Robert-Paul Wolters
What if the student were a crown?
As an art teacher in secondary education, I used to work with students who had little motivation for the subject of Art & Design. Until a few years ago my classes were rather directive and teacher-driven, with a freedom that can best be defined as ‘directed freedom’ and that certainly did not always contribute to the students’ involvement or motivation.
Over the course of time, my entire didactics have changed. This research at MEIA – which is a combination of theoretical research and an analysis of different classroom experiments and conversations with students – is based on the premise that art classes are more challenging, motivating, stimulating and especially more FUN if the student has a degree of agency about the direction of study and the space in which this takes place. I therefore focus on the question of how obtaining agency influences the artistic process of secondary school students in relation to the use of the educational space.
The students were given a clear presence and voice in my research and their surprising input eventually led to the implementation of game elements such as ‘the Crown’, a metaphor for the complex concept of agency. Equipped with the Crown, students could playfully design their own lessons, search for a retreat space within the workspace, stack tables on top of each other and much more. I saw my students grow in their capacity to act with a sense of freedom and responsibility. Yet, there were a lot of issues to consider: social structure, pedagogical codes and a deep paradox about how the physical school space is experienced. In the end, the research was literally set in the format of a game, so that other (art) teachers also have the opportunity to playfully experiment with the agency of their students.
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