1. Learning Objectives

Within this course I hope I can
- familiarize the students with the concepts of installation and environmental art. They should be able to understand what are the characteristics of installation art compared to other art styles and working methods (the outer characteristics as well as the basics of philosophy behind)
- familiarize the students to observe their environment from the point of view of art
- teach the students to build their own three-dimensional installation in a space
- train the students' ability to observe and reflect their working processes and methods
- train the students' ability to give and get feedback from each other

Connections to curriculum
This workshop is one part of many-year hobby for children and youth called Basic Art Education. Although it's a hobby, there is a curriculum and the studies are advancing through time. Studies are divided in two parts: 1) Basic studies and 2) Advanced studies. This course belongs to advanced studies. The students have learned their basic skills in different artistic methods during Basic studies, and now they can choose from different workshop in which field do they want to deepen their skills. The workshops vary from year to year, and so this installation workshop is held only this year. Because of this varying nature of courses provided the exact contents of the courses are not defined in the basis of curriculums neither in the school's own curriculum.

What would I like the students to learn?
Because this is not vocational education, most important learning experiences which I would like the students to get deal with overall self-esteem and skills. In this context art is just a tool for me to give the students positive experiences and possibilities to
- appreciate art -and installation art as a part of it
- think own work is valuable
- increase creativity
- get good feelings out of working

2. Course Content

Overall content
At the course students got familiar with the concepts of installation and environmental art. I have made a web page for students where I have collected information about the course and links to the home pages of related artists and organizations. The address is www20.brinkster.com/kurssit. There will you find also photos of the students and their works. Local newspaper Salon Seudun Sanomat published an article about our course, which can also be found in the website.

First I gave a brief lecture about the concepts and showed pictures from the web sites. Students didn’t have any concept about this kind of art. I also spoke little about constructing a model of an art work. The main content of the course was still actual hands-on working. Every student made a piece of art in the schoolhouse. They were free to choose an interesting place –first we walked thru the house and I tried to draw the student’s attention to the places, which could be suitable for an artwork. The students had also freedom to choose the subject of their work and whether they like to make it alone or in groups. Most of the works were made in small groups, or so that people did individual works, which were designed to fit together.

We also visited the Art Museum of Salo, because there was an exhibition of Ars Fennica prize winner Anu Tuominen, who constructs her art out of found objects. There we trained to speak about art and give grounded statements. On last lesson we had a critic discussion, when we watched everybody’s works and talked about them.

Timetable
Because the students’ working has the main importance this was a very easy course for teacher because lot of planning wasn’t needed.

3. The Students

My concept of human being
I think people have ability to choose their actions and take responsibility of them. I’m interested in the inner actions of human being instead of the outer reactions, because the deepest learning happens when the learner really processes the content. I think that we are in some sense products of our culture, but at the same time we can assess our culture and direct ourselves to the way we consider suitable for ourselves. I also see human as multidimensional being – all the different aspects of humanity affect for example cognitive processes. So I take the students as responsible entities who have a will to learn and who have interest at least towards some things in the world. I know that situation isn’t this ideal always, but in the case of new student I believe so as long as there is empirical evidence which forces me to chance my attitude. This believing in interest can be seen in my teaching so that I always stress the importance of enthusiasm – I hope the students choose for example assignment topics according to their hobbies etc. Of course I also try to plan the tasks so that it is easy for the students to use own interest areas. This is quite easy to implement in art and media courses.

Characteristics of the Student Group
Students were from 13 to 16 years old, most of them being 14. Some of the students had been participating the lessons since they were five-year-old and others have come later, some not before this autumn. All participants were girls and mainly quite interested in arts. Only exception was a little group of elder girls, who came to the lessons only to chat with each other. As you can guess they didn’t get very respectful results out of their working but the other students did very well. I was very surprised of the ideas, taking account they didn’t know anything about environmental art before. The students were quite in different levels in their working habits: some planned very carefully and implemented their work very professionally when others’ working process was more indefinite. Most of the students were in the middle in between the most goal-oriented and most time-spending type. The creative process of course varies a lot among professional artists also, so I’m not sure if it’s fair to assess the level of development in this area.

4. Learning Process

My Learning Concept
I’m interested in experiental and co-operational paradigms, because I think most important is to take account the different dimensions of human being as a psychological, physical and social entity. I also think that learning is fun – although we all have mostly unpleasant experiences from school. My teaching has some features of humanistic approach and others from constructivism. Personal learning experience is very important because you learn things, which are alive to you. Because that the other important thing is to bind the content to reality so that it doesn’t just leave on the level of loose facts.

I mentioned earlier my will to use the students’ own interests and hobbies as topics of assignments. It has a motivational ground but as well it binds the student more tightly to learning. A learner is in a “dangerous” situation when learning new things: s/he can be afraid of embarrassment, the shame of “not-learning” and so on (especially teenagers), but using their own expertise as a part of learning can calm them down. I believe also that a student learns more affectively when also her/his feelings are took account in the learning occasion. We also have more possibilities to spontaneous discussion, when there are some aspects in which the students are experts.

Phasing the Student’s Learning Progress
I would always like to know my students as well as possible. Mostly I still don’t know them very well, because I work as a visitor teacher in many schools. Now I had only 9-12 students, so I could also get familiar with them better than usually. This course was quite easy to phase because it was so individual in nature: every student (group) worked on the pace suitable for them.

5. Teaching Methods and Assessment

Methods Used at the Course
We had quite an interesting experiment because we had two student groups who worked together. The students could choose between the three-dimensional course or the painting course. Some students made both 3- and 2-dimensional works. We were working same time at the same space and the two teachers were available for all students. So a student could get two different solving proposals for her problem. I think this was a very good experience for both the students and the teachers. I worked mainly with my supporting teacher, so she got quite a comprehensive picture of my teaching. She was on vacation few weeks, which time I worked with another teacher. I had never before worked in same class with another teacher, and I found it very nice indeed.

Our methods were mainly discussing and answering the questions. Because I wanted to highlight the students’ power over their work I used questions a lot asking what have they planned to do next and how to solve this or that problem. I think it worked quite well and I am going to use it in the future too. I have also a principle not to touch students’ work because I want to make sure I won’t get too much involved with them. It’s one of most important things to get students feel free and empowered concerning their art works.

Student Assessment
Assessment was given only orally and informally because students are not going to get any written feedback or numeral evaluation on the workshops (they will get an evaluation only when they finish their studies). I always highlight the good features of a work. I think it’s right but still I would like to pay more attention on the not-so-good features because I think the positive feedback may get inflated if I do not mention the other side also. I still have problems with the negative parts of critic: how can I say that isn’t a good part of the work if it was just the student’s favorite detail in it…

Course Assessment
I always ask the students to fill in a questionnaire about the course. It is valuable feedback but gives of course only their viewpoint. Usually in student feedback for example more difficult course is assessed to be worse than an easier course, and the feedback should of course be red bearing that kind of things in mind. Sometimes I also keep little exams just to know how much the students have learned, if the subject is suitable for exams.

I write down my own feelings and perceptions: if I for example notice that the students don’t understand the contents I try to be clearer next time or change the course easier. I think I am quite good at observing and taking the actions needed – not just blaming the students to be stupid and lazy (although they sometimes are ;>). Now on my new courses I try also how does a start exam and questionnaire work – but I will tell about it more in my next teaching practice report.

On this course I used the evaluation questionnaire and my own observations (I filled a diary sheet after every lesson). Compared to “ordinary” courses it is nice advantage to get feedback also from my supervisor Maija and Irmeli who was taking part in one lesson.

6. Evaluation of the Teaching Practice

My Strengths and Developmental Needs
I had first too ambitious and strict plans for the course (for example making learning logs and portfolios) but I noticed they are not going to work because we really were not in a school but in a hobby. My supervisor said later, that when she saw my plans she knew that they are too complex but she wanted to give me a possibility to try them out. I had not teached previously in a folk high school, so I had not a picture of the work there. I think still I understood quite fast the different situation and was wise enough to loosen the plans – it would not have been very sensible to continue following the plans after noticing they don’t work…For example, after I told about my plans one of the students had been frightened that the hobby is becoming too school-like and wanted to quit the course. Her mother called to my supporting teacher, and she managed to assure her the studying is not going be so strict and the student fortunately came back.

I see as a very big strength that now I can be very relaxed when teaching. I have so few experiences about teaching so I still remember how excited I was when I gave my first lessons – and so I presented my contents usually quite un-logically and messy. Now I use my whole person as a tool – I believe that it is always best to be natural. My cognitional processes are not slowed down any more by my nerves, so I can speak more freely, have new ideas and examples ex tempore and so on. And, what is the most important thing, now I can really enjoy teaching. I say it most important because I think the person’s enthusiasm and positive feelings can be seen – and it affects to the other people too. So I hope I can create positive learning atmospheres with my new, relaxed attitude.

I should develop my knowledge about the schools, levels and student age-phases I am teaching. The only real method to do this is simply to work and get more experiences – so time will help me. I also am not satisfied with my way to give feedback –my feedback is too positive in nature, I would like to learn to say something about the worse areas of the art work too. I also have to be aware of taking account all students, not only the social and friendly ones. Being equal is one of my “important principles” but I’m not really sure if I am always acting equally – a hostile student can be frightening to me. I don’t fortunately have experiences in extreme cases, but still I have sometimes found it difficult to handle negative students.

I think I have discussed in the previous chapters quite a lot about how I feel the different aspects of the practice succeeded (the given evaluate criteria). In common I am very satisfied to the course: the lack of experience was the biggest problem but I think it was solved quite nicely when time passed by and I started to understand the system. My supporting teacher Maija took me one evening for sightseeing around the school – it was very nice to see all the different courses people were attending with enthusiasm. I have never studied in a folk high school, but after seeing all that enthusiasm I really think they are very important places!

How am I going to develop my teaching?
Most important is to get more experience and knowledge of the students. I am always trying to make my courses better after feedback. If I will teach this course in future it would need simplification (if compared with the first plans-the shape which it got in practice was still quite good). I should also invent more additional assignments to the fast students. Now some of them got their big works done and were asking what they could do next. I just gave some loose ideas. Some didn’t still find an interesting work to do – maybe if I would have more defined tasks they would start working easier.

Oona Tikkaoja // Teaching practice report // January 2004

Teaching Practice at the Folk High School of Salo