I prepared and delivered Friday 9 Feb a 20-minute microteaching session for 6 participants using object-based learning. I chose this lesson activity following the Workshop 2 reading on object-based learning (Willcox and Mahon, 2023) and observing my students struggling to support their aesthetic judgements using objective and subjective descriptions. I approached the session as if my peers were my students and the object I chose was a student work from CSM Foundation Painting Pathway. I designed a lesson plan for the session (document attached). The session involved an activity responding to a painting I would like to develop using post-it notes to enable students to easily differentiate between subjective and objective responses to create sentences that synthesise the two in the form of aesthetic judgements.
The session began by using Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s touched-touching exercise (Merleau-Ponty, 2012) which allowed students to physically feel the difference between subjective and objective touch within their own bodies. I chose this exercise to build student confidence in recognising they possess bodily skills for understanding painting. After observing the painting for a period of time the touched-touching exercise was used in relation to touching the painting with the eyes and being touched by the painting through perception. Firstly, students were asked to offer subjective responses to the painting that described how the painting made them feel. Words relating to the subjective responses were written on pink Post-it notes to help students clearly associate these words with “subjectivity”. Secondly, students were asked to offer objective responses that described physical qualities they could see, which were written on orange Post-it notes to clearly differentiate these as “objectivity”. The students were asked to connect the orange and pink Post-it notes together to learn how objective descriptions enable subjective ones.
Asking the students to combine the Post-it notes in their own choice of order to create sentences helped them learn how to synthesise objective descriptions with subjective descriptions, which the students identified as forming aesthetic judgements using their own limited vocabularies. The feedback was positive and Floriane confirmed the coloured Post-it notes helped establish clarity of the difference, while Jazmin confirmed the touched-touching exercise allowed her to relax and feel open to the painting rather than intimidated or defensive about contemporary art. All participants responded positively to how they could justify their emotional subjective responses through their objective descriptions. Kwame wrote feedback – please see separate Microteaching-EXTRA post.
References
Merleau-Ponty, M. Phenomenology of Perception. Oxon, U.K and New York, U.S.A: Routledge, 2012.
Wilcox, J and Mahon, K. (2023) The Potential of online object-based learning activities to support the teaching of intersectional environmentalism in art and design higher education. Art, Design & Communication in Higher Education, Vol 22 No. 2 Intellect Ltd Article. Available https://intellectdiscover.com/content/journals/10.1386/adch_00074_1 (accessed 8 Feb 2023)