Art Analysis in the Language Arts Classroom
When thinking of a Language Arts class, the emphasis is often placed on reading and writing skills even though there a several other critical areas of textual literacy. In trying to detangle the knots that connect reading skills and those of writing, listening, and speaking, it is important to provide students opportunities to access texts that are less language heavy and still allow students to demonstrate analytical skills without being compounded by language issues. Art analysis is an access point for demonstrating critical thinking skills.
A crucial part of this unit will be the creation and analysis of works as it relates to social issues. The National Arts Education Association published an open letter speaking of the need to work towards an educational environment that is more inclusive and embraces diversity, while also acting to be anti-racist. In the letter, the association discusses how racist systems produce racist ideologist, and, as such, it is important to dismantle the practices in education that produce that sort of limited environment. The letter basically calls on educators to do better and one way to do that is through looking at art through social movement learning and critical race theory.29
Across the world, and in various industries, the significance of understanding art in relation to social movements is increasing. Jeremy W. Bohonos, Kimberly D. Otchere, and Yoon Pak did their research specifically on how art education and social movement learning were being used in human resource development courses in order to better prepare HR departments. In their work, they deemed it important that organizations teach social justice learning in relation to art in order to humanize the issues and to make sometimes intangible concepts more relatable to those who would be entering the workforce. Art has a way of building empathy as well as pushing oppressors towards evolution and helping to free the oppressed.
Social movement learning can be done using the social justice critical reflection model that encourages learners to consider the descriptive and dialogical thinking, critical reflection and consciousness, and praxis. Understanding the literal meaning of the work is only one aspect of this process (descriptive thinking). Learners are also asked to consider points of view and bias (dialogical thinking) as well considering the historical, political, and social contexts of a work (critical reflection). When considering bias, learners are asked to understand the origin of the point of view and why it is problematic. In the final step, learners are asked to consider what can be done to enact change (praxis).30
This lens lends itself very well to the six hats model.
The Six Hats
In this unit, students will be asked to examine art. Examining art is a way for students to build analytical skills without needing word-rich material to do so. One way of examining art is through the six hats techniques. In this technique, students will be asked to examine art through various lens (or hats). This is a procedure that can also be duplicated with written works. Throughout the unit, students will be given multiple opportunities to use this skill in various print and visual texts.
In the six hat strategy, students will be asked to examine a text using one of six hats. Those six hats include the white, yellow, red, green, black, and blue. Each of those hats looks at a different aspect of a text as explained below:
With the white hat, students are looking for information. They are just looking for facts. In a visual text, they will say what they see. In a written text, they would state what is written.
Using the yellow hat, students are asked to consider the possibilities and to ask questions. These questions are meant to be open-ended with the other students able to consider all possible solutions to said inquiry.
While engaging with the red hat, students are expected to examine their feelings. What emotion is evoked from viewing the piece of art? What mood are they in after they read the piece of text?
When wearing the green hat, students think creatively about the subject. With this hat, I would also like my students to consider what art of their own that could be inspired by the art or writing they are viewing or reading.
The black hat asks the students to look critically at a piece of art or writing. The student is asked to see what doesn’t work or what negatives are there about the text.
Using the blue hat, students will be asked to think about their thinking. They will be involved in a more metacognition. They will begin to cultivate a mindset where they consider their thought process and how to focus and hone in on ideas for further development. 31
When used with multilingual students, the six hats strategy was shown to improve student’s responses to literary texts.32