Audiovisual – Motion Graphics
Editorial
Photography
Creative school projects
Project-based pedagogy in Art and Design
From 2018 to 2021, I taught Art and Design in a Chinese public school in Beijing, delivering lessons in French to local students of different ages and skill levels. Inspired by Bruno Munari, I developed a methodology in which each creative project lasted three to six lessons, with topics changing, but with a consistent structure of methods based on ten categories.
Context
Project-based pedagogy
in a Chinese public school
Over three years, I taught Art and Design in a Chinese public school; the High school affiliated to Beijing International Studies University. I worked in the Sino-French bilingual program, which offers lessons of French as a foreign language (FLE) as well as arts, sciences and sport to a selected group of students. After few months of trial and error experimentation, I applied a pedagogy of project-based learning through which students could explore a subject by producing creative results to the challenges exposed at each step. Through these projects, they were able to learn French differently, putting into practice their knowledge in an art context.
Students learnt to describe art works, their own results, those of their pairs; they learnt to follow project instructions and explain how projects were done; as well as they expressed feelings and opinions in a classroom converted in a workshop. As such, these language skills were added to the fundamentals that constitute the discipline, being the creative process and the plastic result of each engaging project, thus highlighting the committed posture of each student in his work throughout his artistic adventure. Meanwhile, my position as teacher may have been seen as "a guide on the side" to the students. I became a facilitator, a motivator and a content expert; even an instructional designer or a project manager; having to design and plan projects in which students could think critically, solve problems, collaborate and manage their own time while working. Therefore, in this section of the website, creative teaching methods are explained as they have been applied transversally to the four different grades, taking also into account the different disciplines being taught (drawing, design, architecture, etc.).
Creative methods
Methodology: From/to
The prepositions of time “from / to” define the beginning and end of a project. Between them, the process is characterised by phases of change as a project evolves by steps, and this change may vary from a method to another. By looking closely, there are constants in the projects done with the students that can be analysed, communicated and used repeatedly. They are revealed in ten methods, which I define below, being at the core of more than forty projects, leading us to a structured experimentation. As a designer and pedagogue, I have a vocation for experimentation and I am driven by curiosity for what students may do to respond to the challenges exposed at each step of a project. Methods guide them by posing a stable base on which their creativity may be unleashed, and they allow them to see the work process as essential as the result.
For these methods to be applied, lessons had to be structured. The projects done with students from grade 4 and 5 lasted a period of six to seven lessons of forty minutes each while those done with grade 6 and 7 lasted three lessons each. Every week, students had to respond to a new problem individually or collectively that allowed them to progress in their project. A lesson was always formed of two phases, with fifteen minutes of language notions and art theory to half an hour of practice. In the last lesson, students were assessed and they could finish the unit by presenting their project orally and interacting with the rest of the class. Most of these simple projects were designed from scratch, by getting ideas from different sources of inspiration such as the Chinese and French programs, real-world problems, teacher's past projects and students' lives and interests among other references. Once projects were done, they were categorised as part of a method that would be perfectioned year after year.
Language methods
How to teach a foreign language in a creative context?
The challenge here was also to make students learn a foreign language as complex as French while working on their creative projects. Most of the vocabulary taught to strengthen their oral and written skills varied according to the topics chosen while other words were more constant regardless of the project. These latter are technical terms regularly used in creative fields (tools, colours, verbs of action, etc.). As there are methods to design projects, there are also methods to practice a language in an Art context. Language is present before the project begins, during the process and when it ends. First, students may be asked to follow project instructions, which arouse their comprehension skills. Once it is all completed, they may be asked to explain how they made the project by presenting the process and its stages, which develops their evaluation skills.
Students can solicitate orally their teacher or their classmates to get help and advice while doing their project. Projects’ topics may find an echo in Art history and stimulate the study of artists, designers and architects’ works. As such, students learn to observe, analyse and describe artworks. They also learn to express an opinion or feeling, to discuss their likes and dislikes. After few years, they may even know to justify their answers, taking part in a wider debate. As it is to be noticed, students’ works are of great inspiration, for us teachers, to continually develop inventive teaching methods.
