This week we start learning how to make our own: Inhabiting Practice

As I have 3 years part-time and 2 years full-time teaching experience in arts education, my previous experience has been the basis for constructing Practice in terms of the content of my practice. I combine theory and practice and try to integrate contemporary art theory into the teaching of broadcasting and presenting arts. The major of broadcasting and hosting art aims to cultivate senior professionals who have basic theoretical knowledge of journalism and communication and profound cultural skills, are familiar with Chinese news propaganda policies and regulations, and can engage in broadcasting, programme hosting, editing, programme production and other related work. (Teaching Steering Committee of Higher Education Institutions, Ministry of Education. National Standards for Teaching Quality of Undergraduate Professional Classes in General Higher Education Schools (below): Higher Education Press, 2018: 932-938) Therefore, qualified broadcast hosts need to have not only good business ability but also good aesthetic taste. And art theory and aesthetic theory are interrelated. On the one hand, art theory is deeply influenced by the basic theories of philosophy and aesthetics, forming a tendency to philosophise and aestheticise the language of art discourse. On the other hand, aesthetic theory is influenced by art practice and art theory, which are derived from real life. (The Aestheticization Tendency of Art Theory and the Roots of Aesthetic Theory in Art Practice – On the Connection between Art Theory and Aesthetic Theory ◎ He Feiyan) Therefore, aesthetic education for learners of broadcasting arts – contemporary art theory education is an important way to enhance students’ aesthetic taste.

I therefore plan to involve the infiltration of contemporary art theory into the teaching of the art of broadcast hosting so that students can better express their broadcast scripts through audible language.

In the coding of the process, I rationalise the course schedule. The course content is divided into 4 sections.

1.Peer interaction groups are formed through P2P, where students learn from each other by complementing each other’s strengths and weaknesses.(0- 2minutes)

2.Guiding students to understand and master contemporary art theory.(Classroom: by looking at contemporary artworks, videos and listening to Contemporary art music)(3-12minutes)

3.Draw a picture that reflects your understanding of contemporary art theory or work at the moment, express your painting.(12-16minutes)

4.Secondary creation of podcast reading scripts, expressed through audible speech.(17-20minutes)

This arts toolkit is aimed at intermediate students who have mastered the skills of podcasting. Through the control of class time and content, students are given an initial introduction to the theoretical knowledge of contemporary art, and are guided in their attempts to integrate podcasting art theory with contemporary art.

I had a lot of fun designing this process. This is because I can reflect my own ideas in the classroom. In my experience, arts education in China is rather homogeneous, both in terms of content and teaching methods. However, at the beginning of the 21st century, the theory that pedagogy and the theorisation of education needed a ‘practice shift’ (Schatzki et al., 2001) was put forward, so the theorisation of education towards ‘practice’ was a worthwhile approach to teaching. This is why I have changed the way I teach in the classroom to a ‘student-centred’ approach to teaching and learning.

The tools I have designed involve the description of student feedback. In this case, I have created a learning classroom: a group of 20 students who have mastered the skills of presenting and are divided into four cooperative groups (P2P), each group is assigned a script, and the students discuss, sketch and work on the details of the script on their own, with the group members complementing each other’s strengths and weaknesses. 2 minutes later I will show the students, via a projector, the works of artists from contemporary art. I will also arrange the works of art from different periods on the PowerPoint so that students can identify the works that represent contemporary art. Then I will give each student a pen and a piece of blank paper and ask them to present their understanding of contemporary art in the form of a drawing. Finally, the students will be guided to create a secondary draft by combining their knowledge of contemporary art theory with the content of the first handled draft. We can see from the classroom that the students show a high level of motivation and stimulate internal learning motivation. This is clearly a very different approach to traditional Chinese education. Not only did the students exercise their ability to help each other and work together, but they also participated in the learning of contemporary art theory through hands-on games. Students learn from: doing” and learning from experience. (John Dewey, Dewey, John. “Experience and education.” The educational forum. Vol. 50. No. 3. Taylor & Francis Group, 1986.)

Critical Thinking:

Clearly, there are many holes in the design of my art toolkit.

2. In the P2P support groups, I did not adequately take into account the level of ability of the students, and if the ability matching values of each group did not match, the overall classroom progress would be slowed down and the desired effect would be greatly reduced. Therefore, in subsequent lessons, individual differences in learners should be taken into account and a pre-lesson warm-up game to find out how well students understand the lesson would be a good way to get a better understanding of the lesson. (Felder, RM and Brent, R. (2005) Understanding student differences. Journal of Engineering Education, 94: 57-7)
3. The classroom should be matched with a professional teaching assistant. A professional teaching assistant can not only assist students in completing classroom tasks, but also record students’ performance in class and provide feedback to the main teacher, which can help improve the classroom teaching.
4. The design of the course content is too cumbersome and the content should be designed on the basis of class time. In my opinion, for a 20-minute class time, the above design makes it difficult to control the time precisely, thus leading to a less efficient class.

For the subsequent ‘practice’ sessions, I will focus on the individuality of the students and respect their individuality. At the same time, I will refine the design of my lessons. I will also refine the design of my lessons to make them better.

Reference:

1. Teaching Steering Committee of Higher Education Institutions, Ministry of Education. National Standards for Teaching Quality of Undergraduate Professional Classes in General Higher Education Schools (below): Higher Education Press, 2018: 932-938
2. The Aestheticization Tendency of Art Theory and the Roots of Aesthetic Theory in Art Practice – On the Connection between Art Theory and Aesthetic Theory ◎ He Feiyan
3. Schatzki, T. R., Knorr-Cetina, K., & von Savigny, E. (2001). The practice turn in contemporary social theory. New York: Routledge.
4. Dewey, Dewey, John. “Experience and education.” The educational forum. Vol. 50. No. 3. Taylor & Francis Group, 1986.
5. Felder, RM and Brent, R. (2005) Understanding student differences. Journal of Engineering Education, 94: 57-7

Week6&7:Inhabiting Practice / Xiaotong Wu / Contemporary Art & Open Learning (2022-2023)[SEM1] by blogadmin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0