Recently Professor Steve Seidel from the Department of Art of Education Research Institute of Harvard University has delivered a brilliant lecture to the teachers and students in our School of Preschool Education and Special Education. The lecture is on American Children’s Art Education: Learn in the process of engaging in the art activities.
Professor Seidel, now director of the Department of Art Education in the Harvard University and chairman of 0 Point Project of Harvard, has been long engaged in studying art education and teacher education, and concerning on the evaluation and practice of studies. Some of his research have made profoundly earth-shaking influence on the American or even the global education field. As a nucleus leader of the world famous 0 Point Project, Dr.Steve Seidel is the commanding general of many projects. He is now in charge of Evidence Project, Making Learning Visible and so on. His long and deepened cooperation with Reggio in Italy has been praised highly by the peers. His work Making Learning Visible has been translated into Chinese Making Children’s Learning Visible: Children in Individual Learning and Collective Learning, which had been published in 2007 by East China Normal University Press.
Professor Seidel thinks that in the experience of learning art, children are usually required to take part in the processes of creating original art works. Those processes include song and music contribution, spontaneous performance, art reviews, performance, exhibition (show), practice (rehearsal) and experimental creation. Each process mentioned above is a necessary part of effective art learning. However, beside those, what else is necessary in Engagement-based art learning? In order to explore this question, Professor Seidel shares a story about an American girl’s track of learning painting with us, from which he draws some key experiences of art learning.
In the lecture Professor Seidel introduces a series of her newest research achievements in Harvard through some cases of American children’s art education. Our students think that this lecture helps us know the 1st hand information of the world-known “0 Point Project” and get in touch with the vivid cases of American children’s are education. Compared with the current teaching situation in China, the lecture can enlighten our creative thinking and stimulate our enthusiasm for research.v
