On the road of aesthetics towards better education

In 2001, the aesthetic element of all public and private education was introduced by law. In the Danish Act on the Educational Environment of Pupils and Students it is written that all pupils and students in Denmark have the right to a good psychological, physical and aesthetic educational environment. It is new that the aesthetic element is now legislated, and that the schools and educational establishments are to prioritise it along the lines of the physical and psychological elements.

By educational environment consultant and architect Ulla Kjærvang, The Danish Centre of Educational Environment (DCUM)

The Danish Act on the Educational Environment of Pupils and Students is supported by the Act on the Danish Primary and Lower Secondary School and Fælles Mål (Common Goals), which the government introduced in 2003.

In section 1 subsection 2 of the Act on the Danish Primary and Lower Secondary School it is written that: ”The Folkeskole (Primary and Lower Secondary School) shall endeavour to create such opportunities for experience, industry and absorption that the pupils develop awareness, imagination and an urge to learn, so that they acquire confidence in their own possibilities and a background for forming independent judg-ments and for taking personal action.”
The aesthetic dimension helps the students develop awareness, imagination and a desire to learn. Furthermore, requirements for a practical and musical dimension of all subjects are made in the latest revision of the Act on the Danish Primary and Lower Secondary School.

In Common Goals, which the government introduced in 2003, it is written: ”The pupils must develop working methods and expression forms. In other words: they must learn to learn. It is important that the school acknowledges that the world is experienced with all senses. By receiving impressions and processing these impressions to expressions, the children and young people become better at choosing and rejecting in a world of infinite possibilities. The musical, creative and practical activities make it possible for all pupils to develop as many sides of themselves as possible. The creative sides of the pupils are to be developed in close interaction with the other skills.”

This expresses a desire to include all the senses more in the educational environment of the schools through musical, practical and creative activities. The aesthetic educational environment includes these elements, among other things.

Everyday Life Aesthetics
The aesthetic educational environment includes architecture, outside environments, interior design and aesthetic activities. Aesthetic educational environment is about whether the surroundings and environment are stimulating for the senses, and about giving pupils a multitude of impressions and possibilities of expressing themselves. The aesthetic educational environment is closely connected to the educational approach and work form of the school. The dreary concrete schoolyards and empty common rooms are examples of tedious and unfriendly places for the pupils to spend time and bad aesthetics. But bad acoustics and a bad indoor climate also have a negative effect. Furthermore, the teaching methods and the aesthetic/practical/musical life that takes place at the school have to be taken into account.

The aesthetics of the educational environment are not just about making things aesthetically pleasing for the eye, but also about the surroundings and activities that affect all senses in the everyday life of the school. There are aesthetics – or aesthetic experiences – in everything around us. And they have an effect on us. On the way we thrive and the way we feel about each other. We call this the everyday life aesthetics, as they exist everywhere in our everyday lives.

Education can be rich or poor in sensory activities. Especially the meaning and function of the senses in the learning process are important for the development of the aesthetics in the education. This means sight and the senses of hearing, smell, taste and touch, but also other senses, such as the muscular sense.

Working with aesthetics in the education means looking at the teaching method. Does the teaching method appeal to the children? Is it the best way to teach, in order for the children to understand the taught material? Are the senses included in the teaching? It is not enough to explain everything by means of the blackboard, the children have to get outside and test and experience what they have been taught. They have to get out and run 1 km to experience how far that is or draw and paint insects to study their colours and shapes.

This means that the concept of aesthetics in the educational environment comprises much more than just the purely technical skills that are being taught in the visual arts room. If you look at the whole picture of the aesthetic educational environment at a school, everything is included: Lessons in visual arts, woodwork, physical education, home economics, projects, exhibitions, theatre, the little initiatives in the academic lessons, the surroundings, the buildings, the interior design etc. It is the overall picture that influences the well-being of the pupils and the teachers and the everyday life at the school. The more different initiatives there are, the better the aesthetics will be in the educational environment of the school.

Improves academic learning
If you feel good in an educational situation, you are more susceptible to learning. That is the well-documented basis for working with the aesthetic educational environment.
 
In the Danish Act on the Educational Environment of Pupils and Students it is written that the educational environment must help promote the development and learning of the pupils. The practical and musical dimension is very much part of this. Being part of aesthetic learning processes develops and enriches the competences of the pupils. Apart from working with pictures, dancing, music, practical assignments, etc., as a quality in themselves, working with and being absorbed with all their senses in the aesthetics gives the pupils an aesthetic awareness and makes them capable of thinking and acting creatively, being inventive, having creative power, expressing themselves, working together and gives them the ability to organise.

Furthermore, research shows that working practically and musically also improves the academic learning.

Recent brain research and sense psychology show that better learning results are achieved when you make comprehensive and multisensory demands on the brain, as the emotion-relevant right cerebral hemisphere apparently can provide functional support for the cognitive work of the left cerebral hemisphere. Senses, consciousness and feelings are all connected.

The Hungarian composer and musical educationist Zoltan Kodaly worked with the meaning of music for learning all his life. Back in the 1950s he convinced the Hungarian politicians to carry out an experiment. The pupils of 100 schools were given one additional hour of musical education every day, and scientists investigated how these pupils developed in comparison with pupils of the same age in other schools.

Zoltan Kodaly believed that more music would improve the pupils’ achievements in all subjects and he turned out to be right. The scientists found out that the music lessons apparently gave the pupils easier access to the other subjects.

Some Danish schools have also experienced that when pupils are given the opportunity to express themselves and immerse themselves in music and dancing, it improves their ability to concentrate and their ability to immerse themselves in a subject, and this has a positive effect on the academic subjects. If you have trouble concentrating, it is hard to receive education. But experiences also show that the effort has to be prioritised highly with regard to time as well as quality in order for it to have an effect.

When the taught subject is put into a practical and musical connection, the pupils understand the subject better.

Professor Mogens Hansen from the Danish University of Education points out that it would be possible to reduce the number of pupils receiving remedial instruction from 12% to 5% by making the school more practical and musical. ”There are children who are not and will never be abstract thinkers and particularly interested in academic subjects and they will never thrive in a school with mainly book-learning. It is not about disregarding math or Danish, but more about taking a practical starting point,” he writes in the ar-ticle ”Children’s many types of intelligence and the impractical school” from the Danish Ministry of Edu-cation.

Furthermore, the schools also experience that the practical and musical activities give the students valuable social experiences that strengthen the social environment, and this gives the individual students good positive experiences that strengthen their sense of self.  It is hard to fail in practical and musical subjects and, as the American professor of child development Dr. David Elkind says in an interview in the Danish Paper Politiken,: “Good experiences strengthen the children and give them self-confidence. When the children are thriving in school, they are susceptible to learning.”

From 1994 – 1996 the Danish Ministry of Education started the development project: ”The practical, musical dimension of education”. The purpose was to involve a number of schools in the development of methods and teaching practises within the practical musical dimension. Thirty Danish schools were involved.

During the work with the projects, the teachers for example experienced new sides of the children, as they were more motivated to learn than before. Children who used to be difficult to get involved in the lessons where now more committed and this had a positive effect on the more academic subjects.

By now, there is much evidence and many experiences that all in all show that giving priority to the aesthetic element in the educational environment of the primary and lower secondary educational environment has a positive effect on the well-being and learning of the pupils. Furthermore, the actual aesthetics are of great value with regard to manners and cultural values. 

Therefore, aesthetics must be integrated and anchored in the culture of the entire school and not just in the lessons in visual arts, woodwork, sports etc. It has to be included in every educational connection where it is possible to experience with the body, the hands and all the senses.

The surroundings and the education
The surroundings and the education influence each other. The physical frames affect the education or the activities that are to take place and the education helps set the standard for the design and shape of the physical frames. Research shows that better lighting and indoor climate and less noise have a positive effect on learning. Furthermore, the architecture can be stimulating and inspiring to be in and the rooms can have soul and encourage new teaching methods. At the moment, we see how newly built schools that are adapted to new teaching methods where the class room is abolished and larger teaching areas are created instead, with adjacent group rooms, practical rooms and workshops.

Aesthetics have to be included in the architecture. If you are making new buildings, there has to be room to express and present the products that conclude the aesthetic learning processes. Aesthetics have to be prioritised in the entire fundamental idea of the architecture.

If we only look at the interior design of the inschooling, the rooms must signal that here we can grab a paint brush or work with wood in any connection. Obviously, it has to take place within a fixed framework, but an inschooling area that is full of opportunities for creative and musical activities – as opposed to the sterile class room – is an important signal to the pupils. It should motivate them and make them want to participate in the practical and musical activities.

The size and placement of the rooms is of significance to the development of the creative processes. At the school Møllehøjskolen at Viborg they have in the pre-school class chosen to have a large common room in the middle, which is then divided into smaller rooms for different types of social activities. From here you can move directly into the different workshop rooms: The dress-up room, the wood workshop, the picture/painting room, the more formal class rooms with blackboard, chairs and tables, the body room with tools and soundproof walls, the cosy common room with toys, computers, sofas and books, the music room and the kitchen.

Here there is room for a large number of activities, and the different workshops can be shut down and established in accordance with needs and development.

When you decorate a room where there has to be room for practical/musical activities, it is important to look at signal and symbol values and choose good practical solutions, in order to make the room inspiring and titillating to the senses, while making sure that it is easy to keep tidy and clean. Rooms can signal security. They can encourage activities and stimulate the desire for creative activities.

Preconditions for the inclusion of aesthetics.
In order for the pupils to be able to express themselves and be stimulated aesthetically, there are some preconditions that have to be met.

The management of the school and the teachers have to be able to see the inclusion of the aesthetic, practical and musical elements as a quality in the education and culture of the school. The teachers have to look at their teaching with fresh eyes, they have to change their perception of the practical and musical element as something purely practical and make it a different and much wider concept about education and learning.

The development project from the Danish Ministry of Education concludes that if the present teaching processes are to include aesthetic and musical aspect to a larger degree, the basic perception has to be changed, which includes:

• A change in the understanding of the pupils’ way of learning, which will then also change the teachers’ way of teaching.
• An understanding of how the different teaching methods can make it possible for the pupils to gather information and skills independently and work with and communicate their experiences.
• An understanding of the fact that the development of the educational content is connected to participation of the pupils. Thus, there is going to be room for the special experiences, percep-tions and ideas of the pupils.
• An understanding for the development of educational environments where the work methods make room for many different ways of understanding and expressing yourself in the community of the class.

There are a number of parameters that are often present at the schools where the aesthetic element has been successfully integrated. These schools often have a leader who sees the opportunities of this and pri-oritises the area highly. Furthermore, the management has support from the group of teachers. Together they make the aesthetic aspect part of the values and planning of the school, and it is prioritised financially and organisationally.

The leader should be open to new ways of organising the education, in order to create room and time for musical and practical projects. Working with aesthetics takes time. The scheduled lessons do not provide enough time to go into the matter in depth. There has to be time for immersion in projects. Self-governing teams are one way of getting time for projects and the possibility of immersion. At the same time, they make it possible for the teachers to use each other’s resources better and work across subjects, when it is appropriate with regard to the content. In this way, each teacher can better use the resources he/she has within the practical/musical field.

There are many good initiatives in the different schools of the country. Often it is fiery souls who are particularly interested in practical subjects that start good initiatives and the initiatives come alive because of the commitment of these people. Therefore, the management must prioritise having a competent group of fiery souls within the aesthetic area at the school. This can be in the permanent teacher staff or possibly temporarily engaged consultants, such as professional artists, craftsmen etc.

Inclusion of aesthetics
There is no unambiguous answer to how the aesthetic aspect is to be included. The Act on the Educational Environment of Pupils and Students, the Act on the Danish Primary and Lower Secondary School and Common Goal only state that aesthetics are to be included in the educational environment of the school. The individual school has to find out how to do that, in order for the aesthetic aspect to be adapted to the basic ideas of the school.

This means that aesthetics also contain a large degree of freedom, which the individual teacher can ex-plore. There is a freedom in testing new teaching methods, trying out the wacky ideas and seeing what they can do, jumping in at the deep end and observing what the pupils got out of it. The possibilities within the musical and practical field are limitless; it is about finding your methods and ways that work.
 
As a teacher of visual arts, you have the professional foundation to understand the aesthetic area better that many other teachers. It is possible for you to see how the aesthetic aspect can develop in the culture of the school, which projects that need to be started and what they should be about, for example: Decora-tion, shows, exhibitions, trips, new interior design, etc. You can ask yourself: ”What do I think has to be done to saturate all activities and subjects at the school with creative thinking processes and a multitude of opportunities for self-expression? Is it several little workshops, is it the educational viewpoint that needs to be developed, is it the management’s understanding of the area that needs to be expanded, or is it something completely different?
 
In the daily life, educationists or teachers can be aware of:

• Supporting and encouraging curiosity and experimenting. Especially with the pupil who does not already have the desire or the courage.
• Being open to the pupils’ own ideas and show that they are valuable. Say ”that certainly sounds interesting, let us try to figure that out”.
• Being open to many solutions to the problem.
• Being a role model.
• Showing a professional capacity is an important foundation.

While the area of aesthetics is made wider and “regular teachers” move into the area, it is important to recognise your own limitations. Some projects require that an “unqualified” person in the aesthetic area obtain help. Here it is important that the specialist teachers, educationists and teachers work together and exchange experiences and possibly include artists with educational experience from the outside as consultants for a while.
However, there should also be room to throw yourself into the area and possibly fail. It is a development that is always moving forward and an area that needs to be explored all the time.

The practical and musical work has to be an integrated part of the educational work.  There is inspiration to find in the Northern Italian provincial town Reggio Emilia that uses art educationists as part of the permanent staff. The Rudolf Steiner educational theory can also give inspiration to the educational work in the practical and musical field.

Ideas and initiatives
One of the themes of the development from the Danish Ministry of Education was the use of hands and senses. It was about how the education can be adapted, in order to develop the use of the hands and senses in the learning process and about how experiences can give sensory impressions.

In the publication from the project ”The practical musical dimension in the education” it is described how a 5th grade at a large city school works with a project where the practical/musical dimension is integrated:

”The teachers and the pupils have decided that the theme should be about the weather and the seasons. The content is chosen on the basis of the pupils’ questions and ideas, and as usual the learning should as far as possible take place through experiments and concrete practical testing.

The pupils talk in groups about what they would like to learn about the weather:

Why does it rain? Why does lightning occur? What are clouds, where do they come from and why are some of them black? Why can you see your breath in winter? Can people affect the weather?

These and many other questions and ideas are written down. They are divided into subjects after debate in class and are written on a plate that is placed on the blackboard. Then pupils and teachers can jointly check if answers have been found for the questions and add new questions that occur during the work.

In a collection of technical books, the pupils find some answers and some methods for finding out more. Different attempts in class result in practical knowledge:

Hot water is put in a bottle that is closed with a balloon. After a while, the balloons are blown up by the hot air. The pupils wonder at the phenomenon, formulate different explanations and end up concluding that hot air takes up more space than cold air.

Homemade paper spirals are hung in different places in class and show movement over the radiators. Again the pupils wonder, talk about different explanations and finally conclude: Hot air rises up.

It is obvious that these experiments made the abstract concepts described in the technical books more understandable to the pupils. The concepts did not mean anything to them until they tested them in practice. Later in the progress of the project, it was an advantage for the understanding to be able to refer to the experiments.

Furthermore, the pupils made collages about different weather types, they sang seasonal songs, they made a weathercock for the school, they went to an art museum to see what other artists have done to show their experience of the weather, they made poems about the weather, the made colour palettes for the seasons, and finally they rounded off the project by making a dramatisation in the shape of a radio play where weather and wind played an important part in the plot.

The pupils acquired knowledge and skills by using their senses and own experiences in many different ways. The teachers noticed that when the pupils experience that they can do something, become better at something and learn something new, it improves the self-confidence as well as respect and tolerance to-wards each other.”

At the school called Vejlebroskolen in Ishøj, there has for many years been an arrangement that is about the pupils taking part in decorating the school with a visual arts teacher. The visual arts teacher has six lessons per week where classes can come and make projects. For example, a class can use the arrangement in connection with a project where there are to be made pictures, sculptures or something else. No fixed amount of money has been set aside; the money is continuously taken from for example the inventory account or the maintenance account. The inclusion of the pupils in the decoration for example has the positive consequence that the school practically never experiences vandalism.

The school called Vahl Barneskole in Stockholm in Sweden uses a lot of workshop work to strengthen the solidarity and the lingual development. With 90 % bilingual and 20 different languages at the school it can be difficult to find a common cultural basis and language. Working practically and musically gives the children an experience of the cultural solidarity and a concrete platform to help understand the language. Where book-learning can be a hindrance to learning, workshop work is the solution. The school has suc-ceeded with many workshop lessons in the low grades, which are combined with conversations and exercises where the pupils have to explain what they are working with.

At the school Rødkilde Skole they have established a nature class that regularly moves the lessons out into nature. For example one day all year round. A nature class uses the many opportunities for learning with brain, heart and body the “classrooms with high ceilings” gives. It is an educational work method where the education outdoors is integrated in the regular lessons in class, in that is supports and strengthens it. The pupils test the theoretical knowledge and the skills they achieve indoors by working practically outside. They measure, calculate, saw and make knots to build a bivouac to survive in. They read and count and compare and watch in order to find out which kind of creepy-crawler fell into the trap last night. Outside schools use nature as an educational room in all subjects, not just biology and na-ture/technical science.

ReMida is a scrap yard in Randers where trash and scraps from the industry is left. Here there is material for several practical and musical projects, and the different materials encourage the imagination of the pupils. It is inspired by a similar project in Reggio Emilia, a Northern Italian provincial town where the educational foundations is about stimulating the child’s ability to immerse itself and acquire knowledge about things and events. It is the day-care institution Midgaard that has started the initiative, and all schools and institutions in Randers can make use of the storage.  Apart from the day-care institution Midgaard, institutions in Roskilde, Hirtshals and Vandel also participate in the test project with ReMida.

Several workshop activities are a good way of including the musical/practical dimension in the school. This gives the pupils the opportunity to be creative themselves. It can be permanent or temporary workshops that you establish, apart from the purely technical visual arts room, where you can make kites, masks, models, drama, games, stories, movement, etc.  Workshops can also be established outside, where the pupils can make food, build caves, find insects, take care of gardens, etc. The possibilities are limitless.

The little initiatives in the everyday life can for example be morning song, story of the day, game of the day, poem of the day, riddle of the week, etc. The little things can be just as important as larger and more expensive projects.

You can make educational projects about architecture and the aesthetics of the surroundings. Let the children help decorate or let them make little models of their dream classroom. A lot of inspiration can be obtained from the children in connection with rebuilding and redecoration.

The storyline method is based on the children’s own knowledge of the world and the pupils’ creative and argumentative thinking is appreciated. Pupils are active in the learning process and they learn through ex-periences by investigating, exploring, reflecting, debating and acting.

Conclusion
If the aesthetic element in the educational environment is to be taken seriously, it has to be anchored in the entire daily life of the school. It has to be a continuous effort, as aesthetics are a quality that has to be worked with continuously, if it is to contribute to the spirit and culture of the school.

Viewing life aesthetically can become a life style that brings quality to the everyday life.  An old Japanese saying says ”if you focus your attention on something, you transform it”. The aesthetic aspect is this kind of “something”.

If you are to do well academically and at the same time experience quality of life, you cannot forget play, creativity, imagination and craft. The aesthetic activities make it possible to achieve everything. They are connected to emotion, sensing and experience. The core is in the word experience: Feeling life, that life comes to us, so to speak, obtains quality. And when that happens, you do really well.

Literature

The Act on Danish Primary and Lower Secondary School 1993

”Fælles Mål – elevens alsidige personlige udvikling” (Common goals – the versatile personal development of the pupil), The Danish Ministry of Education, Education Management, The Area of Primary School 2003

Kjærvang U.  (2003) ”Æstetik ja tak – en inspirationsbog om hverdagsæstetik i grundskolen” (Aesthetics, yes please – an informational book about everyday aesthetics in primary school), The Danish Centre of Educational Environment 2003.

Heide Wellershoff and Johannes Beck, ( 2002 ).”Sanserne i undervisningen – om at leve og lære i tingenes nærhed” (The senses in the education – about living and learning in closeness to things), Nordisk Forlag A/S Copenhagen.

Publication ”Den praktiske musiske dimension i undervisningen” (The practical musical dimension in education), The Ministry of Education 1998.

Riis B. (1996 ).”Musiske metoder – i opdragelse og undervisning” (Musical methods – in upbringing and education), Folkeskolens musiklærerforening

”Sæt ikke grænser for dine sanser” (Do not limit your senses), Saint-Gobain Ecophon 2002.
Ringsted S. and Froda J. ( 2nd edition 3rd issue 2002 )

”Plant et værksted – grundbog om æstetisk-skabende virksomhed” (Plant a workshop – textbook about aesthetically creative activities), Nordisk Forlag A/S, Copenhagen,.

Knoop H. H. ( 2002 )”Leg, læring og kreativitet – hvorfor glade børn lærer mere” (Play, learning and creativity – why happy children learn more), ,  Aschehoug Dansk Forlag A/S.

Hansen M. ( 2002 )”Skolens rummelighed –intelligenser, undervisning og læring” (The spaciousness of the school – intelligences, education and learning), Billesø & Baltzer Forlagene.

Kirkeby I. (1998 )”Rum, form, funktion i folkeskolen – temahæfte” (Room, shape, function in primary and lower secondary school – a theme booklet), Undervisningsministeriets forlag.

Falkenberg C. & Håkonsson E.  ( 2000 ). ”Storylinebogen –en håndbog for undervisere” (The storyline book – a handbook for educators) , Kroghs Forlag.

Articles

Sørrig K. (5. Oct. 2003). About the research of brain scientist Matti Bergström”Befri fantasien” (Free the imagination), Berlingske tidende.

Sørensen M. S. (3. Feb. 2003) Interview of childrenresearcher David Elkind  ”Lad dog børnene lege” (Let the children play), Politiken

”Elever finder rytmen” (Pupils find the rhythm), Folkeskolen, no. 9, 2004

”Syng dig klog” (Sing yourself smart), Frie grundskoler, no. 5, April 2004.