National Art Education Association

Aesthetic Response in Early EducationAuthor(s): Pamela SharpSource: Art Education, Vol. 29, No. 5 (Sep., 1976), pp. 25-29Published by: National Art Education AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3192126 .

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Pamela Sharp

At last count, there were approxi- mately one hundred fifty thousand kin- dergarten classrooms in the United States and, by rough estimate, seventy- five thousand preschools.1 Suppose we modestly imagine that in each of these is an easel, that each easel has two sides, and that each side has a tray of paint-jars of tempera-red, yellow, blue, and green.

On any Monday morning then, assuming that paint jars are full and fresh at the beginning of the week, two hundred twenty-five thousand jars of red paint are open and available for use by young children. A jar of red paint will yield about a dozen extravagantly red paintings. Twelve times two hundred twenty-five thousand is two million seven hundred thousand.

Now two million seven hundred thousand is an arbitrary number, built from supposition and speculation, but none-the-less believable. It's an astoundingly large number. That's a lot of paintings from one Monday morn- ing's round of red paint.

If the production of paintings were the only outcome sought by art educa- tors, teachers of young children could rightfully feel pleasantly overwhelmed with the quantity of accomplishment. But the job is less than half done. Two million, seven hundred thousand extravagantly red paintings aren't enough. Besides providing children with opportunities to practice skills in the making of art, teachers also need to help children learn to respond to aes- thetic qualities found in their art and beyond.

An aesthetic response may be gener- ated by anything felt,2 but in works of art qualities are ordered in such a manner as to make feelings acute. Even in the work of children, qualities which give rise to aesthetic response can be found. The identification of these qual- ities by children in the art closest to them, their own, can be first steps in the acquisition of the sensibilities that will underlie aesthetic response to their own work and to the work of others. Teachers can help with this identifica- tion by responding verbally to the qual- ities they find in their students' art.

In the literature of early education, however, seldom does one find ratio- nale or goals or activities framed around aesthetic response. Further- more, teachers of young children are often advised to be non-committal

about the work produced by the chil- dren in their classrooms. Hands-off and words-off have long been bywords in early art.

Even if a teacher were inclined to talk with a child about his art, she might be constrained by feelings of inadequacy, for a verbal response to children's art requires knowledge and skills not often included in the training of teachers of young children. For one reason or another, response is neglected in early art education.

The second half of an accomplish- ment of two million seven hundred thousand will probably not be realized unless change takes place in the ratio- nale, goals, and activities of early art education, until an aesthetic response has been made to each of those extrav- agantly red paintings.

II Making a change in belief and prac-

tice is a multidimensional task. First, in early art education, the myth of the non-verbal nature of art must be dis- pelled and replaced with respect for thoughtful and reflective response to art. Second, new concepts must be provided, must be rendered into pat- terns which teachers can follow in their interchange with children about art, and these patterns must be formed in such a way that they fit smoothly into existing preschool and kindergarten curriculum.

Fear of aesthetic response clings to resilient myths about the fragile nature of the fresh and spontaneous ways children employ in making art. Many teachers of young children seem to be afraid that the free, open nature of chil- dren's art making might be destroyed by reflection and thought on the part of young artists. The belief is held that somehow, in some mysterious manner, the delightfully pleasing work of chil- dren is a result of their having been left to their own devices. But the delight found in children's art comes not from the mysteries of its production but from something very real, from the aesthetic qualities found in that work.

Art is not the product of happy acci- dent. Artists work, reflect upon their work, and make choices. Children making art also need to look at what they've done in a reflective manner so that they too can begin to make choices. Art making is a purposive and controlled activity which requires thought.

If teachers could be shown that chil- dren who spend time in thought and

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talk about art produce works of equal or increased aesthetic merit, fears might be reduced. Research by Sandra Packard, Nancy Douglas, and Julia Schwartz will help, for they have shown clearly that the identification of and reflection upon qualities found in works of art help children produce work of increased aesthetic merit.

In her study, Creative Tempo in Chil- dren's Art Production, Packard exam- ined the time spent by children in reflective thought and the relationship of that time to the aesthetic quality of their work. She first identified a crea- tive tempo personality dimension as measured by the time taken by a child to solve problems-that is, children who worked rapidly on one task, did so on all tasks, while those who worked slowly on one task, also did so on all tasks.

Secondly, Packard examined the degree of relationship between Reflec- tion/Impulsivity and Creative Tempo: if the child who takes more time may be considered to be more reflective, does his reflection result in products that will be judged to have a higher degree of aesthetic quality than the products of children who spend less time in reflec- tion? Packard found this to be so. The children who spent more time on their work produced products judged to have higher aesthetic qualities.

A third relationship, the proportion of variability in creative tempo and reflection/impulsivity due to percep- tual motor factors completed her study. The aesthetic quality of a child's work was measured against that child's skill in copying geometric line draw- ings. Packard found no correlation; perceptual motor abilities had little or no bearing upon the aesthetic qualities of children's art. Aesthetic quality correlated with time spent in reflection rather than perceptual motor factors.3

Packard's findings complement notions offered by Nancy Douglas and Julia Schwartz in a study done a few years ago. In their work they found that the aesthetic quality of children's work was increased not so much by techni- cal instruction as it was by a teacher's verbal response to aesthetic qualities found in art, coupled with talk about the intentions and ideas of artists. By her use of language, the teacher in their study modeled thought about art. She offered overt examples of how people respond to art.

Douglas and Schwartz found that increased sensitivity to aesthetic quali- ties and artistic processes led to greater involvement and control over media by children, than did merely technical 26 Art Education, September 1976

instruction offered to a control group.4 The children who heard a great deal of talk about art were not crippled by the experience.

In fact, the teachers of the young- sters who produce all those extrava- gantly red paintings do a lot of talking. Their talk, however, is mostly about technique and management: the litera- ture on art for young children is almost exclusively devoted to technique and management, a bent reflected in class- room practice.

In a recent study bythe author,5 all of the talk of one preschool teacher was recorded for one hour every day for seven weeks. Utterances having to do with art were coded from the tapes into two categories, art-making and response. Instructive remarks were those such as "You may use this brush, Jonathan" or "Don't put so much paste on." To be coded as responsive, an utterance had to be generated by observation of a child's art. Utterances which seemed to be directive, even though generated by observation of work, were not included in response but were coded as art-making. Respon- sive utterances included "Fine job, Susan", "Such a nice train" and "Your mother will like that".

Art-making comments outnumbered response four to one. In fact, more teacher talk, as measured by utteran- ces per minute, was heard in the art area than in any other place in the school.

Children hear a lot of talk and are asked to think about the making of art. They have been well exposed to adult models of thought and behavior asso- ciated with the production of objects and delight in production survives. Language and thought about response to art won't hurt either.

III What are the beginnings of aesthetic

response? First of all, children need to know that an aesthetic response is something people do and secondly they need the raw material of aesthetic response-conscious awareness of aesthetic qualities and language for the expression of their response.

Teachers of young children, without examination of belief, construction of rationale, or even conscious intent respond to the things children make. And children observe their response. But the usual response is made in com- mon, general terms, or, more often than not, is a nonverbal response, a smile, or a hum of approval. An aesthetic response is a special kind of response-it deals with feeling, and

talk about feeling is, unfortunately, uncommon. How is a young child to know the basis for his teacher's responses unless she is explicit? Smiles and hums, or even "That's nice", are not explicit. How is a young child's attention going to be directed to aes- thetic qualities unless teacher and child hold in common the uncommon language of feeling? If children are to respond to aesthetic qualities, they will need to build a vocabulary of feeling and construct rules for use of that vocabulary. For the provision of those kinds of things for children, language provides a paradigm.

Roger Brown, Courtney Cazden, and others have conducted extensive stud- ies of the language patterns of young children and of the adults who talk to children and have uncovered patterns of interchange between adults and children that seem to aid the devel- opment of both the language and thought of young children. Among these patterns is an adult response Brown and Cazden have named exten- sions.6

When an adult responds to a child with a statement which is contingent upon the child's previous utterance and which builds out from it along some dimension of meaning, that response is an extension.

Examples: child's utterance:

"Dog bark" adult's extension:

"Yes, and the kitty is running after him".

child's utterance: "Mommy come"

adult's extension: "I'm bringing a great basket of yarn."

Theories about the efficacy of verbal extensions hold that by extending a young child's reduced,telegraph- ic sentences, adults offer children rich verbal stimulation delivered with ideal timing. Immediately following the child's utterance, extensions are simul- taneously paired with meanings the child understands.

Verbal extensions based on the chil- dren's utterances and the contextual settings offer children expanded con- cepts of reality. Extensions encode additional meanings at the moment the child is most likely to be attending to the cues that can teach that meaning.

A concept of aesthetic extension nat- urally follows.7 Suppose that teachers of young children responded to chil- dren's art, not with statements of praise

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for having worked hard, or directions for naming or storage, but with aes- thetic extensions, statements of feeling generated by the work at hand. Sup- pose the extensions were offered just as a child finished his work while at- tention lingered. And, following good practice in language, suppose the extensions were clear, tied to concrete phenomena, appropriate to develop- mental levels, and presented smoothly, in a natural, flowing manner. It's reaso- nable to assume that such statements could offer children 1) models of adult talk about the feeling found in art, 2) verbal stimulation, vocabulary, and forms of response and 3) expanded concepts of what may be seen and felt in works of art.

Aesthetic extensions, adult state- ments of response generated by a child's work of art, can be primary ex- periences with aesthetic response. Like linguistic extensions, an aesthetic extension does not necessarily result in an immediate change of production but rather offers raw material for the induction of childish rules about the kinds of things people talk about, directs attention to meaning, and offers words attached to meaning. Other teaching behaviors to follow are atten- tion to children's verbal statements about their work and the extension of those statements, reinforcement of statements of feeling, direction of at- tention to the physical processes which result in felt qualities, and gener- alization of feeling from a number of works of one child or of several chil- dren. But aesthetic extensions are pri- mary.

IV What does an aesthetic extension

sound like? What kinds of things are talked about?

Aesthetic extensions will sound much like aesthetic response in gen- eral, for aesthetic responses are tied to sensual phenomena. An aesthetic response reports feeling and com- mands attention by bringing into con- sciousness awareness aspects pre- viously unnoticed. It might be possible then to call any aesthetic response an aesthetic extension. But we are looking for a special response to be made to young children. We are looking for the beginnings of aesthetic response, pri- mary aesthetic extensions.

Like semantic extensions in general, aesthetic extensions will be rich but within the child's comprehension. They will command attention by being slightly novel, "not too familiar and not too strange".6 Extensions are spon-

taneous; they encode aspects of reality at a moment when a child is most likely to be attending to those aspects.

Models of aesthetic extensions can be built from the ideas found in aes- thetics and language. Working within a set of parameters teachers could pat- tern beginning response-simple can be built from the bottom up. But that doesn't seem to be the way adults nor- mally design language for use with children. The language input usually received by children comes from a nat- ural simplification of normal adult lan- guage, modifications almost uncons- ciously made.

It is known that the linguistic behav- ior of individuals varies according to use:

. . . how we talk or write, what kind of language we use, depends not only on what we are talking about but on the use we are putting language to and other circumstances of the "immediate situation of utterance. '6

According to Schnelle, an intelligent adult, when communicating with chil- dren, will restrict his language accord- ing to assumptions held about their lev- el of understanding. This restriction is often done unconsciously.9

Cazden reviews recent literature on mothers' modification of language used with children and finds that moth- ers use simpler, shorter utterances when speaking to children. Mothers use more repetition when explaining and telling stories, and talk more to younger children. Women without children exhibit similar tendencies leading to a conclusion from Snow that:

simplification for young children is partly a component of adult commu- nicative competence and partly a response to cues provided by the child-cues of inattention when the speech addressed to him becomes too complex.10

If we are looking for simple in terms of aesthetic response, perhaps this nat- ural mechanism of modification of adult speech to children can uncover models. Aesthetic extensions ought to be produced by asking adults who are capable of responding in very rich, complex ways, to respond to works of art in the presence of young children.

Experts' modifications could provide models for teachers of young chil- dren, models with content as varied as art, as varied as human response to art can be, but having a simple, restricted form in common. To examine the

mechanism and describe some of the changes taking place as an expert talks about art to individuals with different levels of comprehension this author recently made a study of the modifica- tions made by one expert.5

A local expert, nominated by his peers as a capable and sensitive per- son, talked about a group of prints to four persons: an artist, aged 40, a junior high school art student, aged 14, an elementary school child, aged 9, and a preschooler, aged 4. His talk was tape recorded, transcribed into written form, and five minutes of each exchange was analyzed using a coding system developed by Acuff and Sieber- Suppes.11

As was expected, the expert talk to the adult was rich, if somewhat ellipti- cal. Sharing a common base of knowl- edge, expert and artist left many words unsaid. A nod, an "uh", a sentence drifting off were part of the exchange. The most detailed description of the works of art was offered to the fourteen-year-old. An easy banter characterized their exchange as the expert drew the teenager into the work through explanations of technique and mechanical processes employed.

From its inception the interchange between the nine-year-old and the expert was reserved, respectful, and polite, on both sides. Description of technique was tied very closely to a dis- cussion of what the artist did, very con- crete, real person talk, rather than the abstract process talk heard by adult and teenager. Although, as with the others, talk about technique was pre- dominate (60%), the expert used fewer run-on sentences and increased his use of metaphor. He drew the middle child's attention to objects and colors easily seen. Questions asked were eas- ily answered from feelings at the moment, from observation of the phe- nomena at hand. Of greatest interest for this discussion, however, were the forms of language offered to the four- year-old. A common knowledge of col- or held the expert and the preschooler together. The expert spoke slowly, with easy questions of preference, allowing the child plenty of time to answer. He talked of literal objects, shape, and col- or, all within Nat's experience. He used few references to art forms and tech- nique, and invented (so it seemed) words to convey ideas about physical processes. (i.e. "Dunk, dunk, dunk", is a printing process.)

Talk at the gallery differed little from what Nat hears at his preschool in that it consisted of short, clear sentences, a fair amount of redundancy, a gentle

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tone and pace. The most interesting aspect for use in a search for a model for aesthetic extensions was the way the expert led Nat to the edge of his comprehension through easy ques- tioning and then added a new piece of information, a new distinction.

Expert: Come over here and let's see how many colors we can find in this.

Child: Pink. Expert: Okay, there's pink. What

else can you see? Child: Orange and blue. Expert: Orange and blue. Is there

more than one color of blue? Child: Oh, yeah! (delighted tone) Expert: Yeah, there is, isn't there.

There's a light blue and a dark blue, see . . .

The questions acted as a set up for new pieces of information. The new information, that blue can be light and dark, is an aesthetic extension. The new information was not too strange, it encoded an aspect of reality when the child was attending to that aspect, and it seemed to be spontaneous. Through the natural mechanism of modification, the expert provided models of aes- thetic extensions, models for use by teachers of young children.

V It's one thing to propose change and

quite another to implement it. Pre- school and kindergarten curricula fol- low long established, comfortable patt- erns. Teacher training is done for the most part by former teachers. Proposal for radical change is not apt to be well received, especially when that change is in art, long a handmaiden, valued in early education not so much for its intrinsic offerings but for what it can do to develop hand-eye coordination, keep little hands busy, produce Moth- er's Day gifts, and so on.

To be acceptable, change in the practice of early art education will have to be molded to fit children, their art, and existing programs. To begin to build an accurate picture of what now happens in early art, the author recently observed the art activities which took place over a six-weeks period in a parent cooperative nursery school.5

Of interest were the attention span young children (aged 3-5) have for their art work and the availability of an adult who could aesthetically extend that work. Is a child's attention held by his finished work? Are teachers availa- ble to expand a child's conception of his work at the moment the child is most likely to be attending to the cues 28 Art Education, September 1976

that could teach aesthetic meaning? Could aesthetic extensions fit easily into an existing program?

It was observed that children's at- tention was held by their work and remained held for a few moments after its completion. A very high percent of children observed attended to their work for at least a few moments after its completion, if only to see that it had a name. Children, especially in the older group, at times solicited response to their work from adults and other chil- dren.

An anecdote will illustrate the atten- tion children pay to their work and to the work of others.

Emily and Janeen dash into the play yard in a beeline for the easels.

"I'm using this color." "That's red. I'm using red, too." They each paint a vertical stripe on

large white paper. Nomoretalk. Now another stripe, a different color. Emi- ly's stripes are bold, at least three inches across with a half inch or so of white showing. Janeen's are nar- rower, and almost no paper shows.

Emily, four stripes into her work, looks up and over at Janeen, "Hey, look at mine,"

Janeen looks, continues painting. Emily's eyes go from her stripes to Janeen's and back again.

"We can paint this way, too." Emily has noticed that the stripes are differ- ent. She has attended to her work and to Janeen's and has noticed dif- ferences and has invented (for her) a still different way of making stripes.

The papers fill up. Names are requested from the attending adult. And Emily volunteers that these paintings are like the one by the door in the playroom. It seems that the girls had seen and admired a paint- ing by still another child displayed in the playroom and wanted to make one for themselves.

The adult says, "Where shall I put your name?" Children attend to what they are

making, to what they have made, and to what others make and are making. This was not an isolated incident. Children in this school talked to one another as they worked, and they talked about what they were doing. They talked about what they had done, but the adults at the easels talked only about names.

In this school there seemed to be no shortage of adults available imme- diately following a child's completion of his art work. Adults were nearby and had time to name paintings in all cases

but two. Naming was given a great deal of time at the drawing table, too, and at a construction bench. Teachers had ample time for response. In the book- making corner a one-to-one relation- ship often existed, over an extended period of time, with much discussion of drawings. Plenty of opportunity but lit- tle response to feeling were observed.

When interviewed, the teachers in this school said they were not afraid of talk about feeling and indicated some understanding of aesthetic response. They had set up a table, the drawing table, especially to be a place to talk about qualities in works of art and materials. Unfortunately, in practice, that kind of talk held low priority. Because of its location, the drawing table served not its intended function to be a place for reflection and talk, but as a buffer between outdoor big muscle activity and indoor quiet activity. Dis- traction prevented most talk. As the drawing table was placed next to the major traffic artery of the school, chil- dren passed by the table in great numbers, rounding the corner on the run, propelled by outside voices. Past the art table marched bleeding fingers, wet overalls, beautifully garbed thespi- ans. Trays of cookies and juice floated by; doll beds scraped the floor.

The drawing table was not the place for aesthetic response. There was, however, ample time and undivided at- tention at the easels, in the block room, in the book-making area, and at the woodbench.

If the adults in schools such as this want to respond to the qualities found in children's art and if they have the skills to do so, the attention span of children and the existing programs offer numerous opportunities for doing so.

VI Reflective response is part of art. The

avoidance of reflective response in early education programs has limited the art education of young children unnecessarily. From what we know about children, language, and art, practices can be patterned for primary experiences with aesthetic response. Existing school programs may have to change little to accommodate these new practices. What remains to be designed are means of training teachers of young children so that they may respond and help children respond to aesthetic qualities found in works of art.

Pamela Sharp is curriculum specialist, Salem Public Schools, Salem, Oregon.

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NOTES ' Gordon E. Hurd and Linda A.

Barker, Preprimary Enrollment- October 1970, National Center for Edu- cational Statistics; Washington, D.C., 1971.

2 Susanne Langer suggests that the word "feeling" may be taken in a broad sense, "meaning everything that can be felt, from physical sensation, pain and comfort, excitement and repose, to the most complex emotions, intellectual tensions, or the steady feeling-tones of a conscious human life." Susanne K. Langer, Problems of Art, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1957, p. 15.

3 Sandra Packard, "Creative Tempo in Children's Art Production", Studies in Art Education, vol. 19, no. 3, 1973, p. 18-26.

4Nancy J. Douglas and Julia B. Schwartz, "Increasing Awareness of Art Ideas of Young Children Through Guided Experiences with Ceramics", Studies in Art Education, vol. 8, no. 2, 1967, p. 29.

5 Pamela Sharp, "Aesthetic Extensions-Beginnings of Aesthetic Response", Research Presentation, National Art Education Association Convention, Miami Beach, April, 1975.

6 Courtney B. Cazden, Child Lan- guage and Education, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., New York, 1972, p. 125-127.

7 Child language and art are each "childish," governed by rules which are particular to children. Other similari- ties include these factors: that compre- hension precedes production; that construction requires invention; that both language and art production are bound by psychomotor skills; that chil- dish statements in language and art, if incomplete, are the best possible for the moment. When pressed for addi- tional meaning in either language or art, a child will resort to another mode of communication.

8 J. Ellis and J. N. Ure, "Language varieties: Register", in Encyclopedia of Linguistics: Information and Control, London: Pergamon, 1969, p. 251.

9 Helmut Schnelle, "Language Com- munication with Children-toward a Theory of Language Use," Pragmatics of Natural Languages, Dordrecht, 1971, p. 191.

10 Op. cit., Cazden, p. 106. " Bette C. Acuff and Joan Sieber-

Suppes, A Manual for Coding Descrip- tions, Interpretations, and Evaluations of Visual Art Forms, Research and De- velopment Memorandum No. 95, Stan- ford Center for Research and Devel- opment in Teaching, Stanford, California, 1972.

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