dominance of self‐serving attributions will be stronger in an individualistic‐oriented context than in a collectivistic‐oriented context. One‐hundred‐and‐fifty students, selected from two educational contexts (one individualistic‐oriented and one collectivistic‐oriented), were scored on attributions for positive and negative events as well as on the five personality dispositions on the basis of an inventory. All four hypotheses were supported. Educational implications are discussed.     

(Re) thinking Emotions in Visual Education Activities: Students' Experiences

This article focuses on the emotions of 13 and 14 year‐old students related to visual art education activities. Our aim is to understand the interference of the students' emotions with the processes of the creation and reception of their own pictures, as well as their characteristics in an art education context. The article adopts a Vygotskian theoretical perspective about emotion and aesthetic education that refers to the biopsychological nature of emotion and its cultural determination. The need to transform emotions in art activities is stressed and the teenagers' pictures are interpreted as a means of communication. The data collection was based on questionnaires and interviews with seventh and eighth grade secondary school students. It is concluded that students' emotions are not only present in the creative process and in its result, but also that they could have a significant positive or negative impact on students' motivation and achievement behaviour in art education classes. In this context, the students' pictures, acting as stimuli, may evoke their emotions.