With apologies to Dewey:
(Interdisciplinary) thinking is not like a Sausage Machine
How can Art be taught through Maths? How do we understand the logic of proportion through fractions and percentages? Can we teach about environmental issues through fashion? Or sustainable design? The 2022-23 PGDE Secondary Art and Design cohort from the University of Glasgow considered ways to embed interdisciplinary thinking into their teaching practice. Using the multifocal lens of Art and Design and through the creation of large collaborative 'thinking maps', students explored the breadth of their thinking to identify links between subjects and knowledge systems across the curriculum. We wanted to consider how interdisciplinary thinking operates for pupils. Is it just another pedagogical fad or does this run deeper?
As the maps developed and student dialogue intensified, it became easier to understand the curriculum as an interconnected, organic (as opposed to compartmentalised or linear) system of knowledge.
Following the creation of thinking maps, the Art and Design Lecturer asked students to think about how inter/multidisciplinary thinking might be established to reframe learning. Philosopher and educational reformer, John Dewey suggests that no child is dull and that they must be allowed to make connections for their learning to spark a “quick and lively” reaction (1910:35): how can we support the pupil who finds geometry inaccessible or who ‘seems inaccessible to historical facts’?
Each area is connected and interconnected
He reminds us that "thinking is not like a sausage machine" (1910: 39) in which knowledge is linearly set out in sequential order. The thinking maps attempted to embody Dewey's thinking by drawing connecting lines across the vast web of topics and subjects that surface in Art and Design practices. Each area is connected and interconnected in some way, and with other subjects. Dewey suggests "any subject, from Greek to cooking, and from drawing to mathematics, is intellectual, if intellectual at all, not in its fixed inner structure, but in its meaning and in its power to start and direct significant inquiry and reflection." (1910: 39). Our thinking maps let us explore interdisciplinary thinking and reflect upon ways we might use information systems from other subjects to enhance meaning and relevance in our own and to consider the potential value and power of knowledge reciprocity.
Knowledge transfer through Art and Design
The maps were initially drawn using each element of Art and Design - Expressive Activity, Design Activity, and Critical Activity (Critical and Historical Studies) - as headings and contexts for deeper reflection. We did not seek a collapse of discipline boundary lines, or complete disassembling of the pillars of knowledge – in any case, as Dewey reminds us, "Information… is not merely amassed and then left in a heap; it is classified and subdivided so as to be available as it is needed" (Dewey 1910: 41).
However, we were looking for ways in which knowledge can transfer across the dividers of classification so that they can coalesce with other subject areas and knowledge be made active through this entanglement. As Perkins reminds us "most disciplines dig moats, art builds bridges" (Perkins 2004:90). How might we use knowledge transfer in a way that allows pupils to make sense of their learning from another perspective, or through the lens or customs of subject towards which they are cognitively/personally more inclined.
Field Study: Interdisciplinary Thinking in Art and Design
The Expressive element of Art and Design is concerned with expression and communication; pupils interpret and understand the world by expressing thoughts and feelings using a range of media. They reformulate truths through aesthetics and work through contemporary issues and methods. The Expressive element involves making art; it is also about understanding the role and purpose of art and artists in the history of our world.
Teaching Expressive Art contexts, students made several links in this area to other subjects. For example, one student made links between science and colour theory, using the principles of light refraction to explain the array of colours found on the artist's pallet.
When asked ‘where do colours come from’ as a practitioner with little scientific knowledge, when this question first arises the initial response would be ‘I don’t know, but I will find out’. Through a little research, delving into the relationship of colour and science, a much deeper learning and understanding can be shared.
Another, generated discussion around the social contract informed by the historical and social context of tenement housing in Glasgow. To borrow Dewey's term, ‘the reflection’ was deployed as a launchpad for a printmaking unit with deep learning emerging throughout.
endlessly relating and re-formulating
With reference to the Social Studies syllabus a portrait project focused on Expressionist artist Kathe Kollwitz was taught through the lens of the First World War, ideas of motherhood and loss, connections between art and history, emotion, and expression - endlessly relating and re-formulating.
Littered between the think-map drawings, diagrams, and connective arrows, students linked specific CfE benchmarks that could delineate future learning – as an example, Health and Wellbeing became the starting point for a portrait project exploring questions about appearance, contemporary social media, and the high stakes of self-image production.
The Design Element of our subject is focused on problem-solving through a range of design contexts linked to real-world issues. Design briefs generate problems for pupils who must harness practical and aesthetic processes to come up with design iterations and viable solutions. Design contexts offered many opportunities for interdisciplinary thinking. Students found connections between fashion and sustainability drawing on ethical materials and smart design. Architecture units of work were framed in terms of consumer accessibility, physical access, and social equity rather than pure aesthetics. Feminist understanding of looking and self-expression supports the design of a jewellery unit.
More generally, we use terminology such as size, scale, regular and irregular shape, pattern and form, symmetry, asymmetry, motif, and fractals. We consider Fibonacci in analysis and implementation of proportion, layout, and composition.
It is almost impossible to teach shape without touching on the principles of geometry and this connection creates important links between mathematics and art. We wondered if this same approach is taken when shape is taught within the mathematics curriculum.
Dewey interrogates the linearity of knowledge suggesting that various forms of knowledge "must be arranged with reference to one another and with reference to the facts on which they depend for proof" (1910: 39).
the visual narrative
The Critical and Historical Studies area of Art and Design involves knowledge and understanding of the language, lexicons, and historical context of art and design practice, which leads to interdisciplinary thinking with its close relationship to language, criticality, and history. One teaching student designs learning around Gustav Klimt’s portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer through history and storytelling. Who was she? What kind of life did she lead? What Faith did she have? What impact did this have on her life at the time? What was her relationship to the artist? We ‘read’ a visual composition and respond psychologically to combinations of visual elements, e.g., lines, shapes, tone, texture, and colour frequency – the visual narrative. Students understood the cross-over between English teaching methodologies, borrowing ideas around descriptive writing and embedding them into creative writing and critique.
Evaluating designs through their failings is a valuable method for design thinking as it encourages active learning and critical thinking. Design critique involves analysing various aspects of design such as form, function, feasibility, and ergonomics, and offers insights into ethical sourcing, materials, environmental sustainability, and psychologically persuasive marketing strategies. From a moral perspective, design critique teaches about our duty of care for the environment, eco stability and sustainability. Analysis of designs can include awareness of psychologically devious marketing strategies that persuade and lure with the promise of glittering prizes. Engaging with critique may support better choice-making in young consumers. Leaning into this, one teaching student flipped the linear formula and taught about good design through analysis of bad design. Students interrogated failed products such as the 2016 Samsung Galaxy Note X which tended to explode in consumers' pockets, or designer Phillipe Starck’s 1988 ‘Juicy Salif’ citrus squeezer which, depending on the height, circumference, and volume of a vessel, can be impractical in extracting lemon juice.
Interdisciplinary thinking can contextualize learning and tether it to the real world. The General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS) encourages educators to promote social justice in their classrooms. Interdisciplinary thinking allows teachers to fully embed social justice into their lessons by framing projects within this context. Rather than simply add a learning intention at the end of a linear lesson, teachers can use interdisciplinary thinking to create projects that are inherently connected to social justice. During their placements, teaching students were able to put theory into practice by using interdisciplinary thinking in their lessons. One had her class research the cultural and spiritual roles of masks in African cultures as part of a printmaking unit based on tribal masks. The teacher explored the ethics of displaying looted items such as masks in institutions like the British Museum with the class and used these discussions to drive the project. Another used math concepts to teach clay portraits. The class looked at form and shape through the frameworks they had learned in mathematics, discussing organic and geometric shapes to better develop ideas around anatomy and form. Pupils considered individuality and the uniqueness of self and others.
A few final thoughts
Following the map-making and our first attempts to implement interdisciplinary thinking, it seems clear that, while ‘I-D-thinking’ is instrumental to our subject, this rubric, this way of thinking is not limited to art and design. Ruptures, old lines of inquiry, new starting points, midways; all this tangled operational knowledge structure can be accessed from a multiplicity of places.
Interdisciplinary thinking can be a powerful pedagogic tool as it encourages deeper understanding of concepts and connections between subjects. This way of thinking is not limited to art and design; it can be applied to a multitude of subjects. One can depart from science, and find oneself in math, literacy, art, or music. Codes, symbols, patterns, and frequencies. The possibilities for connections are endless.
Dewey (1910: 39) suggests thoughts are concentrated “not by being kept still and quiescent, but by being kept moving toward an object”.
Interdisciplinary thinking operates under this framework. What kinds of thinking maps would other teaching students create? Do other subjects think in this way?
References
Aitchison, I. (2019) From theory to classroom practice: Designing future IDL Practice, RADAR. Available at: https://radar.gsa.ac.uk/6936/ (Accessed: 28 June 2023)
Dewey, J. (1910) How We Think, DC, New York: Heath and Co Publications 35-41
Perkins, D. (2004) The intelligent eye. Los Angeles: Getty Publications 90
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