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Competence-based approach in education assigns special importance to deep learning which requires pupil’s active and interested involvement in diverse teaching/learning activities. One of the new key words in education policy documents is pupil’s self-expression. It is included in the domain of understanding culture and self-expression in art which envisages the improvement of pupils’ transversal skills, virtues, and values.
Observations during the classes in the methods of visual art course lead to bringing forward the problem that prospective teachers hesitate to engage in the self-expression process; they neglect their abilities in art, they do not believe in their creative potential, they are afraid to make mistakes and be misunderstood because their experience is connected with the teacher’s created subjectivity in the assessment of their work which has resulted in creating a psychological barrier for artistic activity and inadequately low self-assessment. This leads to thinking that prospective teachers do not understand the nature of self-expression and to doubting whether they will be able to be creative as teachers and be able to connect the freedom of self-expression with the teaching/learning content of visual art in order to plan and implement meaningfully the teaching/learning process that is based on pupil’s competence as the educational outcome.
Aim
The aim of the article is to analyze the nature, structure and manifestations of creative self-expression, possibilities of its facilitation in the teaching/learning process of visual art in primary school according to the education policy of Latvia and the readiness of prospective teachers to do it.
In order to reach the aim: 1) theoretical analysis of the concept of self-expression in visual art was performed; 2) prospective teachers’ experience of creative self-expression in primary school and understanding of the concept “self-expression” were explored; 3) the suggestions for the teacher education were summarized.
Methodology
The data for the qualitative study were obtained in teacher education program students’ free-form essays. The respondents’ reflections were analyzed qualitatively to indicate pre- and in-service teachers’ readiness to promote the pupils’ creative self-expression in visual art lessons.
Participants of the study were 90 pre-service and in-service teachers.
The results of the theoretical analysis offer structured criteria and indicators for the measurement of the creative self-expression in the visual arts.
The findings of the empirical study will contribute in the development of initial teacher education programs and lifelong learning to help them to promote the pupils’ creative self-expression purposefully.
Theoretical Background
Self-expression in theory of psychology and pedagogy is related to the creative process, in which human conscious and unconscious psychic forces interact: man’s imagination under the impact of leading emotions creates new combinations of experience (Выготский, 1998), divergent thinking creates varieties solutions (Guilford, 1967; Cropley, 1999), lateral thinking opposite to vertical connects seemingly incomparable objects and remote associations (Де Боно, 1997), systemic thinking contrary to linear observes the diverse connections between objects and perceives things in their wholeness (Edwards, 1999), alignment and surrender to the flow in which the person forgets about his ego, loosens the difference between work and play (Csikszentmihalyi, 2002).
Giving up the dominant of abstract, symbolic, logical thinking to engage all human psychological components – attention, perception, memory, imagination, associations, intuition, etc. – is essential for the creative process.
The basis of creative self-expression in visual art is spontaneous expressions that come without strain, stereotypes, prejudices, and clichés. It corresponds to the theory of artistic innovation psychology emphasizing the extravert line of art works, when art works emerge as if out of themselves, outside the artist’s will; they are the expression of artist’s nature, the result of a creative impulse, a sudden revelation of which the author himself is unaware (Jungs, 2009; Eisner, 2002; Pöllänen, 2011).