Training Package On Art Education For Primary Teachers (2 volume Set)

Foreword

There is immeasurable literature available to us on the importance of arts for the learning and development of every child. Be it researchers, pedagogues and neuro-scientists, they all agree that a child’s brain needs to be stimulated in a variety of ways to foster development. Existing research suggests that any art experience contributes to a fully functioning brain and body, as it has the capacity to engage every learner: intellectually, socially, emotionally and physically. Realising the importance of art experiences for the learning and development of every student, National Curriculum Framework 2005 recommends inclusion of art education as a compulsory subject up to Class X. It further elaborates that school authorities must acknowledge in practice that the arts are to be given significance in the curriculum and not remain restricted to being so-called entertaining or prestige-earning activities. Schools must not only permit but also actively encourage students to study the arts. While focussing and explaining the importance of education through arts at the primary stage, NCF-2005 states that orientation ‘should be towards art as a medium of self-expression, creativity, sense of freedom, thus psychological health’.

In spite of having recommended arts education as a curricular area, one has often discovered that the situation at the primary stage has not changed much. Teachers continue to be rather ill-equipped, at times uninformed and mostly unenlightened about the scope and range of the significance of the arts education, and have questions such as, ‘Should arts be integrated with curriculum as an approach, or should it be a separate curricular area?’ Whether arts should be taught by generalist teachers or by the art teachers only?’ Other queries include, ‘Can art be evaluated?’ ‘How do we get materials for activities?’ ‘If I am not an artist myself, how can I teach arts?’ Or ‘I have used charts, paintings, models, etc. while teaching subjects; would this come under it Art Integrated Learning?, etc. It is to be noted that the same teachers do not feel the need to ask such questions while teaching other subjects such as languages, mathematics, environmental studies. Probably, what worries them most in art education is the lack of knowledge about art itself as a subject. The concept of art education, which covers the whole range of visual and performing arts and learning through the arts, may itself be new to most of them.

The Training Package on Art Education for Primary Teachers is an endeavour to promote education through arts, and education in arts, and has the answer to most of the questions raised by teachers and parents of this particular stage. It systematically clarifies the concepts, methods, materials and evaluation, through examples from actual classrooms, in Part B of every module, and provides hands-on-experience on art and art integrated learning through well designed training instructions and exercises in Part A of each module.