SHELLEY TRACEYQUEEN’S UNIVERSITY

BELFAST

Crossing thresholds and expanding conceptual spaces: using arts-based methods to extend teachers’ perceptions of

literacy

Adult literacy practitioners: start of teacher education programme

“I see literacy as basic English language, as reading and writing”

“Literacy is the ability to communicate in your daily life”

End of course

“My understanding of literacy has changed dramatically over the past two years. In today’s world as methods of communication have expanded, it is no longer simply being able to read and write.

Due to the development of technology such as computers, television and mobile phones it is almost impossible to shop, use banking systems or apply for a job without having a good understanding of literacy and technology. People with poor literacy skills find it difficult to integrate into society and to be independent and make their own choices and decisions.

To me being literate should be more than being an economic asset to the government - it should be about people fulfilling their ambitions and reaching their full potential.”

Overview

Context: teacher education programme for adult literacy practitioners at Queen’s University Belfast.

Use of arts-based approaches to enhance practitioners’ conceptualizations of literacy

Responses and teachers’ evaluations of these methods.

Discussion on assessment and visual literacy

IALS

• International Adult Literacy Survey

• 1994-1996 • 26 countries• More than 20% of adults in NI

with lowest level of skills

IALS questioned

MethodologyCriteriaResultsDeficit model of literacy

Essential Skills for Living Strategy

Department for Employment and Learning (NI), 2002

24% of post-16 population of Northern Ireland at lowest level

Standards for learning for adult literacy and numeracy and frameworks for teacher qualifications

Essential Skills for Living

Definition of literacy and numeracy as Essential Skills:

“the ability to communicate by talking and listening, reading and writing: to use numeracy: and the ability to handle information”

Focus on employability skills

Essential Skills Strategy

The Literacy Ladder Crowther, Hamilton and

Tett (2001:1-2)

The common way to think about literacy at the moment is by seeing it as a ladder that people have to climb up.

“Deficit” and “Wealth” models of literacy

Skills-based models (Skills for Life)

New Literacy Studies: literacy as social practice

Brian Street: models of literacy

Autonomous model: set of technical reading and writing skills

Ideological model: based on literacy in context

Situated literacies: different literacies in different domains/ aspects of life

Visual literacy

Students

Previous teaching experience in adult literacy: 0 to 48 months

Teaching qualification: 15%

Working full-time and studying part-time.

Teaching practice placements : - further education colleges, alternative education,

training organizations, programmes for unemployed people, prison service, voluntary and community organizations, hostels for homeless people.

Literacy Travellers’ Tree (2007)

Alberto et al (2007):perceiving literacy as a capacity for reading and writing limits the participation in learning of those with severe learning difficulties

Notion of literacy as “obtaining information from the environment” (p. 234) in a variety of modes, only one of which is reading words.”(ibid.)

Literacy and the arts

Teacher education: extending reflection

Leitch and Day (2000: 186-187)

“the development of more complex models of reflection, related to purpose, which take greater cognisance of existing knowledge from other disciplines, particularly those aspects of psychology concerned with cognitive processes including problem-finding, insight, wisdom, creativity”

Modes of reflection

• Thinking• Critical

reflection• Discussion• Writing• Drawing

• Imagining• Reverie• Meditating• Dreaming• Visualising

Individual collective verbal non-verbal process product

… arts-based methods of inquiry still wrestle

for mainstream acceptance in the world of educational research

but are nevertheless rich in their capacity to create opportunities for teachers to reflect and

self-direct

Leitch, 2008, p. 150

Arts-based approaches

“Arts encourage a transcendental capacity. They allow the creator and the viewer to imagine possible ways of being, encourage the individual to move personal boundaries, and challenge resistance to change and growth.”

(Higgs,2008:552)

Innate “artistry” involved in the craft of teaching (Eisner (2002, 382-383).

Arts-based methods

‘… immersion in the uncertainties of experience, ‘finding’ a personally fulfilling path of inquiry, and the emergence of understanding through an often unpredictable process of exploration.”

McNiff, 2000: 15

Creativity: process

PreparationIncubationInspirationIlluminationVerification (evaluation)

(Poincaré)

Creative Reflection model (Tracey, 2007)

1. Preparation for Engagement

2. Play

3. Exploration

4. Synthesis

Processes involved in creativity

Phase 1: Preparation

• Entering a creative space; threshold activities

• liminal spaces: uncertainty • need for receptivity: Negative

Capability: John Keats , “when a man is capable of being in

uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason” (Buxton Foreman, 1895).

Meyer and Land (2006): learning involves the occupation of a liminal space during the process of mastery of a threshold concept

Threshold activity

Phase 2: Play

Phase 3: Exploration

Non-verbal explorationNeed for incubation timeUse of metaphor

Exploring and extending teaching spaces

Creating an ideal teaching and learning environment ...

Phase 4: Synthesis

• Reflection

• Evaluation

Use of arts-based work (2008/2009)

Course sessionsAssignments:- Group exhibition - Reflective learning journal- Final reflection in teaching practice portfolio

Course sessions

Creative thinking activitiesStorytelling PostersModels for learning and themesAcrostic poemsCollages Resources for literacy teaching

Group work on motivation

What are you like?

What are you like?

Assessment: Creating exhibitions

First year of the programme : interactive group exhibition on any aspect of literacy

Posters and creative artefacts, creative writing activities, dance and mime.

“This was a great learning activity”.

“It allows for imagination, creativity and collaboration with peers.”

“Good ideas for learners”.

Reflection

“Images were used in my reflection on the group project and I felt that they did help when writing up my reflection. I used them to enhance the presentation and to ‘jog my memory’ of the presentation.”

Teachers’ evaluations

Reflections on images  “Images really helped me to reflect

and my learners to do the same”. “Learners in my organisation are

extremely visual.” “Helped with story telling;” “Allows the imagination to run wild

but in a constructive way”.

Creative Writing

“Can be adapted and used on a variety of areas and learning levels”

“Learners like reflecting on their disabilities though poetry”.

“Acrostic poetry was new to me, found interesting. Allows for creativity.”

Acrostic poem

Shape Poem

STORY TELLING

“I have incorporated storytelling into my class and found it useful and important to learners”

“Learners with [learning] difficulties enjoy this activity”.

Assessment: Reflecting on images

“The use of images, whether of one’s own or another’s creation, can reveal our otherwise hidden worldview assumptions. Those hidden assumptions have a profound impact on the way we think and make meaning from our experiences. It is in the purposeful estrangement from those assumptions, envisioning of alternative realities, and critical examination of both old and new points of view – although not necessarily in a conscious and rational way – that transformative learning occurs.” (Hoggan, 2009, p. 73)

I find self-reflection quite difficult. I find it hard to express myself through words - I can’t seem to be able to state how I feel using only language. Being able to use [Windows] Moviemaker greatly enhanced my ability to reflect not only on what I had learned but also on what my learners had learned. To say all I wanted to, using only words, would have required me to write page after page! Using Moviemaker allowed me to address the many intricacies of my reflection in a fuller and more interesting format.

“It’s a great idea and I liked learning how to use Windows Moviemaker, but I just didn’t have the time for this.”

Digital Images (Mullan and Tracey)

Photos: of practice: “really enabled me to see my teaching

through the eyes of my learners – especially when they took their own photographs”

“…photos and images of my practice provided the opportunity to show others the nature of my teaching and the range of learners.”

Short films: Windows Moviemaker.

Collaging research

Rese

arc

hin

g C

oll

ag

e

COLLAGE-MAKING

Meaning-making

Electro

nic co

llage

Paper-b

ase

d

colla

ge

Text

Image

Rese

ar

ch

qu

estio

ns

Although none of the learners in my class made it as far as accreditation while I was there, we did use the final session as a time of acknowledgement. The learners participated in collage making (something none of the men had ever tried before), with the theme “What I have learnt about myself”. Afterwards we engaged in a discussion about the collages, what they meant to us, and how much we had learnt about ourselves, as learners and as people, through the classes. I acknowledged the work each individual learner had done and highlighted their progression with particular note to some of the more difficult areas in their literacy learning that they had overcome. Everyone, myself included, came away from that final session inspired by the potential and possibilities we had seen for ourselves and each other.

Use of arts-based methods in assignments

RESULTS

Collage : responses

“Great for kinaesthetic

learning sessions.”

“something that I could use with my

learners”

Response ReflectiveLearning Journal:Year1 (n=13)

ReflectiveLearning Journal:Year2(n=14)

Teaching Practice Portfolio: Year 1(n=13)

Teaching Practice Portfolio: Year 2(n=14)

No use of images/arts-based methods

4 3 1 0

Use of existing images as focus for reflection

2 6 5 7

Images created for assignment (drawings/ cartoons/games)

3 3 2 6

Use of photographs 0 0 1 2

Film (Windows Moviemaker) 1 1 1 2

Collage 2 0 1 2

Acrostic poetry 2 7 4 6

Storytelling/ creative writing 1 1 2 2

Total: 15 21 17 27

Reflective learning journal

Reflective learning journal

Student work online

http://www.qub.ac.uk/eskills

At the end of the course

“I have learnt about visual literacy, for example, which I had not considered before.”

 “I now see literacy as a complex web of realities – different for different learners and communities.”

“My definition of literacy now includes speaking and listening, also visual literacy and social practice view of literacies.”

“I understand that literacy is much more than just writing, that it takes many forms and this impacts on the resources I use.”

• Visual literacy in adult literacy teacher education programmes

• Frameworks for the assessment of arts-based work in higher education.

Discussion

Visual literacy

Use of images in assessment process for literacy learning

Griffin (2008): because students in the twenty first century are receptive to visual images, this does not necessarily mean they are knowledgeable about them or about aspects of visual design

 

Visual literacy in Higher Education

“The challenge of transforming print-centric colleges and universities into a visually rich and dynamic community of creators and scholars is daunting. Although the information technologists have laid the infrastructure and although commerce and entertainment have provided examples, higher education remains bogged down in its traditions—traditions that were highly effective in a past era.” Metros and Woolsey, 2006:80-81

Analysing images

Visual literacy not the capacity “to identify images and to parse them according to the ways they refer to the world.” (Elkins, 2002, p. 137)

Visual literacy

Langford (2003): the skills of interpreting, decoding, analyzing and synthesizing the images around us.

Rose (2001) set of questions to enhance awareness of the nature of the image itself, its production, and the role of the audience in the production.

“The course has opened up for me the creative and powerful aspects of literacy. It has also made me aware that I have neglected my own development in this area.”