Literature Review
Chapter 2: Literature Review
The studies reviewed in this section demonstrate the ways in which art education can be an effective tool in developing compassion in students. How can educators teach compassion using art? The supporting ideas that answer this question are through the role of the educator, character development, hidden and experiential curriculum, interdisciplinary learning, and integration. Discussed in this review are several published works detailing these elements of developing compassionate behavior in students, as well as examples of positive results of those who used art to do so.
Compassion and related terms
To begin, Steve Hein (n.d.) of eqi.org defines compassion as:
…a combination of empathy and understanding. Greater empathy gives you greater information, and the more information you have on something, the more likely you are to understand it. Higher emotional intelligence makes possible a greater capacity for such understanding. Thus, the logical sequence is as follows: Higher emotional sensitivity and awareness leads to higher levels of empathy. This leads to higher levels of understanding, which then leads to higher levels of compassion.
This website has many pages dedicated to the understanding and implementation of compassion as well as other positive personality attributes. The author also describes the ways in which empathy, caring, compassion, and understanding are used to help someone else in an emotional state of need (Hein, n.d.). In a similar reading, John Fein (2003) discusses Nel Nodding’s description of caring as three components: conceptual and emotive understanding; deep positive regard and respect for the feeling and intrinsic value of another soul; and the motivation, willingness, and skills to act to protect and enhance these feelings, values and rights. He goes on to describe caring as more of an action word that should be acted upon as well as an opposite to words like cruelty and indifference. Caring shifts in this presentation to the word compassion, because of its close nature to empathy and understanding as a combination in presence (Fien, 2003). In this literature review, the word compassion also represents other closely descriptive positive personality traits such as empathy, caring, and understanding.
With compassion now defined, this literature review will attempt to identify whether and how compassion develops through educational opportunities, and more specifically, educational opportunities related to art making. While a significant amount of research describes compassionate activities, compassion as it relates to a topic, compassion as a moral compass for one’s life, and compassion as it relates to empathy, there is very little research that describes how compassion develops within high school art classrooms.
Role of the Educator
The role of the teacher is an important aspect of teaching compassion in art. For instance, Marable (2006) wrote that Ruth Fasion Shaw integrated finger paint in art classrooms and in psychiatric therapy. She was very influential at the Shaw School in Rome, Italy by impressing the concept of creativity “as an integral part of a healthy personality” (Marable, 2006). Moreover, Alana Cook (2009), once named teacher of the year at Maple Ridge Secondary, writes in Teaching us Humanity: The Importance of Keeping Compassion in the Classroom that “students will be the most engaged when they feel as though you care about them” (p. 1). Teachers’ actions influence student thinking, learning, and behavior in the classroom. Teachers are the starting point for this study and representative of compassionate behavior.
Character Development
The character and personality of artists and art educators are acting examples for how compassion can be admirable. One artist, Kathy Tacke from Kansas City, MO (Gamble, 2004), states that she has “a passionate pursuit” (p. 22) for what she teaches. She goes on to describe reasons why she teaches art and how important art education is at the elementary level. Tacke says, “If I can make the learning more meaningful, it will be remembered for a longer period of time” (p. 24). As Nel Noddings says, “When we care, we want to do our very best for the objects of our care” (1995, p. 675). Teachers who truly care make big impressions and students can tell the difference.
Caring teachers exist from elementary to college often with a similar goal, to educate with meaning and compassion. Daphne Hill is an artist in California who teaches with character and meaning. An article written for UCLA Today paints Hill as an excellent educator who has brought her own fears to the forefront in order to help others. Hill, who educates doctors on compassion through art, creates artwork of sexually transmitted diseases and often includes samples of what the microscopic disease looks like. Such diseases are associated with the need for compassion by mankind due the severity of the affliction. She uses these exhibits to teach new doctors how to see patients as people and puts these diseases in perspective (Lin, 2010). Her work involves ideas later discussed in this review, such as hidden and experiential curriculum, interdisciplinarity and integration, and character education. Just like Hill, other educators play a crucial role when it comes to their students’ character development within art education. In this study, will character development occur from compassion in action through art making?
Hidden and Experiential Curriculum
Two potential ways of developing students’ compassion is through hidden and experiential curricula. Through personal philosophies and methodologies delicately intertwined in the curriculum (also known as hidden), students learn about concepts such as compassion without ever realizing the transmission. Artist, Carrie Mae Weems uses a form of hidden curriculum, acknowledging that the hidden curriculum looks like so many different things and it easily tucks into any lesson (Sollins & Dowling, 2009). Beth Bearden (2011), another artist educator using hidden curriculum, writes indirectly about this topic describing ten lessons art teaches students. These ten lessons include problem solving, perspective, experience, and communication. She goes on to describe how important her role as an educator is with influencing the demeanor of the students on a daily basis. Actively promoting compassion through art is a positive attribute that would influence demeanor in an art room. Bearden is an experienced teacher who desires to develop her students’ whole selves and sense of compassion in the classroom through art (Bearden, 2011).
From positive role models to role-playing, experiential education is another potential means of developing compassion in an art education setting. Rebecca Carver (1996) describes experiential educational practices by way of authenticity, active learning, and drawing on experience, and connections to future opportunities. In her article, she references the true value of a teacher with pedagogical principles that cultivate an environment for learning and nurturing students (p. 10). This article goes on to give a detailed framework for how a classroom can facilitate a successful topic such as compassion (p. 11). Starting with caring educators who use common sense in curriculum shaping, teachers can build self-esteem, safe environments, and competent art students (p. 12).
Philosopher and educator Nel Noddings (1995) writes several articles about caring in schools and caring through art based learning, but her article Teaching Themes of Care reflects a clear listing and explanation of why caring is crucial through the arts. Her discussion lists points of importance such as cultural literacy, academic connections, existential questioning, and personal connections (p. 675). She states, “Caring implies a continuous search for competence” (p. 675) and “[Students] can be led to develop the skills and knowledge necessary to make positive contributions, regardless of the occupation they may choose” (p. 675). Like students, teachers want to be competent in what they do in the classroom. Nodding’s article suggests that both the role of the student as well as the educator benefit from hidden curriculum behaviors.
Interdisciplinary Learning
Project based learning with an interdisciplinary approach in art successfully uses a problem solving methodology and helps students to make real life connections. Interdisciplinary lessons in art can develop more empathetic and compassionate students through cooperative working, conceptual thinking, and personality development. Davis Publications produces a book for art educators that helps guide this type of learning. Chapter 2 of the Davis Publication, Rethinking Curriculum in Art, discusses at length the topic of interdisciplinary learning (Stewart & Walker, 2001). The authors write, “students are helped to apply their new understandings to life situations, to demonstrate their achievement through performance tasks and projects often in contexts other than those strictly associated with the school” (p. 13). This chapter describes how to help students make real and meaningful connections to artwork. Connections to emotion, history, or English are interdisciplinary and integrated forms of learning. Through art, compassion can be the building block for character as well as support for interdisciplinary growth. Group work, social interactions, and peer-to-peer learning are possible interdisciplinary actions that develop compassionate personalities.
An artist educator that implements this concept, Lynn Sanders-Bustle (2008), has an excellent idea for teaching students through interdisciplinary concepts. Her article Visual Artifact Journals as Creative and Critical Springboards for Meaning Making discusses journaling as a means to educate students through visual studies and written reflections (p. 8). These journals would allow students to record visual information that they remember, know, or learn just as they would in an English or History course. Students are able to keep record of personal feelings and reactions to the lessons or students in the classroom. The recorded emotions can encourage recognition of caring for others or problem solving, a growth point of social development.
Another example of an artist who uses interdisciplinary concepts with her own artwork is Carrie Mae Weems. She describes her art in the PBS: Art 21 video Compassion (Sollins & Dowling, 2009). Weems documents the life and times, even struggles and victories, of black American culture through recreation, discussion, photography, and journaling (“Carrie Mae Weems,” 2011). While her work is mainly photography, the conceptual idea of compassionate action she uses through art is essentially the same as what could be used with lessons for high school students. Her journaling process is also very similar to what I currently teach in high school art. Weems includes a large amount of history as she recreates famous historical events that evoke a sense of compassion, an interdisciplinary and hidden curriculum idea students could use when creating their own art (Sollins & Dowling, 2009). Weems is very influential with her uses of compassionate art making as a means to reach someone in a meaningful manner.
Integration
Besides the actions and modeling behaviors of educators and artists, certain artworks and exhibits are great resources for integrating compassion into a curriculum. For instance, the Jack Blanton Museum of Art provides students and teachers with an exhibit based on empathy. This exhibit, entitled Learning Empathy Through Art, can be found in the museum and online in lesson plans guiding their learning (“Learning Empathy Through Art,” n.d.). The website has a materials list, objectives, connections, procedures, related links and the lesson to teach students about the art on exhibit. Students can explore empathy on their own personal visit or through a teacher guided class visit. Museums are an additional educational opportunity for students to learn how to put compassion in action through art.
The most important and the most relevant reading on integrating and developing compassion in student behavior is by Rachael Kessler. Her work centers on how to integrate “soul” into the classroom. Kessler’s work transcends the idea of interdisciplinary learning through real life experiences, but also strongly focuses on experiential curriculum such as introducing death to her students. She tells the story of her students and their journey with a classmate who died (Kessler, 2000). This reading is quite evocative and indicative of compassionate behavior taught through art because of the description of her emotional and authentic lessons. She does not stop there; she creates a website soon after this story and creates a business of bringing compassion, connections, and character to the classroom (Kessler, 2005). Between art exhibits, online learning, classroom lessons, and real life adventures, teachers can integrate compassion in action through art just as Kessler demonstrates.
History
Looking back at this topic of study, historical sources suggest that character is organic, and that studies about children often make adults “more sympathetic and tactile in dealing with them” (Bailey, Jr., 1903). This article further advocates that teaching compassion would be a viable possibility in the classroom and that students can learn to become compassionate beings. In the article Character and Conduct, Alexander (1893) writes “…permanent character depend on the permanent associations of our ideas of conduct” (p. 485) This is thought to mean that those who are taught and learned to show compassion will reflect these lessons later in life as well. Dating back to the Middle Ages, this idea of positive, compassionate behavior through art is reflective as important. Ethical values and a Christian spirit were expected behaviors during this period, thus artists reflected these actions in their art naturally. An example, one of the best-known Christian art symbols, the Madonna, is “the greatest ethical conception of the Middle Ages” (Laing, 1903, p. 63). This figure depicts a motherly woman with a compassionate and caring demeanor. Facilitating compassionate conduct through art is both a contemporary and historical concept.
In Conclusion
While educating students through caring based artmaking processes, one can understand how compassionate behavior is important. Compassion, also worded as empathy, understanding, sympathy, or caring is important in art education. Regardless of the name, the goal in this literature review demonstrates the ways in which art education can be an effective tool in developing compassion in students. Meaningful and purposeful art makes for vested students regardless of what they create. Vested students can become successful adults contributing positively in society. This review has highlighted the ways in which art makers, art educators, and museum educators are able to and have made caring a priority, supporting the idea that meaningful art education is important to developing compassion in high school students.
The studies reviewed in this section demonstrate the ways in which art education can be an effective tool in developing compassion in students. How can educators teach compassion using art? The supporting ideas that answer this question are through the role of the educator, character development, hidden and experiential curriculum, interdisciplinary learning, and integration. Discussed in this review are several published works detailing these elements of developing compassionate behavior in students, as well as examples of positive results of those who used art to do so.
Compassion and related terms
To begin, Steve Hein (n.d.) of eqi.org defines compassion as:
…a combination of empathy and understanding. Greater empathy gives you greater information, and the more information you have on something, the more likely you are to understand it. Higher emotional intelligence makes possible a greater capacity for such understanding. Thus, the logical sequence is as follows: Higher emotional sensitivity and awareness leads to higher levels of empathy. This leads to higher levels of understanding, which then leads to higher levels of compassion.
This website has many pages dedicated to the understanding and implementation of compassion as well as other positive personality attributes. The author also describes the ways in which empathy, caring, compassion, and understanding are used to help someone else in an emotional state of need (Hein, n.d.). In a similar reading, John Fein (2003) discusses Nel Nodding’s description of caring as three components: conceptual and emotive understanding; deep positive regard and respect for the feeling and intrinsic value of another soul; and the motivation, willingness, and skills to act to protect and enhance these feelings, values and rights. He goes on to describe caring as more of an action word that should be acted upon as well as an opposite to words like cruelty and indifference. Caring shifts in this presentation to the word compassion, because of its close nature to empathy and understanding as a combination in presence (Fien, 2003). In this literature review, the word compassion also represents other closely descriptive positive personality traits such as empathy, caring, and understanding.
With compassion now defined, this literature review will attempt to identify whether and how compassion develops through educational opportunities, and more specifically, educational opportunities related to art making. While a significant amount of research describes compassionate activities, compassion as it relates to a topic, compassion as a moral compass for one’s life, and compassion as it relates to empathy, there is very little research that describes how compassion develops within high school art classrooms.
Role of the Educator
The role of the teacher is an important aspect of teaching compassion in art. For instance, Marable (2006) wrote that Ruth Fasion Shaw integrated finger paint in art classrooms and in psychiatric therapy. She was very influential at the Shaw School in Rome, Italy by impressing the concept of creativity “as an integral part of a healthy personality” (Marable, 2006). Moreover, Alana Cook (2009), once named teacher of the year at Maple Ridge Secondary, writes in Teaching us Humanity: The Importance of Keeping Compassion in the Classroom that “students will be the most engaged when they feel as though you care about them” (p. 1). Teachers’ actions influence student thinking, learning, and behavior in the classroom. Teachers are the starting point for this study and representative of compassionate behavior.
Character Development
The character and personality of artists and art educators are acting examples for how compassion can be admirable. One artist, Kathy Tacke from Kansas City, MO (Gamble, 2004), states that she has “a passionate pursuit” (p. 22) for what she teaches. She goes on to describe reasons why she teaches art and how important art education is at the elementary level. Tacke says, “If I can make the learning more meaningful, it will be remembered for a longer period of time” (p. 24). As Nel Noddings says, “When we care, we want to do our very best for the objects of our care” (1995, p. 675). Teachers who truly care make big impressions and students can tell the difference.
Caring teachers exist from elementary to college often with a similar goal, to educate with meaning and compassion. Daphne Hill is an artist in California who teaches with character and meaning. An article written for UCLA Today paints Hill as an excellent educator who has brought her own fears to the forefront in order to help others. Hill, who educates doctors on compassion through art, creates artwork of sexually transmitted diseases and often includes samples of what the microscopic disease looks like. Such diseases are associated with the need for compassion by mankind due the severity of the affliction. She uses these exhibits to teach new doctors how to see patients as people and puts these diseases in perspective (Lin, 2010). Her work involves ideas later discussed in this review, such as hidden and experiential curriculum, interdisciplinarity and integration, and character education. Just like Hill, other educators play a crucial role when it comes to their students’ character development within art education. In this study, will character development occur from compassion in action through art making?
Hidden and Experiential Curriculum
Two potential ways of developing students’ compassion is through hidden and experiential curricula. Through personal philosophies and methodologies delicately intertwined in the curriculum (also known as hidden), students learn about concepts such as compassion without ever realizing the transmission. Artist, Carrie Mae Weems uses a form of hidden curriculum, acknowledging that the hidden curriculum looks like so many different things and it easily tucks into any lesson (Sollins & Dowling, 2009). Beth Bearden (2011), another artist educator using hidden curriculum, writes indirectly about this topic describing ten lessons art teaches students. These ten lessons include problem solving, perspective, experience, and communication. She goes on to describe how important her role as an educator is with influencing the demeanor of the students on a daily basis. Actively promoting compassion through art is a positive attribute that would influence demeanor in an art room. Bearden is an experienced teacher who desires to develop her students’ whole selves and sense of compassion in the classroom through art (Bearden, 2011).
From positive role models to role-playing, experiential education is another potential means of developing compassion in an art education setting. Rebecca Carver (1996) describes experiential educational practices by way of authenticity, active learning, and drawing on experience, and connections to future opportunities. In her article, she references the true value of a teacher with pedagogical principles that cultivate an environment for learning and nurturing students (p. 10). This article goes on to give a detailed framework for how a classroom can facilitate a successful topic such as compassion (p. 11). Starting with caring educators who use common sense in curriculum shaping, teachers can build self-esteem, safe environments, and competent art students (p. 12).
Philosopher and educator Nel Noddings (1995) writes several articles about caring in schools and caring through art based learning, but her article Teaching Themes of Care reflects a clear listing and explanation of why caring is crucial through the arts. Her discussion lists points of importance such as cultural literacy, academic connections, existential questioning, and personal connections (p. 675). She states, “Caring implies a continuous search for competence” (p. 675) and “[Students] can be led to develop the skills and knowledge necessary to make positive contributions, regardless of the occupation they may choose” (p. 675). Like students, teachers want to be competent in what they do in the classroom. Nodding’s article suggests that both the role of the student as well as the educator benefit from hidden curriculum behaviors.
Interdisciplinary Learning
Project based learning with an interdisciplinary approach in art successfully uses a problem solving methodology and helps students to make real life connections. Interdisciplinary lessons in art can develop more empathetic and compassionate students through cooperative working, conceptual thinking, and personality development. Davis Publications produces a book for art educators that helps guide this type of learning. Chapter 2 of the Davis Publication, Rethinking Curriculum in Art, discusses at length the topic of interdisciplinary learning (Stewart & Walker, 2001). The authors write, “students are helped to apply their new understandings to life situations, to demonstrate their achievement through performance tasks and projects often in contexts other than those strictly associated with the school” (p. 13). This chapter describes how to help students make real and meaningful connections to artwork. Connections to emotion, history, or English are interdisciplinary and integrated forms of learning. Through art, compassion can be the building block for character as well as support for interdisciplinary growth. Group work, social interactions, and peer-to-peer learning are possible interdisciplinary actions that develop compassionate personalities.
An artist educator that implements this concept, Lynn Sanders-Bustle (2008), has an excellent idea for teaching students through interdisciplinary concepts. Her article Visual Artifact Journals as Creative and Critical Springboards for Meaning Making discusses journaling as a means to educate students through visual studies and written reflections (p. 8). These journals would allow students to record visual information that they remember, know, or learn just as they would in an English or History course. Students are able to keep record of personal feelings and reactions to the lessons or students in the classroom. The recorded emotions can encourage recognition of caring for others or problem solving, a growth point of social development.
Another example of an artist who uses interdisciplinary concepts with her own artwork is Carrie Mae Weems. She describes her art in the PBS: Art 21 video Compassion (Sollins & Dowling, 2009). Weems documents the life and times, even struggles and victories, of black American culture through recreation, discussion, photography, and journaling (“Carrie Mae Weems,” 2011). While her work is mainly photography, the conceptual idea of compassionate action she uses through art is essentially the same as what could be used with lessons for high school students. Her journaling process is also very similar to what I currently teach in high school art. Weems includes a large amount of history as she recreates famous historical events that evoke a sense of compassion, an interdisciplinary and hidden curriculum idea students could use when creating their own art (Sollins & Dowling, 2009). Weems is very influential with her uses of compassionate art making as a means to reach someone in a meaningful manner.
Integration
Besides the actions and modeling behaviors of educators and artists, certain artworks and exhibits are great resources for integrating compassion into a curriculum. For instance, the Jack Blanton Museum of Art provides students and teachers with an exhibit based on empathy. This exhibit, entitled Learning Empathy Through Art, can be found in the museum and online in lesson plans guiding their learning (“Learning Empathy Through Art,” n.d.). The website has a materials list, objectives, connections, procedures, related links and the lesson to teach students about the art on exhibit. Students can explore empathy on their own personal visit or through a teacher guided class visit. Museums are an additional educational opportunity for students to learn how to put compassion in action through art.
The most important and the most relevant reading on integrating and developing compassion in student behavior is by Rachael Kessler. Her work centers on how to integrate “soul” into the classroom. Kessler’s work transcends the idea of interdisciplinary learning through real life experiences, but also strongly focuses on experiential curriculum such as introducing death to her students. She tells the story of her students and their journey with a classmate who died (Kessler, 2000). This reading is quite evocative and indicative of compassionate behavior taught through art because of the description of her emotional and authentic lessons. She does not stop there; she creates a website soon after this story and creates a business of bringing compassion, connections, and character to the classroom (Kessler, 2005). Between art exhibits, online learning, classroom lessons, and real life adventures, teachers can integrate compassion in action through art just as Kessler demonstrates.
History
Looking back at this topic of study, historical sources suggest that character is organic, and that studies about children often make adults “more sympathetic and tactile in dealing with them” (Bailey, Jr., 1903). This article further advocates that teaching compassion would be a viable possibility in the classroom and that students can learn to become compassionate beings. In the article Character and Conduct, Alexander (1893) writes “…permanent character depend on the permanent associations of our ideas of conduct” (p. 485) This is thought to mean that those who are taught and learned to show compassion will reflect these lessons later in life as well. Dating back to the Middle Ages, this idea of positive, compassionate behavior through art is reflective as important. Ethical values and a Christian spirit were expected behaviors during this period, thus artists reflected these actions in their art naturally. An example, one of the best-known Christian art symbols, the Madonna, is “the greatest ethical conception of the Middle Ages” (Laing, 1903, p. 63). This figure depicts a motherly woman with a compassionate and caring demeanor. Facilitating compassionate conduct through art is both a contemporary and historical concept.
In Conclusion
While educating students through caring based artmaking processes, one can understand how compassionate behavior is important. Compassion, also worded as empathy, understanding, sympathy, or caring is important in art education. Regardless of the name, the goal in this literature review demonstrates the ways in which art education can be an effective tool in developing compassion in students. Meaningful and purposeful art makes for vested students regardless of what they create. Vested students can become successful adults contributing positively in society. This review has highlighted the ways in which art makers, art educators, and museum educators are able to and have made caring a priority, supporting the idea that meaningful art education is important to developing compassion in high school students.
