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Aristotle wrote in his Nicomachean Ethics, “For the things we have to learn before we
can do them, we learn by doing them.” This, while the great philosopher wouldn’t have known it
originally developed by David A. Kolb, drawing heavily from previous work by John Dewey.
This learning theory involves learning by doing and reflection. Kolb looked at learning as
something that could happen both in formal situations, as in the classroom, and in informal
situations like through life lessons and mentorship. According to Aubrey and Riley in
“Kolb saw learning as ‘the process whereby knowledge is created through the
experiences which were then transformed into abstract conceptualism through the process
Here we can also see the stages of experiential learning as laid out by Kolb, concrete experience,
reflective observation, abstract conceptualism, and active experimentation. If art educators can
incorporate experiential learning into their classrooms by using art as a method of research
relating it to other subjects as means of taking into consideration the stages of experiential
learning and students’ learning styles, students would be able to better understand concepts and
ideas. In Maria Letsiou’s publication in the International Journal of education through Art, “Art
as research; Defending the significance of art practice in high school” (2016) and in Anne
experiential learning is examined and employed in two very distinct ways, through art as
In Letsiou’s (2016) article the educator uses experiential learning as a part of her art
projects in two of her classes. Using art practice as a method of research for two separate projects
for the two groups of students, an eighth-grade class and a tenth-grade class.
“The concept of art practice as research holds the promise of comprehension and
happens when research skills coexist with creativity and imagination.” (p. 242)
By using art making as a conduit for students’ research they are forced to experience the topics
addressed whether that be social, political, or personal, in such a way that allows them to
understand much more deeply, because they use comprehension and imagination, than they
would have from reading about the topic alone. Letsiou (2016) describes three aspects of art
education that she feels work in conjunction particularly well with experiential learning. These
thee tools, as she calls them, are “the production of images and objects, the use of images as
sources of information and knowledge, [and] an approach to research that uses the metaphor of
research process as art.” (Letsiou, 2016, p. 243) These steps relate to teaching with the cycle of
experiential learning because the student is having a concrete experience in research and image
gathering, practicing reflective observation by creating art works to reflect the information and
knowledge gathered, bringing that knowledge into abstract conceptualization by creating their
own visual representations, and taking part in active experimentation by trying out different
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methods of art making in order to express what they have learned. By using these tools educators
are able to integrate art as research into subjects across the board like math and science. Letsiou
“Under art practice as research learning tenets, images play a significant role not only in
reconsidering students’ identity formation and attitudes through image-making, but also
pragmatist aesthetic emerged from his arguments about reconstructing the traditional
opposition between science and art. He argues that science is art because an inherent
aesthetic quality exists in science and that art is science because art helps people counter
Dewey emphasizes here that there does not need to be such a distinct difference between how we
approach art and science because they are actually one in the same. By making this connection
across subjects, educators can use a much more effective and holistic approach to teaching any
topic.
Letsiou’s (2016) first project with her students is called “The Hexagon Project” in which
“the concept of art practice as research is reflected in production processes and focus on
materials used in creative investigation and meanings attached to them.” (p. 248) This project
focused on students’ of global themes such as poverty, sexual abuse, recycling, or cyber
bullying. In groups the students chose their theme and investigate it by gathering information and
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creating ways to display their findings visually in a product that would take the form of an art
piece (see image 1) Letsiou (2016) describes her main concern with this project as, “to organize
the experiential learning around a creative process that includes art production. Art production is
Her other project is entitled “Youth Practices in Youtube”, in this project students in
groups each take on different parts of the research process. These parts include investigating
video-art production, the history of YouTube and youth usage of YouTube. One strategy used in
“The strategy consisted of using a box as a visual map of concepts and their connections.
The students attach to one side of the box words-concepts about their individual research
those between YouTube and culture, between video and research, etc.” (Letsiou, 2016,
p.251)
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Image 2
Letsiou (2016) also used traditional forms of art making in her project like drawing and painting;
a drawing was made to, “represent the metaphor of video production as a mode of both
production and consumption. In addition, a mind map of a tree was created to represent the
connections among several components of the concept of culture.” (p. 251) Ultimately with this
project Letsiou (2016) wanted students to realize that inquiry and creativity were things that have
always been useful parts of their lives. (p. 252) In both projects art practice is knowledge
construction and research processes are the experiences that promote learning.
emotion” Douglas and Coessens (2011) analyze how artists who utilize improvisation compare
with those who use it in other fields; improvisation is a method utilizing experiential knowledge.
and growth in the world…by focusing on practitioners who work with improvisation in
precise ways in the fields of anthropology, ecology, visual art and music, we explore how
Here the cycle of experiential learning is used in that the artists in practice are having a concrete
experience in researching and observing their subject whether it be science art, practicing
reflective observation by creating art or reports from the information and knowledge gathered
from the previous step, bringing that knowledge into abstract conceptualization by creating their
art pieces, and taking part in active experimentation via the scientific process or via art making,
or even both in the case of two artists studied in this article. This article addresses multiple artists
who use improvisation as an educative experience in their work. Two that are examples of this
are Helen Meyer and Newton Harrison, “ecology artists and systems thinkers” (Coessens &
Douglas, 2011, p.181) who “examine the ecoculture of specific places under threat. In response,
they create work that traces the interconnectedness of living systems.” (Coessens & Douglas,
2011, p. 181) Just as in Letsiou’s (2016) classroom projects, this team of artists use research on a
topic as a part of their art making which is experiential and helping to develop theirs and others’
knowledge on the subjects. Douglas and Coessens (2011) use Dewey’s ideas to explain why art
embodied, vague and undefined. Dewey calls this the level of ‘feelings’, making possible
a first discernment of the world as loved, intuitive. On the next level of ‘sense’, the world
is accepted and reflected upon as meaningful. Third, these experiences are articulated
Here we see how art making itself is an experiential learning process. Through using mark-
making as described by Dewey in art as research teachers can integrate art as experiential
While both texts very comprehensively address experiential learning in the topics at
hand, and one cannot identify any significant research gaps, there are some unanswered
questions in both. In Letsiou’s (2016) article, the author acknowledges that she is still in process
of teaching these courses when this article was written so we cannot know the ultimate affect her
approach had on her students, she can only speculate. In Douglas and Coessens’(2011) article
implications of improvisation in experiential learning is not addressed for other uses such as
As future and current art educators, we can learn from these articles and apply
experiential learning by using art as research. Asking our students to actually engage personally
with the subjects at hand and to really reflect on their thoughts and conclusions. Researching
experiential learning theory has given me as a future educator a whole new perspective on how
and why art making can and should be integrated into curriculum. Using art as research is a way
to apply experiential learning to formal situation such as teaching things in the classroom, like
Letsiou (2016) did with her classes, as well as informal situations such as outside of the
classroom as Douglas and Coessens (2011) do in their research and ecologically conscious art
making.
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References
Aubrey, K. & Riley, A. (2016). Understanding and using educational theories. Thousand Oaks,
CA: Sage.
DOUGLAS, A. a., & COESSENS, K. k. (2012). Experiential knowledge and improvisation: Variations
on movement, motion, emotion. Art, Design & Communication In Higher Education, 10(2),
179-198.
Letsiou, M. (2016). Art as research: Defending the significance of art practice in high school.