The problem with administering standardized learning activities without accounting for differences of diverse cognitive capacities, desire and strengths in heterogeneous student populations is that individual flights of learning are blunted.
The scientific method is innate in human beings. The desire to be curious, explore, create, reflect and learn is a human trait that has served our species well.
When I think of Teaching for Artistic Behavior classrooms and art programs, I think of learning environments that support, nurture and expand mental growth through those innate capacities.
A TAB classroom is in many ways an umwelt, an environment where learners connect at a deep psycho/emotional/physiological level.
Within the environment of the TAB classroom, inspiration, time, support, opportunity and feedback are available to learners.
When I first began TAB practice, I began to witness unbelievable feats of creativity from my elementary students.
At the heart of natural pathways to creative growth experience? Emergence.
|Baseline example of student art created in September, '14 and example from December '14 reveal changes in composition complexity of radial symmetry design ideas.|
Kathy Douglas and Diane Jaquith's dynamic approach to art education that accounts for individual differences falls within the parameters of systems theory set forth by Aristotle, who writes in "Metaphysics,"...the whole is greater than the sum of it's parts."