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Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 122 (2014) 245 - 249
2nd World Conference on Design, Arts and Education DAE-2013
The Role of New Technologies for Enhancing Teaching and
Learning in Arts Education
Luminita Heliana Munteanua *, Gabriel Gorghiub, Laura Monica Gorghiua
aFaculty of Sciences and Arts, Valahia University Targoviste, 18-24 Unirii Blvd., Targoviste 130082, Romania bFaculty of Electrical Engineering, Electronics and Information Technology, Valahia University Targoviste, 18-24 Unirii Blvd., 130082
Targoviste, Romania
Abstract
The role of Arts in nowadays education and its significant function devolves the specific task of structural analysis through the organization of certain explanatory activities in strong relation with Arts. The specific educational exercise - in secondary education - postpones the ostentatious references and indicates Arts as an inner vision, leading to a real explanatory behavior, practiced especially in the theory of signs. The deciphering of the artistic symbolism aims to the meaning of the concept of interpretation and revelation of multiple senses, in virtue of certain legitimate values which are assigned to hermeneutics. As specific and valuable methods used in the actual Arts education, there can be mentioned: organizing certain activities in relation with the vector that connects the diffusion of the work to its particular meaning / interpretation, designing special "games" of oppositions and combinations within a system of units, but also introducing new technologies that confers the intention of approaching Arts and the related interpretative educational activities in order to offer to the students new meanings through the mediation of signs and works. The last method is explored in the paper, in the actual context of the Romanian education. 15 Arts in-service teachers were questioned in the frame of a continuous professional development program which included both face-to-face and on-line learning sessions, related to the knowledge level on using ICT in Arts education, the self-confidence concerning the implementation of ICT into the Arts classes, and the expected benefits that can be brought by the new technologies in the educational process © 2013 The Authors.PublishedbyElsevierLtd.
Selection and peer-reviewunder responsibilityofAcademic WorldEducationandResearch Center. Keywords: arts education; meaning; aesthetic value; new technologies
1. Introduction
In the Romanian environment, art reserves a privileged position due to the tradition established in the interwar period, but also to the reverberations from the communist regime, condescendingly. The artistic education should not be considered a control center, rather a necessity - in Romanian schools it involves different organizations, associated with general education, on the one hand, and vocational education, on the other hand. In the teaching / learning process, the current situation of the pedagogical intentionality exceeds the level of development of the
* Corresponding name: Luminita Heliana Munteanu. Tel.: +40-245-213382; fax: +40-245-213382. E-mail address: heliana_munteanu@yahoo.com
1877-0428 © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of Academic World Education and Research Center. doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.01.1336
interpretative capacity and the knowledge of related elements concerning the musical, pictorial, poetic language, various techniques and specific instruments of different arts. A new typology of pedagogical actions is determined by the answer to the question why the reception of art is necessary, but also through motivating the act of reception. The primate held in the hierarchical motivation system represents the fundamental training of the aesthetic taste and cultivation of admiration for the art work (Barlogeanu, 2001). The extended field of the artistic education brings together the justification of intentions and of changing motivations, knowing that in the current modern culture we cannot argue through someone else's authority. The transition between eras is no longer balanced by the defense of critical judgments and certain acquisitions.
2. The role of the artistic education in forming the future specialist
The education process is engaged in certain actionable perspectives involved by the art phenomenon that relates directly to the spiritual universe and conceptual worlds, which include concepts such: creation, educational knowledge and communication. The components of the artistic education stimulate and develop creative abilities, critical thinking and imagination, and refine the cognition that will complete the acquisitions in the academic school, but also the success, with a massive impact in developing the thinking of each child who wishes a professional artistic career.
The means of the formal logic and epistemology emphasize the plurality of the rationality in the Science of education area, the advocacy for the complexity - a constructive thinking that induces an interpretative method and a conceptual instrumentation, necessary for the evaluation of postmodern education. In this context, the artistic culture - a major acquisition of artistic education - becomes a factor of judgment which determines the students to be engaged in gradual reports within their culture. A result of this process is the formation of the ability to build their own artistic culture, and in an unquestionably way, their own images about art, and with the help of the artistic sign, their own self-image. In successive stages of development, it is determined the sense of craftsmanship, the quality performances tasks, and the definition of goals and abilities necessary for succeeding in the classroom and beyond.
The art can revolutionize and determine comprehension reports (Habermas, 2000) and conciliation between people, through an authentic communication. It can also supply the important values, team-building abilities and the appreciation arising from the respect of alternative points of view, provided by different cultures and traditions.
The progressive construction of the stages of comprehension, and the ability to act in relation with their own artistic intentions play a major role in the formation of artistic thinking, motivations, language and social-emotional development. The justification of this process lies precisely in the coordinates of the familiar environment of children that offers a singular culture, maybe even particular values circumscribed to a stage that can block the access to humanity, which the school is intermediating through its values and through the declared purposes of vocational education. Through motivating the children and their involvement in learning, engaging the symbolic communication, predicting their artistic transformation and developing their skills and competences, the school promotes the conditions of humanization of a young person and finds a place for everyone in people culture, also by promoting relationships and coexisting in public spaces.
Operating certain selections of artistic contents in education, or in the formation of a certain scholastic artistic culture, involves specific levels of organization for a "field" of the artistic practices, acquaintances and mental operations, generated by the art particularities. The diversity of practices indicates particularly known actions: drawing, playing instruments, writing poems. What defines those actions is their nature: cultural practices are distinguished from the scientific ones through their finality and through the emerged operations / psychological implications. As example, the practice of playing the piano or violin, flute or pan-flute, requires the knowledge of the keyboard, strings, piping, deciphering the music sheet (which implies a deep knowledge of the music theory),
indicating the musical timber of the sounds, their synthesis and the entire composition. On the other hand, practicing painting or sculpture implicates a good knowledge of the materials, binders, work tools and the observation of creative techniques of the artists (a painter will not be interested in explaining the shadows during the day, but will achieve a generated light).
3. The integration of new technologies in artistic education
As educators we have to know that the field of art corresponds to a profound human desire, as an exceptional presence. Ignoring the sphere of desires can be an error in education, our problem becoming materialized in the necessity to obtain an answer regarding the question what object or event is considered as art (Cuco§, 2006). This answer is related to the reception of the art in relation with the subject that sees, reads, listens, in a way that marks an exceptional event. The discussions illustrated in the literacy concerning the fundamentals of education through arts advance the idea of replacing the aesthetic education with the artistic education - in fact, a replacement of the vision that opens the art as a place of beauty in the art arena, as a place of creation. The artistic education is related to the meaning, value, but also to the modern means through which there can be acquired knowledge, information, reading, interpretation and new theorizations, by involving and using ICT tools. The artistic culture, as a system of knowledge presented in a community, can be represented through language, literature, music, picture, architecture, public emotions and cultural events. All those components generate ways of symbolizations, perception and thinking, but also conceptions regarding the value, cause-effect relations, through people interactions. The panoply offered by new technologies instruments which are used in the artistic education provides important information about the stratification of the unseen part of the culture iceberg (Rocher, 1992) - ways of thinking revealed by norms, roles, ideologies, beliefs, values, symbols, artistic techniques. But an entire efficient process of teaching and learning that integrates ICT has certain features:
• it is addressed to all students;
• it includes knowledge and intermediate the comprehension of artistic/cultural phenomenon;
• it forms abilities, skills, attitudes and values;
• it is derived from the reality and integrated in all the studied disciplines in schools;
• it values the resources of allocated time for artistic education and intercultural abilities;
• it makes learning more pleasant and more relevant for the everyday life of the children and offers the opportunity to share information within a group/community;
• it develops communication abilities with others (even in heterogeneously groups) and encourages respect and cooperation in joint projects and supports the social cohesion;
• it ensures equal chances of participation for all the students involved in the educational process.
Different types of ICT instruments can be integrated with large success in the artistic education, mainly multimedia products as: digital presentations, educational video-clips, electronic posters or sound files. At this moment, digital presentations and educational video-clips represent the most introduced objects in the educational process, by arts teachers.
In this respect, the presentations are frequently used due to their accessibility; they are more suggestive and easy to be followed by students with different levels of comprehension. For teachers, those instruments enhance teaching and learning, offering a series of advantages (Jones, 2003), especially on drawing the students' attention to key points of the lecture on which they needed to listen and take notes, or on better noting of critical points in the lecture when being consulting in advance (Armitage, n.d.).
Also, the educational video-clips, through their diversity, make the world of art visible through sounds and images. Various types of clips are used in the training process (Ciascai & Marchij, 2008): documentaries, reportages, movies with certain themes, movies with a biographic character, popularizing knowledge movies, selected materials from TV shows (edited according to the specific purposes).
4. Results and discussion
Trying to emphasize the possibilities offered by the new technologies tools for enhancing teaching and learning process in Arts education, Valahia University Targoviste promoted - in the frame of the project called "EDUTIC: A network for teachers professional development with the view to increase the quality of ICT implementation in the Romanian primary and secondary education" (code POSDRU/19/1.3/G/37002) - a professional development programme dedicated to in-service teachers from nine Romanian counties. A number of 15 participants from the target group were Arts education teachers. The program consisted of three modules: a) Fundamentals on pedagogical use of ICT in education, e-learning technologies and learning platforms. ICT tools for drawing teaching materials; b) Visual communication and multimedia technology in education. Procedures for integrating multimedia applications in education; c) Teaching methodologies and pedagogical strategies based on the use of virtual instrumentation. Designing learning activities which include the use of virtual experiments in education. While the first module (a) was compulsory for the entire target group, the participants had the possibility to choose between the last two modules (b and c), function of their needs and preferences. All the 15 Arts education teachers selected the module related to visual communication and multimedia technology as optional one.
During the modules that have been developed in a blended learning format (face-to-face and e-learning) different aspects have been presented and discussed. The most important of those were how to implement new technologies in education, in strong relation with the use of available computers and other hardware specific devices or how to use the software in teaching and learning process and transform it in additional didactic instruments, with educational valences. An important place in discussions was devoted on how to use multimedia facilities in order to support the scientific content or the applications of specific lessons, and which are the advantages of accessing information from educational digital storage media (like CDs or DVDs). It was concluded that the multimedia products should be selected or designed by the teachers, but, at the same time, they have to be in accordance with the applicability in the learning process and students' perception. This fact can determine the students to make logical connections and discover new perspectives on the addressed issues.
At the end of the programme, a questionnaire was applied to the target group, trying to collect the teachers' opinion related to the aspects presented during the courses. Some of the questionnaire items were devoted to obtain the teachers' feedback related to the expected benefits of using ICT in the teaching / learning process. In this sense, figures 1-4 present the trainees' perception on how the ICT tools (especially multimedia products) can increase the scientific content understanding, improve the teaching methods in Arts classes, attract the learners to study and cooperate or increase the students' self motivation. A five-level Likert scale (1- Totally; 2 - To great extent; 3 - To some extent; 4 - Not sure; 5 - Not at all) was used for evaluating each aspect. As can be seen from the following figures, most of the Arts teachers agreed that multimedia products like digital presentations, educational video-clips, electronic posters or sound files have a great potential to support the Arts education. Only few teachers concluded that those kinds of ICT tools can help "only to some extent' the teaching/learning approach - in terms of improving the teaching methods or increasing the scientific content understanding.
To a great xtent 6%
Totally
o some extent 7%
Figure 1: Increasing the scientific content understanding
Figure 2: Improving the teaching methods
Totally 80%
Totally, 80%
To a great extent 20%
To a great extent, 20%
Figure 3: Attracting the learners to study and cooperate
Figure 4: Increasing the self motivation
5. Conclusion
There are many advantages of using new technologies in arts education, but the most important one is represented by the involving of the students in activities and situations of learning that are in opposition with their ideas and previous conceptions. New technologies - which are judiciously implemented in arts lessons -promote experiential learning, stimulate the students' interrogative spirits and combine the independent work within the students' work group. In addition, when ICT is involved as educational instrument, a real gain in raising the student's creativity and meta-cognition was noticed, but also an increasing of the quality of the lessons provided by art teachers.
Armitage, S. (n.d.). Lancaster University - PowerPoint & Student' Learning: Briefing Paper. Retrieved April 5, 2013, from: http://www.lancs.ac.uk/celt/celtweb/files/Powerpoint and student learning final.pdf Bârlogeanu, L. (2001). Psihopedagogia artei. Ia§i: Polirom.
Ciascai, L., & Marchi§, I. (2008). Educafia interculturala §i media. Cluj Napoca: Presa Universitarâ Clujeanâ. Cuco§, C. (2006). Informatizarea în educafie. Bucharest: Polirom.
Habermas, J. (2000). Discursulfilosofic al modernitafii. 12 prelegeri. Bucharest: All Educational.
Jones, A. (2003). The use and abuse of PowerPoint in Teaching and Learning in the Life Sciences: A Personal Overview. Bioscience EducationE-journal, 2. Retrieved April 5, 2013, from: http://www.bioscience.heacademy.ac.uk/journal/vol2/beej-2-3.aspx Rocher, G. (1992). Introduction à la sociologie générale (3rd ed.). Montreal: Les Éditions Hurtubise inc.
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