Brief 6 - Research Brief - Readings in Primary Art Education

• What is art's unique contribution to the education of young children?
• Makes unique contributions to the individual's experiences with and understanding of the world.
• Deals with human consciousness.
• Focuses on individuals and a regard for individuality. 
• Visual aspect of art education. 
• Children need to know the syntax of line, colour, shape, space, texture and so on. 
• Teachers need to teach children to see. 
• Children need to be taught to observe and investigate the visual world. 
• Drawing is the art of discovery. 
• Interest, curiosity, awe, wonder, analysis, discussion, recording, sharing, tactile experience, expression. 
• Art makes significant contributors to the child's ability to observe, investigate and communicate. 
• In some schools children are told or shown in ways which are neutralising that they bear little relation to true sensory experiences. 
• The development of visual intelligence and imagination. 
• Teach the child to look, which is to observe, to see which is to understand and to make which is to transform. 
• The visual arts deal with an aspect of human life that no other area does.
• Art is an intellectual activity in its own special way.  
• Art should attempt to embrace the individual's contribution. 
• Individuality isn't just rates of progress, it is to do with identity, personality traits, qualities, experimental understanding, social realities and forms of expression.
• Individuality involves personal expression. 
• Children learn the power of art as a form of communication.
• Art is an activity where feelings and ideas become forms which are transformed into images which can then be communicated to others. 
• Visual aspect, individuality, consciousness.
• Balanced educational diet. 
• Art is under emphasised. 
• Provides the child with a chance to develop rather more of his faculties and senses.
• To exclude children from knowing and understanding is to deny them access to whole areas of learning. 
• We can't restrict consciousness and sensibility. 
• Art is both a form of communication and a means of expression of feeling which ought to permeate the whole curriculum and the whole life of the school. 
• Art activity constitutes a mode of knowing.