Loans Breathe Creativity and Culture across the Curriculum
National Society for Education in Art & Design Newsletter: No 3: Winter 2002: p2
by Joy McAlpine: Project Manager
In "All Our Futures: Creativity, Culture & Education" (1999), Dr Ken
Robinson persuasively argued for teaching methods and materials that would facilitate the
development of young people's creative abilities and cultural understanding across the
curriculum. Key to this strategy were partnerships between schools and cultural
institutions. Having recently completed a DfES-funded evaluation of learning outcomes from
Museum of Reading loans of real art, artefacts and specimens to schools, one clear finding
was that these objects played a significant part in fulfilling many of the report's
objectives. Outcomes included an increased range of possible teaching approaches and the
development of young people's language ability, their emotional engagement in learning and
their capacity to remember what had been taught.
Evaluation findings on learning and school loans
Interviews with 25 primary and secondary teachers highlighted that cultural objects were
not only used to teach Art & Design (61%) but that 92% of the schools also extended
the use of the loans to teach nearly every area of the curriculum. The teachers (80%)
perceived cultural objects as a contributing factor to creativity in multiple disciplines
and described "best" loan lessons as those that developed imagination.
Finding 7, Finding 8 and Finding 15
In addition to breadth of usage, the loans also encouraged a range of approaches to
learning. Observational drawing rivalled writing answers to questions as the most popular
main activity with loans in 24 classroom observations. Other approaches included art work,
handling, discussing, labelling, ordering, comparing, presenting and play.
Finding 13, Finding 49, Finding 53 and Finding 57
"Discussion" was viewed by teachers as the skill most developed by the loans
followed by observation and questioning. One teacher pointed out that the presence of the
objects stimulated whole group discussion across age, ability, gender, language and
culture differences. In addition, teachers believed that the cultural objects gave young
people an opportunity to express a sense of awe and wonder. They also witnessed increased
enthusiasm and confidence in the subject.
Finding 21
When 24 young people were asked to communicate their memories of any object in a method
of their choice - ten months following loan contact - the majority asked to model them in
three dimensions. It should be no surprise that a created or designed object should be
remembered spatially and reproduced with design-oriented processes. The second most
popular request and product were coloured media drawings.
Finding 76
Young people not only reproduced their memories physically, they also described the
objects' materials, function, colour, texture, shape, size, feel, and smell. The loans
acted as a trigger to recall of the whole learning context including personal feelings,
thoughts, questions, associations, imaginations and conversations. Males with low SAT
scores initiated more objects from memory than any other grouping.
Finding 62, Finding 65, Finding 66, Finding 67, Finding 68, Finding 69, Finding 70, Finding 71, Finding 72, Finding 73, Finding 74, Finding 75 and Finding 77
In conclusion
Teachers are aware of the power of learning from objects and the opportunities they
provide to realise young people's creative capacities and cultural understanding. The
majority of teachers in the evaluation had personal collections from which they taught and
90% preferred museum loans over museum visits for depth of learning. In response to this
evaluation, the Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries has recommended access to
museum loans for schools across England (Renaissance in the Regions, Resource, 2001). It
is the author's hope that many more people will be inspired in their teaching and learning
by these rich educational resources.
Finding 23, Finding 24, Finding 25, Finding 26 and Finding 34
For further information please explore the following findings:
Finding 7: Which curriculum areas do you use the loan objects
to support?
Finding 8: Can you expand on how the loans support the
creative and imaginative elements of the curriculum?
Finding 15: What's the best thing you've ever done with a
loan object?
Finding 49: What was the main activity
Finding 53: Did the loans stimulate the imagination and
encourage creativity?
Finding 13: (in teacher interviews) If you ask the students
to do observational drawing of the loans what are you aiming to encourage?
Finding 57: (in classroom observations) What were the aims
and outcomes of any observational drawing?
Finding 21: Which skills and capacities are most developed
by the use of loans?
Finding 76: What is significant about the way the students
chose to layer their information through a chosen process?
Finding 62: Were any gender or ability differences obvious
in the number of objects which the students remembered?
Finding 65: Which of the physical aspects of the students'
choice objects were described by the students?
Finding 66: What did the students remember about their
conversations with friends at that time?
Finding 67: How did the students describe how their object
felt to touch?
Finding 68: What did the students think when they saw the
object?
Finding 69: What smells did the students associate with the
loans?
Finding 70: What sort of questions did the students ask in
reponse to the loans?
Finding 71: What did the students think that they remembered
the teacher saying when they had the loans in the classroom?
Finding 72: What sort of things did the students say that
they understood as a result of interacting with the object?
Finding 73: What emotions did the students feel when they
used the loans?
Finding 74: What did the students imagine when they saw the
loans?
Finding 75: What were the students reminded of when they saw
the loans?
Finding 77: What did the sutdents wish to do with the loans?
Finding 23: What would teachers order from a loan service?
Finding 24: How important is learning from objects?
Finding 25: Is learning from objects more, equal or less
important than learning from books?
Finding 26: How important is having access to a loan service?
Finding 34: If you had to make a choice between free loans in
the classroom or free visits to the museum which would you prefer and why?
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