Strategies for Teaching and Dissemination of Artistic

Available online at www.sciencedirect.com

ScienceDirect Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 237 (2017) 717 – 722

7th International Conference on Intercultural Education “Education, Health and ICT for a Transcultural World”, EDUHEM 2016, 15-17 June 2016, Almeria, Spain

Strategies for teaching and dissemination of artistic heritage by promoting critical and creative thinking among future Primary Education teachers Patricia Gutiérrez Rivas* Research Group Studia Humanitates, Universidad Católica de Murcia, España

Abstract The historical and artistic heritage of Spain is varied and has a great cultural wealth; however, it is necessary to know this heritage in advance before taking any action for enjoyment, preservation or protection. The importance of this knowledge is introduced in the curriculum of different educational school levels, which features in a prominent place. It is fundamental that future teachers first know the historical heritage of their surroundings to subsequently design strategies for teaching and dissemination in primary schools. Thus, future teachers’ initial training must be fully based on a solid knowledge of their subject, mastering a variety of techniques and developing critical and creative thinking. The teaching of social sciences provides several opportunities to enhance and develop these intellectual skills such as analysis and synthesis, critical thinking, comparing and deducing, managing information and teamwork. These skills will become apparent through the design of different teaching strategies whose ultimate goal is that students in education degrees develop abilities to think and devise new and creative ideas through historical and artistic heritage. © 2017 2016The TheAuthors. Authors.Published Published Elsevier © by by Elsevier Ltd.Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of EDUHEM 2016. Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of EDUHEM 2016. Keywords: critical thinking; creativity; teaching strategies; cultural heritage.

* Corresponding author. Tel.: 968278181; fax: 0034 968 307066 E-mail address: [email protected]

1877-0428 © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of EDUHEM 2016. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2017.02.112

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Patricia Gutiérrez Rivas / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 237 (2017) 717 – 722

1. Introducción This paper begins with a quote from the Spanish poet Antonio Machado, who once said that teachers should focus their work on love and provocation. With this quote, Machado was referring to teachers who deeply love their jobs, and those who encourage students to think by themselves. In this sense, if students do not first learn how to think, teachers will find difficult to stimulate their curiosity, creativity and critical reasoning. The objective of this research is to teach future teachers how to think on basis to the design of specific teaching strategies and the dissemination of historical and artistic heritage. The absence of critical and creative thinking in college students and the lack of motivation to learn, especially in the subjects of history and art, is becoming a more common reality nowadays. As a response to this problem, some university lecturers have incorporated new methodologies with the aim of promoting learners’ autonomy and significant learning as well as making the contents more interesting to them based on their daily environment. Swerlig Sternberg and Spearman (1999) stated that teachers must train students who can manage and cope with problems, despite these could be different from the ones they will face when they become adults. In this sense, it seems that it is necessary that teachers instruct students to critical thinking, so they can define and explain what occurs around them and also analyze the origin of what is happening. Unfortunately, many students do not consider the reason of things, or even if what they read in books is the most objective view of a historical fact, or whether there may be different interpretations of the same historical event. But to be fair to them, when they are initiated into their critical thinking, scaffolding learners’ strategies should be a great help for them. With this support, students will not only be able to think critically, but they should also infer, analyze and even pose different solutions to what was first told. In this sense, this procedure should be common in all universities. This lack of critical thinking among college students is also accompanied by their limited conceptual knowledge and general culture. In recent years, before students started the subject of ‘Teaching and Learning Social Sciences’, they were tested on general knowledge based on their direct environment: history, heritage, customs and traditions of Murcia and Spain. Results were not only disappointing, but they have been getting worse year after year. 80% of students at the education degree are not interested in history and they do not even find teaching history useful. Besides, only 18% of participants showed some knowledge of history beyond some recent events such as the Spanish civil war or some relevant characters like García Lorca or Miguel Hernandez, whose exposure to them has been repeated since elementary school. In addition, almost 70% of students participating in our survey agreed that the history they learned was repetitive and mainly based on memorizing facts. Results also showed that most students had not apparently been taught to analyze facts, to compare them with reality, to identify their origin, or to analyze the reasons why they had occurred or are still occurring. In short, it seems that they were not taught to think critically by themselves. To remedy this situation, we encouraged students to analyze the situation of Syrian refugees. Firstly, they had to identify the historical origin of this event, then they analyzed its consequences and finally they had to apply critical judgment to that situation. Students had to carry out this task by using either print or online media resources. At last, this task was linked to an in-class discussion about the topic; and as result students discovered that a discussion is not simply a means to express their points of view without any conceptual basis of background. Similarly, based on the fact that current curricula of the subject of Social Sciences only focuses on the particular region or autonomous community where the students live causes that they only gain knowledge related to their immediate environment. Consequently, they cannot respond to questions based on history and geography contents from other regions. For example, if a student lives in the autonomous community of Alicante, they are not able to list historical events from the region of Murcia or vice versa. Therefore, it seems it would also be positive that student worked on strategies with contents that are not familiar to them, providing them with the opportunity to know the historical heritage of other regions of Spain. Another sign that the teaching of history needs changes is related to the assessment of learning outcomes, which are the result of the importance that is given to the acquisition of conceptual knowledge. Although teachers are aware that assessment strategies require urgent changes, previous research suggests that testing, especially in the teaching of history, has an almost unquestionable supremacy in which conceptual and decontextualized contents excessively prevail over social reality (Calatayud 2000; Gomez and Miralles 2013; Trepat 2012). On the other hand, this type of assessment neither seems to develop language skills nor to require proficient written skills because learners are


evaluated with tests based on multiple choice questions whose responses are quite intuitive rather than being more extensive that require critical thinking. Spanish universities are involved in this situation; a large percentage of students are unable to reason and develop an extensive response in a logical order and with appropriate vocabulary. Different studies show that different skills such as analysis, reasoning, reflection and assessment or interpretation of documents are essential for learning historical thinking; however they have little presence in written examinations at schools despite some of these competences are fundamental for students (Gómez and Miralles 2013; Trepat 2012). Unfortunately, these same deficiencies can also be identified in assessment strategies at universities; gradually assessment becoming less demanding, the material to study is more reduced and they only test conceptual content. The data introduced in this section represent the situation of the current educational system; in this sense, teachers should start considering how to carry out these long-awaited changes. We agree that present and future teachers must become the cornerstone of an efficient education system and any other possible educational reform. It seems that the present education requires teachers that are leaders with complex and critical thinking skills, broad knowledge of general culture and a noticeable emotional intelligence. 1.1. Critical and creative thinking in the teaching of history and artistic heritage What is it meant by complex and critical thinking? It is well known that critical thinking is part of some higher intellectual skills, those related to analysis, conceptualization, information management, systemic thinking, critical thinking, research and metacognition (Hervas and Miralles, 2004). All these skills are feasible to be enhanced in the classroom and they also have their optimal time to be developed in any matter or subject. The definition of critical thinking pointed by Hervas and Miralles (2004) quoting E. Glaser (1985) is the starting point in this research. Different authors state that this type of thinking promotes the recognition of a particular reality and its evaluation as well as encouraging students to use their knowledge correctly, to evaluate their arguments and values drawing inferences and examining evidence, and to review judgments based on that evidence. We agree that this should be ideally implemented since primary school, when students set the basis of the foundations of thinking, and concerning all curricular areas but with a special focus on the subject of history, which is more likely to implement them. It shall be acknowledged that teachers in primary education are increasingly becoming aware of the importance of the development of these cognitive skills and they are also proposing new methodologies to develop them in their classrooms, for example there are increasingly more contributions related to this field in congresses of education. In this sense, the development of critical thinking and artistic creativity is essential in the training of future teachers. This consists in promoting a set of skills to generate knowledge and develop imagination and also to choose the best option to solve any problems, either individually or collectively. The development of creativity is also oriented towards carrying out original work, promoting the use of new ideas based on previous ones. Creativity has even a greater impact in daily life because it provides new ways to solve a problem. In this context, students find more difficulties when they need to identify problems and to provide solutions to daily problems; it is common to find students responding “I had not noticed it”, “I could have stated it otherwise” “it hadn’t occurred to me that I could have done it in a different way”, etc. We have previously stated that history is a great way to learn how to think critically, but in the practice it is necessary to analyze how it can be implemented at university. Actually, it can be much simpler than it may seem even if it is intended to develop higher order skills. In order to think historically it is necessary to raise learners’ awareness of temporality, so that they can understand the past as a tool to analyze the present. This should not result in something completely theoretical, but students should be able to deduce and analyze the source of present facts in past events. The use of historical sources can be a very effective way to work historical thinking; this way, students can deduce and understand the causality of historical processes, including the use of old photographs or scanned documents stored in various Spanish archives. Implementing the teaching of critical thinking means directing students towards the acquisition of skills to process information and to analyze the original sources, and avoiding the obvious or what the literature says as the unique or best response. In order to work on this issue, students of Social Sciences Didactics analyzed textbooks of Social Sciences in Primary school focusing on the methods used by different publishers to process information and also on the evaluation activities introduced at the end of each didactic unit. This promoted the completion of an activity

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involving meta-cognitive and reflective processes of historical content that is usually taught in the classroom; besides the students also had to propose changes and modifications when they were considered necessary. It is well known that Spain is rich regarding its historical and artistic heritage. In this sense, it is necessary to know this heritage in order to also enjoy, preserve and protect it. The importance of knowledge and its dissemination is also reflected in the curriculum of different educational stages, especially in primary and secondary schools in which they are more relevant. Considering that results of training in the subject of social sciences is increasingly deficient among future teachers, we think it is vital that they learn the historical and artistic heritage as a first step towards designing teaching strategies for teaching and disseminating along Primary school. In recent years, school trips, which are part of the strategy introduced in this paper, have become an effective way to familiarize students in all educational levels with the target environment. This research starts with the idea that students’ knowledge on heritage allows them to experience their immediate surroundings and gather information, investigate and explore reality from an experimental and close-perspective (Cooper 2002; Rivero 2011). In this case, we supplement school trips with the development of tourist guides that will help students understand the target historical places and their monuments. 2. Objectives To this purpose, this paper aims at discussing around the following objectives: x x x

To introduce the acquisition of historical thinking and the development of creativity based on the design of strategies for teaching and learning history to students of education. To use and design guidebooks as resources for heritage knowledge and encourage students towards critical thinking and teamwork, decision making, information management and personal initiative. To learn about the learners’ immediate and close cultural heritage surrounding and regain its historical legacy transforming them into educational tools for teaching history.

3. Methodology Some of the projects completed with students of education to fulfill the previous objectives were the following: x x x

Design of posters for their own knowledge and dissemination of artistic heritage. Development of tourist guides to introduce information from some towns in the Spanish regions of Murcia, Almeria and Alicante. Design of didactic videos about the artistic heritage of the Region of Murcia.

This paper focuses on developing critical and creative thinking skills based on artistic heritage and the development of tourist guides adapted to the different courses in primary education. Conceptual knowledge on historical and artistic heritage will be the target of this research and this knowledge will also be fundamental in order to design any teaching tool, resource or strategy for educational purposes. This way, the learning objectives will be clear regardless of the teaching resource used in the classroom. Regarding previous use of tourist guides as a resource for heritage teaching, there are some travel guides for primary school children which focus on the knowledge of distant spaces to their environment. This is the case of the tourist guide ‘Me mola viajar’ (I love travelling) which focuses on cities such as Rome, Paris, London, Barcelona and New York and introduces basic local information using simple language and interesting facts. The weakest point of this tourist guide is the section devoted to its final activities in which children have to paint and cut a character or representative monument of the cities visited. The series called ‘Mi viaje a…’ (My trip to…) introduced in the guide Lonely Planet has a similar purpose and it is addressed to children aged 9 years. Other similar tourist guides are designed by the publisher Nórdica about cities such as Madrid, Barcelona or London. The publisher Susaeta offers tours across four cities and discovers their history, streets and culture: Seville, Barcelona, Madrid and Valencia. Our project is closer to the one shown in the collection ‘Madrid oculto para niños’ (Besas, 2011), whose title means


something like ‘The undiscovered side of Madrid for children’. The author of this tourist guide introduces activities in which students must play games and solve puzzles that appear while they discover new places and landmarks of the cities. These activities offer meaningful learning and they are adapted to the age of the children; for example if a group of children visits the Prado Museum they can buy postcards that they like and then they can play to ‘go and find’ them along the route. The starting point of this project was a task in which students of education degrees had to choose a town of their interest but it should not belong to their close environment. The first stage consisted in searching for information, making different attempts and inquiring which information was more relevant and meaningful to them in order to develop their tourist guides. The main difficulty of this stage is that not all students were capable of working with different resources (web pages, history books, oral sources) or discriminating information by carrying out analysis and synthesis. In this case, individualized work was necessary to help them in the development of this task. On the other hand, in order to promote students’ creativity, they were encouraged to title the guide so that it would catch the attention of children. Some of the titles for the tourist guides were the following: Saltando la muralla llegamos a Moratalla (Jumping the wall we can get to Moratalla), Las nuevas aventuras de Tintín en Cartagena, (The New Adventures of Tintin in Cartagena), or Viajamos con Mariano el murciano (Traveling with Mariano the guy from Murcia). Similarly, the future teachers designed mascots with the role of tour guides along the trip with the aim of raising their students’ creativity and imagination. Most of these mascots were designed by the students. Concerning the historical content, this should be clear, simple and not too extensive. It was also agreed to introduce the content in a friendly atmosphere in order to get the students’ attention, or also by using catchy curiosities or anecdotes that the same students had collected during the first phase of this research. All the materials designed by the learners such as maps and photographs had to meet the same characteristic: they had to look simple and keep the same color line. The description of the historical city center and other monuments or places of interest had to include information about its historical origin. This was a valuable resource to incorporate new historical content such as the historical origin of streets such as Trapería, Platería, Jabonerías, calle del moro, etc. The local gastronomy was considered a relevant point in the design of their guides because it contributed to incorporate primary education children’s current interests. This was also a great opportunity for students to recover traditional recipes and pastries as well as discovering their ancestral origin through research. Finally, as part of learning social sciences, we consider that teachers’ main goal should that students know and manage a specific area of vocabulary, as part of their personal development and essential for their future teaching. For this purpose, we insisted that students had to know the origin of words with historical content, art, popular or speech, and they had to be included in the final section of their tour guides. Following a similar research and work process and focusing on the acquisition of a critical and creative thinking, other innovation projects were started: poster designing to promote a historic site, monument or the festivities of a particular village. This work was complemented with the development of an educational video that was used to give support to students in history classes. 4. Results and conclusion It shall be noticed that the implementation of these innovation projects has meant that students at the second year of primary education degree at college could learn a variety of strategies and teaching resources for the teaching of history beyond the use of their textbooks and punctual visits to some interesting historical towns and monuments. However, above all the benefits involved in this project, students had the opportunity to strengthen and develop intellectual skills related to the acquisition of critical and creative thinking as well as to interrelate their work with other areas of knowledge. Regarding the collection of information, we used the scientific methodology applied by historians. In this sense, they conducted a systematic observation of the reality, they investigated in the place, they collected the information, and then they selected and adapted the information to the language and interests of a particular audience. In addition, other necessary basic skills related to their professional and academic interest were trained. In this case, it shall be necessary to emphasize cultural and artistic skills since many students had little knowledge on relevant facts and historical characters or different artistic movements. Similarly, there was also attention to those competences

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related to knowledge and interaction with the physical world through observation and analysis of reality and facts that contribute in their decisions about what places, characters or events should be included in their research and which ones should be left aside. They also had to fulfill objectives concerning information processing and digital competence by participating in the design and layout of the tourist guides, advertising posters and instructional videos. In this sense, we consider necessary to continue promoting the development of intellectual skills among college students, especially in teaching degrees because they are responsible of the implementation of some long-awaited changes in education. References Alcaide, A., Anadón, J. & Anguita, M. & Santacana J. (2010). Recursos y estrategias para estudiar Ciencias Sociales. Barcelona: Editorial Graó. Besas Martínez, Marco (2011). Madrid oculto para niños. Madrid. Ediciones La Librería. Calatayud, M. (2000). La supremacía del examen: la evaluación como examen, su uso y abuso, aún en la Educación Primaria. Bordón. Revista de Pedagogía 52 (2). 165-178. Cooper H., (2002). Didáctica de la historia en la educación infantil y primaria. Madrid: Morata S. L. Ministerio de Educación Cultura y Deporte. Domínguez Garrido, Mª. C. (coord.) (2004). Didáctica de las Ciencias Sociales. Madrid: Pearson Prentice Hall. Gómez J., Ortuño J. & Molina S. (2014). Aprender a pensar históricamente. Retos para la historia en el siglo XXI. Tempo e Argumento 6, (11). 527. Gómez C. & Miralles M., P. (2015). ¿Pensar históricamente o memorizar el pasado? La evaluación de los contenidos históricos en la educación obligatoria en España. Revista de Estudios Sociales, 52. 52-68. Gómez C. & Miralles M. P. (2013). Los contenidos de ciencias sociales y las capacidades cognitivas en los exámenes de tercer ciclo de educación primaria. ¿Una evaluación en competencias? Revista Complutense de Educación 24 (1). 91-121. Gutiérrez Rivas, P. (2014). Las Guías Turísticas, nueva estrategia para la enseñanza de la Historia en Educación Primaria. En Gómez C. y Escarbajal A. (Eds). Calidad e Innovación en Educación Primaria. Murcia. Editum. 49-59. Hervás, R. & Miralles, P. (2004). Nuevas formas de enseñar a pensar. El desarrollo del pensamiento crítico en la enseñanza de las ciencias sociales. Íber. Didáctica de las Ciencias Sociales, Geografía e Historia 42. 89-99. Hervás, R. & Miralles, P. (2006). La importancia de enseñar a pensar en el aprendizaje de la historia. Educar en el 2000, 9. 34-40. Consultado en: http://www.didactica-ciencias-sociales.org/articulos_archivos/2000-ENSEnAR-PENSAR-EDUCAR-miralles.pdf Murphy, Julia (2011). Más de 100 ideas para enseñar historia. Primaria y secundaria. Barcelona. Editorial Graó. Prats, J.; Santacana J. (2011). ¿Por qué y para qué enseñar historia? En Didáctica de la Geografía y la Historia. Barcelona Graó. 13-29. Rivero G. M. P. (Coord.) (2011). Didáctica de las Ciencias Sociales para Educación Infantil. Mira Editores. Sesé Alegre, J.M. & Gutiérrez Rivas, P. (2015). La formación inicial de los estudiantes de Magisterio españoles en Ciencias Sociales. Enseñar a pensar críticamente con juegos de mesa y de ordenador como recurso didáctico. VI Simposio Internacional de Didáctica de las Ciencias Sociales en el ámbito iberoamericano (en prensa). Sternberg R. & Spear-Swerling, L. (1999). Enseñar a pensar. Aula XXI. Editorial Santillana. Trepat, C. (2012). La evaluación de los aprendizajes de historia y geografía en la enseñanza secundaria. Las pruebas de ensayo abierto. Íber. Didáctica de las Ciencias Sociales, Geografía e Historia 70. 87-97.