AUSTRALIAN STEINER CURRICULUM FRAMEWORK THE ARTS INTRODUCTION / OVERVIEW

Transcription

1 STEINER EDUCATION AUSTRALIA AUSTRALIAN STEINER CURRICULUM FRAMEWORK THE ARTS INTRODUCTION / OVERVIEW June 2016 ACARA RECOGNITION GRANTED SEPTEMBER 2017 The Australian Steiner Curriculum: The Arts was developed to meet the recognition and equivalence given to alternate internationally recognised curricula by the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA, and follows their format and staging. Steiner Education Australia ARTS CURRICULUM - INTRODUCTION Version: (ACARA v 8.1) June 2016 / September 2017

2 Revisions included in this Document June 2016 September 2017 As submitted to ACARA Recognition process ACARA Recognition granted to Curriculum (no amendments to Introduction) SEA:ASCF CURRICULUM: THE ARTS INTRODUCTION Page 2 of 15

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4 Australian Steiner Curriculum Framework THE ARTS General Introduction The Arts have always been central to the pedagogy, curriculum and integrated methodology of Steiner Education. Through story, movement, music, drawing, painting and modelling the content of primary age schooling is revealed to, and experienced by, children. In the High School it is the way that conceptual content is worked through by students- recorded, reflected on and expressed. It is inseparable from each aspect of the overall curriculum. Each of the Arts is fostered for its own sake throughout the years of schooling. They are a way of experiencing a deepening connection to the inner life of soul and for the revelation of the world it brings to lesson content in all learning areas. Steiner Education traditionally recognises 7 arts Architecture Sculpture Painting and drawing Music Poetry Eurythmy The Social Art In the Australian Steiner Curriculum: The Arts, architecture and sculpture are integrated with painting and drawing into the Visual Arts. Music stands alone. Speech and Drama incorporates Poetry. Eurythmy, taught by a highly trained specialist, is a unique form for the Dance curriculum. The Dance-Movement curriculum is an alternative taught by class teachers or a traditional Dance teacher. The Social Art is the culmination of all the Arts. Then, in life, all the words and deeds of the person represent the truth and artistry needed to respond to and transform life events. The deeds are the art. The ASCF Arts Curriculum is comprised of five subjects Dance- (two alternatives Dance- Eurythmy [DE] OR Dance Movement [DCM]* Speech and Drama [SD] Music [MU] Visual Arts [VA] Media Arts- an adaptation of the above arts for media purposes [MA] *Eurythmy is an approach to movement or dance which has a four-year specialised training in Steiner Teacher Education and, as shown in the curriculum documents for Dance: Eurythmy, covers the content of the Australian Curriculum: Dance in depth and across all strands. The Dance: Movement Curriculum has been written for Foundation to Class 6 as an Alternative Dance Curriculum where a Eurythmist is not available and the class teacher meets the content of the Australian Curriculum: Dance in the diverse and extensive dance and movement lessons within the integrated Australian Steiner Curriculum. The ASCF Dance Curriculum has here been made visible in a discrete curriculum document. SEA:ASCF CURRICULUM: THE ARTS INTRODUCTION Page 4 of 15

5 Rationale Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition in the Arts Experience The Arts, as expressions of concepts or experiences, allow the unfoldment of imagination: of imaging through structural gesture, form, colour, tone, word, movement and deed. The world of inspiration can increasingly enter this process as feelings arise and then the inner reality of the subject for each artwork is encountered in intuitive experience. Steiner Education sees the Arts as expression through these varying levels of human experience. Goodness Beauty and Truth in the Arts The Arts can express our higher impulses of Goodness, Beauty and Truth, be a healing agent or catharsis, or be an expression of unresolved challenges. The very young child is surrounded by Goodness, Beauty and Truth in the learning experiences provided by the teacher; the primary school child is guided through increasing polarity and the high school student is encouraged to meet the world through conscious insight and meaningful expression. Arts in Learning In Steiner Education the arts are experienced as fully integrated into the methodology of science, history, grammar and mathematics as well as having their own integral curriculum content. How can this be understood? Steiner educational methodology works with 3 steps in teaching and learning: encounter which becomes experience and then understanding; or one might say perception, feeling and idea. The encounter becomes experience when feelings unite with perceptions and then when recalled and brought to consciousness through question and discussion, become alive with meaning and understanding. i Especially in the years of Classes 1-7 or 8 the artistic comes into its higher purpose in serving human experience. In life, the arts reveal, make more potent and form the bridge from the material world into the soul-spiritual. In educational curriculum the same may be said. If the arts were to be mere illustration they would not have reached their pinnacle. They express a deeper connection to the essence of an aspect of life. What is necessary is that through the medium of what is flexible and artistic we give the child, in picture form, perceptions, ideas and feelings which can grow together with the soul simply because the soul is growing. What the children experience, they then integrate and express as visual, dramatic, movement and musical response to the content. In the years that follow, reasoned insight and intellectual understanding are appealed to and what was experienced artistically is now reviewed and analysed at a new level, building to a conscious world conception. The artistic presence in the whole curriculum makes impossible the bleak and picture-less, artless and machinelike in the education of the young ii SEA:ASCF CURRICULUM: THE ARTS INTRODUCTION Page 5 of 15

6 Aims The Australian Steiner Curriculum: The Arts aims to develop students Love of the arts and joy in connection to and expression of their deeper experience of life. Opportunities for, and receptivity to, artistic experiences of human striving toward Goodness, Beauty and Truth and in the challenges to reach this. Connection to the world through increasing sensitivity to perceiving and living into the qualities of life forms and structures of the natural world, and their representation in their own artworks and in the artworks of others. Knowledge, skills and understanding in outer representation, expression and communication of inner experience through the visual and plastic arts, music, poetry, speech and drama, eurythmy, movement and dance, culminating in all being integrated in the art of living. Ability to use innovative practices with spatial, temporal and emerging digital technology to enhance possibilities of artistic expression. Understanding of Australia s histories and traditions through the Arts, engaging with the artworks and practices, both traditional and contemporary, of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples iii. Understanding of local, regional and global cultures, and their Arts histories and traditions, through engaging with the world of artists, artworks, audiences and the arts professions iv. SEA:ASCF CURRICULUM: THE ARTS INTRODUCTION Page 6 of 15

7 Key Ideas The Arts for their own sake Art exists for its own sake though its very character makes it fundamentally educative. Art can of course have an illustrative function., or it may serve a dialectical purpose and both of these purposes have their place. however, art is taught for its own sake. When practising artistic activities, children experience their own soul realm v. Fostering love of the arts as an experience revealing deeper aspects of life An artistic experience allows the area of life expressed or experienced as an audience to be more fully revealed. It allows what cannot be rationalised or conceptualised to be met in the feeling life and depths of soul in a way that makes the understanding of life more authentic and connected. Teachers should love art so much that they do not want this experience to be lost to the children. They will then see how the children grow through their experiences in art. It is art that awakens their intelligence to full life...with our intellect we merely comprehend nature: it takes artistic feeling to experience it... However clumsily a child models or paints, this activity awakens inner soul forces. When children engage in music or poetry they feel their inner nature uplifted to the ideal plane. - Rudolf Steiner, 1920 vi Some of these higher ideals fostered in Steiner Education may be recognised as Goodness in our moral life, Beauty in our artistic and feeling life and a sense for Truth in our thinking. The arts support the experience of these ideals and a growing commitment to their development. The artistry in the surroundings of the child The Arts curriculum is supported by educational surroundings which imbue the child with sensitivity to artistic qualities. The architecture, colours and harmonies of form in the classroom furnishings, the beauty of nature which surrounds them in their gardens and the quality of performance arts in the school and community events is intrinsic to the curriculum. SEA:ASCF CURRICULUM: THE ARTS INTRODUCTION Page 7 of 15

8 Structure The Australian Steiner Curriculum: The Arts covers each of the five arts subjects across bands of year levels. Foundation to Class 2 Classes 3 and 4 Classes 5 and 6 Years 7 and 8 Years 9 and 10 The Australian Curriculum states: The curriculum is based on the assumption that all students will study the five arts subjects from Foundation to the end of primary school. Schools will be best placed to determine how this will occur. From the first year of secondary school (Year 7 or 8), students will have the opportunity to experience one or more arts subjects in depth. In Years 9 and 10, students will be able to specialise in one or more arts subject. Subjects offered will be determined by state and territory school authorities or individual schools. vii However, the Australian Steiner Curriculum recognises that students from Class 7 to Class 10 will benefit from all Arts subjects being completed with ideally as much of the content as possible being taught. Eurythmy, Visual Arts, Speech and Drama and Music are key subjects in international Steiner Curriculum from Kindergarten to Year 12 viii. The curriculum for each Arts subject includes A rationale and aims Description of learning and knowledge and skills Band/Stage descriptions Content descriptions Content elaborations Resource materials Achievement standards for each stage Each subject engages students in a different way. Dance/Eurythmy focuses on developing the human body as an instrument of perception and expression whereby subtle experiences of form, feeling and thought are communicated through spatial movement and gesture. Music: Students engage in music as listeners, performers and creators. With growing awareness, they experience the musical world as an expression of their inner lives and also as the revelation of an objective wisdom of the created world. SEA:ASCF CURRICULUM: THE ARTS INTRODUCTION Page 8 of 15

9 Visual Arts: Students explore and express through the universal language of art, where relationships of colour, shape and line can be created and understood. They learn to know the spirit or essence behind a particular work of art, a layer of meaning, which is inherent to all colour, form and shape as they learn to create and read in the language of art. Speech and Drama: Speech and Drama enables and develops each student s speech instrument (voice), through chorus and individual speech work, comprising speech exercises and a living experience of a wide range of texts. Dramatic work is a natural extension of creative speech, enabling students to explore expression through gesture, movement and stagecraft as well as voice. Media Arts: Throughout primary school Media Arts are scaffolded through the creative application of: hand crafted story writing, drawing and painting, singing and playing acoustic music, and drama, dance and Eurythmy, combined in a range of performance and display events. By Year 10, students will have the specialised knowledge, technological skills and vocabulary to make, discuss and analyse a wide range of media including: television, social media, newspapers, radio and film with regard to the sociocultural, political, historical and global media culture. The Design Process Composition, design, choreography, interpretation and presentation in the arts are all part of the process of creating artistic works. In the younger years design arises from inner activity and free communication with other children. Examples include: early play-based design of the imaginative garden with pebbles, flowers and shells in Kindergarten; ground sandstone painted and etched rock art; the Class 1 beeswax story scenes and spontaneous percussion and recorder pieces, and the individual Class 2 Main Lesson book illustrations. By Class 4, design becomes more conscious, such as that of their house project or of cross stitch handwork. In Classes 5-6 it involves a reflective process which in years 7-10 is formally planned and documented. Integration of the arts and art as a way of knowing As indicated by Eric Oddleifson, work such as Gardiner s Theory of Multiple Intelligences has helped extend the arts programs in many schools. He comments on the arts through the senses as a way of cognition and understanding ix. This understanding underlies the integration of the arts in all subjects in Steiner Education as a way of knowing the world through the many curriculum subjects. Stanford s Elliot Eisner suggests that our difficulty in recognising the benefits of the arts comes through our own fundamental misunderstandings about the very nature of mind, knowledge, and intelligence. Besides believing that language is required for thought, we think that logic is necessary to express intelligence. Not true. Poetry, which employs language, is not only not necessarily logical, but considered by many to be the highest form of thought. We believe that the senses are mere receptors of stimuli, to be mediated and made sense of by the intellect. Not true. Both the cognitive psychologists and neurologists... now know that senses are direct forms of cognition, and understanding. In Steiner Education the arts have always been integrated as well as fostered in specialist lessons as the children move through the primary school years. Eric Oddleifson (Chair of the Center for the Arts in Basic Curriculum) quotes Ernst Boyer in regard to arts integration x. One of the strengths of the Waldorf (Steiner) curriculum is its emphasis on the arts and the rich use of the spoken word through poetry and storytelling. The way the lessons integrate traditional subject matter is, to my knowledge, unparalleled. Main Lesson curriculum (a 3-4 week theme each morning for 2 hours) involves arts integration on a daily basis. Music, speech, drama, painting, drawing and movement are integrated with the Social Sciences, SEA:ASCF CURRICULUM: THE ARTS INTRODUCTION Page 9 of 15

10 Mathematics, English and Science in topics such as Ancient Greece (Class 5), The Human Being and the Animals (Class 4), Voyages of Discovery (Year 7) or Shakespearean Drama (Year 8). In class drama productions there is integration of set and costume design and making and design of flyers and invitations, speech and drama, music and Eurythmy. Expression in new innovative forms New innovative forms arise when children bring their own artistic impulses to bear on the creation of collaborative and individual works. Having learnt to experience the world and their inner life through the window of each discipline, and having developed the skills specific to each subject, they are in unique positions to work creatively and flexibly across the arts and to combine elements in meaningful and creative configurations. In Music e.g. students are led toward innovation through understanding the previous musical forms, using technology in a conscious and skilful way (not just as an operator, but as a creator) and experimenting with different musical contexts, media and different types of audiences. After synthesising a thorough knowledge and appreciation of historically and culturally diverse music they are freed to innovate creatively having developed the skills and inner expressive potential. SEA:ASCF CURRICULUM: THE ARTS INTRODUCTION Page 10 of 15

11 Australian Steiner Curriculum Framework THE ARTS General Capabilities Literacy In the Australian Steiner Curriculum Framework: The Arts, students have the opportunity to appreciate language both as interpreters and creators by engaging with texts, song and lyrics. Interpreting texts in representation in Music, Speech and Drama, Visual Arts, Media Arts and Eurythmy and Dance develops connection to meaning. Setting them to music or interpreting them in Speech and Drama, Eurythmy or Dance requires an understanding of metre and emphasis. Students become more and more aware of consonants, vowels and pronunciation through developing their singing technique or speech formation. Senior students also learn the specialist terms and expressions for discussing and understanding all of the arts and their elements or concepts. The expression of the nuances of observation and apprehension of techniques in the arts develops their capacity for choosing appropriate language as a means of communicating and deepening understanding and appreciation. Numeracy In the Australian Steiner Curriculum Framework: The Arts, numeracy underlies and is experienced by students in the creative patterning of the world they represent, e.g. drawing of a shell with a perfect logarithmic spiral form, in Eurythmy or dance through the mathematical harmonies and patterning of the music they express, in speech and drama through metre such as hexameter. Ernst Bindel xi suggests that in musical experience there is inside each of us an unseen mathematician busily calculating the ratios and proportions that enable us to have an aesthetic experience of music. In order to distinguish pitches, we have to make these calculations, however unconsciously, so to train the ear is to work with number at a profound level. In the gradual understanding of rhythmic relationships, there is much scope for number work, for instance in the use of fractions when dealing with the subdivisions of the whole note. Senior students, in their study of string and vibrating air columns use number ratios to understand the phenomena of acoustics. They also relate these findings to the proportions of the human body. Musical structures with their divisions into bars and sections also deal with number. In their expression of the arts students develop skills in use of geometrical forms, measurement, scale, proportion and understanding of space in staging for a dramatic production or layout of visual artworks and media products. Information and communication technology (ICT) Capability In the Australian Steiner Curriculum Framework: The Arts, the students of Kindergarten to Class 6 do not use ICT directly in arts education but the skills needed are scaffolded so that the transition to ICT brings a high level of perceptual and expressive skills as well as technical expertise. Senior students learn how to use computer graphics in the Visual Arts and recording equipment, electronic keyboards and other electronic sound and text sources in Music, Dance and Speech and Drama. They learn how to use software programs for the arts e.g. Garage Band and Abelton for recording and mixing music and Sibelius or Finale for notating music. They use online resources to find SEA:ASCF CURRICULUM: THE ARTS INTRODUCTION Page 11 of 15

12 texts and audio recordings that help them to experience Music, Dance and Drama from other times and cultures. They may use applications or online resources such as Skype and Youtube to access prerecorded or real-time tutoring and performance opportunities. In Media Arts they develop the specialised knowledge, technological skills and vocabulary to make, discuss and analyse a wide range of media including: streamed media, television, social media, newspapers, radio and film. Critical and Creative Thinking In the Australian Steiner Curriculum Framework: The Arts, exploration and experience of the world is taken up by the imagination and leads to expression of thoughts, feelings and impulses in music, dramatic performance, visual representation or movement. This involves experimentation as the student makes choices of e.g. tones, texts, colours, forms, choreography or materials and reflects on the expression created, adjusting and analyzing the technique to produce the desired result. In their own and other people s artworks they reflect on the inner meaning created and its relationship to their own world experience and views. They sense and increasingly articulate the artist s viewpoint, bias or frame of reference. Making within the arts involves many opportunities for critical thinking and analysis such as deciding on alternative solutions in composition exercises, evaluating performances and planning for improvement in the future or ascertaining the roles of different instruments heard in a piece of music. As students enter later years there is more emphasis on their ability to understand and imagine larger scale artistic performances, including new forms of digital media. Creative thinking is found in the enormous range of choices available in each art form e.g. in music composition and speech work (pitch and rhythm combination, the choice of instruments, dynamics, articulation); performance (how to phrase a song or text, where to breathe, what dynamics to use) and listening (what a piece of text or piece of music suggests to a listener, how to interpret, decipher it and respond to it). In visual arts these choices help create qualities of movement and rest, unity, harmony, variety, balance and counterbalance, similarity (analogous) and contrast, proportion, pattern, repetition and rhythm. Personal and Social Capability In the Australian Steiner Curriculum Framework: The Arts, creation of artworks allows students to develop their imagination and their creativity in exploring the ideas, materials and techniques. They build perseverance, confidence and empowerment by mastering these diverse materials and techniques through repeated practice and attention to detail. The subtle nuances of colour mixing, of tonal qualities in voice, of breathing in speech formation and presence in body language or gesture are the result of sensitivity of feeling and perception. Practice of the arts provides opportunities to develop personal skills such as self-discipline through practicing and initiative, courage and commitment in carrying out a performance or finishing an artwork for exhibition. Social competence is developed through working with others in duos or small groups. Musical composition, writing of plays, choreography and media design in small groups, particularly, requires a great deal of awareness of one s own and others strengths and weaknesses and the need to listen to ideas from other people. They also learn to integrate feedback and to appreciate diverse viewpoints. As students develop their individual characteristics, the arts can be an important part of their sense of identity. Vocal music, dramatic expression, dance and Eurythmy enable them to experience their bodies in a tangible and healthy way. The arts provide opportunities for emotional expression, communication skills and leadership as well as being a supportive contributor to group tasks. SEA:ASCF CURRICULUM: THE ARTS INTRODUCTION Page 12 of 15

13 Ethical Understanding In the Australian Steiner Curriculum Framework: The Arts, students develop insights, skills and perspectives around the need for ethical discernment in expression of viewpoints which may potentially be discriminatory, untruthful, biased or show disrespect. The balance between freedom of expression and ethical behavior is consciously explored in the later years. In the early years, children experience the gift of the teacher s guidance in choosing artworks that represent the Good, True and Beautiful in the world so that they have a frame of reference. Students consider the role of the arts in ethical comment and they develop empathy for the impact of artistic expression which crosses over the boundaries of ethical principles. The arts require a respectful approach, in terms of respecting the creations of other people, such as artworks or performances and the presence created in shared artistic experiences. An example would be the magical silence engendered at the end of a piece of music. Here students can develop the ability to allow the music to disappear in its own time and not disrupt the change of mood. The business aspects of the arts industry can be studied including the ethics involved in concepts such as intellectual property and attitudes towards commercialization of the arts. Intercultural understanding In the Australian Steiner Curriculum Framework: The Arts, through experiencing and learning about the arts from different parts of the world and from different periods of time (in the World Tales in Classes 1 and 2, the mythological and cultural studies in Classes 3-6 and the historical studies in Classes 6 and beyond), students gain an appreciation for different cultures and ways of living. Through learning the arts in conjunction with human geography and history, different parts of the world and different periods of time can be brought to life. Students can gain the ability to imagine other life situations apart from their own. The arts have a unique ability to transport the listener, observer, creator or performer to another culture or era as these are clearly defined by particular artistic qualities and characteristics. They grow in empathy and tolerance as they learn to experience other ways of life and their expression through the arts. This gives them a context for their experience of their own culture and helps develop multiple viewpoints and flexible thinking. High school students develop their ability to recognize and analyse particular cultural characteristics, including their approaches to the arts, belief systems and histories. SEA:ASCF CURRICULUM: THE ARTS INTRODUCTION Page 13 of 15

14 Australian Steiner Curriculum Framework THE ARTS Cross-Curriculum Priorities Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures Students may engage with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artworks, learning to listen and appreciate singing and playing songs and chants, hearing stories in drama performances, appreciating Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander dance, creating or appreciating visual artworks and participating in festivals. They learn to perceive and understand the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander relationship between People, Culture and Country/Place and how it is expressed through the arts. Asia and Australia s engagement with Asia The Arts Curriculum is followed in conjunction with the Main Lesson Curriculum and this involves immersion in the stories and histories of Asia, such as in the Ancient India Main Lesson. This will involve recitation, drama, drawing, painting and sculpture, dance, singing and playing music from Asia. Senior students may learn to place these arts in cultural and historical contexts. In studying and experiencing the arts from Asia, senior students will learn about their history, rich belief systems and traditions and the influence of Asian culture on both world culture and Australian culture and artistic expression. Sustainability The Arts provide a means for expression to explore and to advocate for social change with regard to sustainability issues and a vehicle for communicating viewpoints on related political, commercial or social factors within and between communities to foster sharing of insights and cooperation for a more sustainable future. From the earliest stories about the child who makes e.g. a musical pipe from a fallen pear tree, ecology and sustainability are part of the Arts Curriculum. Instruments, pigments and costumes in the early years are best when not too finished such as using seed-pods as shakers, resonant stones or sticks for clapping sticks or making in handwork lessons the simple props, jewelry or costumes for a drama performance. Aspects of sound pollution or sustainable use of natural plant based paints and dyes may also be experienced and later investigated. Having been exposed in a pictorial and emotionally rich way to the ideas of sustainability as younger children, students can approach them more intellectually in the upper school years, through conscious care of instruments, consideration of photocopying and paper usage, noise pollution and the dangers of very loud music. The deeper issues of sustainability are also addressed in historical studies of artists and cultures. i Barnes, H & Lyons, N. (1979) Education as an Art in Educating as an Art: The Rudolf Seiner Method. ii ibid iii Australian Curriculum; The Arts July 2013 iv ibid SEA:ASCF CURRICULUM: THE ARTS INTRODUCTION Page 14 of 15

15 v Rawson, M and Richter, T. The Educational Tasks and Content of the Steiner Waldorf Curriculum. vi Steiner, R Basel Course 1920 vii Australian Curriculum Version 8.1 viii Richter and Rawson Tasks and Content of the Steiner Waldorf Curriculum; Stockmeyer E. A. Karl. Rudolf Steiners Curriculum for Waldorf Schools. ix Oddleifson, E. (1995) Boston Public Schools as Arts-Integrated Learning Organisations. Centre for Arts in Basic Curriculum. Hingham. x Ibid xi Bindel, Ernst, 1950/51 The Numerical Basis of Music, Stuttgart SEA:ASCF CURRICULUM: THE ARTS INTRODUCTION Page 15 of 15