THE PROCESS

• With teacher guidance at each step, students first learn about how learning works by studying constructivism and discussing the roles of the teacher, peers and themselves in the learning process.  

• To build this learning team, we do trust building activities to create a sense of emotional safety needed in the studio to facilitate critique and peer learning.

• Students explore what they are curious about, to find the topic or question they will investigate for the first research cycle.

• Students learn a process for creative research, using their own question or topic as the focus for each stage. This process (see chart below) is called Stages of Research-based Artmaking" and has distinct stages, and each stage is documented in the students research art book. The names of these stages form a common vocabulary so students can understand each other's work and give feedback at each stage. (Note: Students may personalize their creative process only once they have learned all the stages.)

• Students develope skills to document each page—decide what types of information needs to be included at each stage, how to organize that on a page, and how to represent it all in their Research Artbook.

• Students are introduced to the idea of critique as a gift we give to other artists, explore critique styles by watching videos of artists & teachers critiquing and learn the term "Warm Demander" to understand their role in helping peers improve.

• Students create artwork, focusing on frequent critique, revision and resolution of a few related artworks, rather than quick production of a breadth of unrelated works.