Republic of the Philippines

ISABELA STATE UNIVERSITY

BUILDING AND ENHANCING NEW LITERACIES

ACROSS THE CURRICULUM 
(SEd Prof. 312/EEd Prof 312/TLEd Prof 312/PEd Prof 312)

A Self-Paced Learning Module for College Students  

MODULE 9

ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE

LITERACY
 Module 9: ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE LITERACY

Introduction
Teaching 21 century learners is a challenge for educators. As educators, we
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need to create classrooms that will maximize the success of all students, and will
accommodate a diverse range of skills, needs, and interests. Incorporating arts
education will not just actively engage students in teaching and learning process,
but will also enhance their creativity and be able to express their feelings and
thoughts in a meaningful way. The prime function of arts education is to introduce
students to the arts world – a world where they are able to learn about dance,
drama, media, music, visual art and design and, from various arts experiences,
develop their own artistic capabilities. The inclusion of quality arts program, and the
types of thinking developed therein, uniquely meet the needs of the 21 -centuryst

learner by not only providing experiences and opportunities for today’s students to
be engaged, but to thrive. The arts make all kinds of learning exciting.
Learning Outcome
 Characterize artistic literacy;
 Discuss the value of Arts to education and practical life; and
 Identify approaches to developing/designing curriculum that cultivates the arts
and creativity among learners
Learning Content
This module equips teachers with ways to maximize student’s creative potential and
critical literacy through activities involving "the arts". The following are topics to be
discuss:
Topic 1: Valuable lessons or benefits of Arts to education
Topic 2: Characterizing Artistically Literate Individuals
Topic 3: Issues in Teaching Creativity
Topic 1. Valuable lessons or benefits of Arts to education
To understand deeply the arts education, here are the definitions of Artistic Literacy. 
Artistic Literacy is defined in the National Coalition for Core Arts Standards: A
conceptual Framework for Arts Learning (2014) as the knowledge and understanding
required to participate authentically in the arts. While individuals can learn about dance,
media, music, theatre, and visual arts through reading print text, artistic literacy requires
that they engage in artistic creation processes directly through the use of materials
(e.g., charcoal or paint or clay, musical instruments or scores) and in specific spaces
(e.g., concert halls, stages, dance rehearsal spaces, arts studios, and computer labs).
Researchers have recognized that there are significant benefits of arts learning and
engagement in schooling (Eisner, 2002; MENC, 1996; Perso, Nulton, Fraser, Silburn, &
Trait, 2011).
The flexibility of the forms comprising the arts positions students to embody a range of
literate practices to:
 Use their minds in verbal and nonverbal ways;
 Communicate complex ideas in a variety of forms;
 Understand words, sounds, or images;
 Imagine new possibilities; and
 Persevere to reach goals and make them happen.

The following are summarized by Eliot Eisner into eight valuable lessons or benefits
that education can learn from arts:
1. Form and content cannot be separated. How something is said or done shapes the
content of experience. In education, how something is taught, how curricula are
organized, and how schools are designed impact upon what students will learn.
These “side effects” may be the real main effects of practice.
2. Everything interacts; there is no content without form and no form without content.
When the content of a form is changed, so too, is the form altered. Form and content
are like two sides of a coin.
3. Nuance matters. To extent to which teaching is an art, attention to nuance is critical.
It can also be said that the aesthetic lives in the details that the maker can shape in
the course of creation. How a word is spoken, how a gesture is made, how a line is
written, and how a melody is played, all affect the character of the whole. All depend
upon the modulation of the nuances that constitute the act.
4. Surprise is not to be seen as an intruder in the process of inquiry, but as a part of
the rewards one reaps when working artistically. No surprise, no discovery, no
discovery, no progress. Educators should not resist surprise, but create the
conditions to make it happen. It is one of the most powerful sources of intrinsic
satisfaction.
5. Slowing down perception is the most promising way to see what is actually there. It
is true that we have a certain words to designate high levels of intelligence. We
describe somebody as being swift, or bright, or sharp, or fast on the pickup. Speed
in its swift state is a descriptor for those we call smart. Yet, one of the qualities we
ought to be promoting in our schools is a slowing down of perception: the ability to
take one’s time, to smell the flowers, to really perceive in the Deweyan sense, and
not merely to recognize what one looks at.
6. The limits of language are not the limits of cognition. We know more than we can
tell. In common terms, literacy refers essentially to the ability to read and to write.
But literacy can be re-conceptualized as the creation and use of a form of
representation that will enable one to create meaning- meaning that will not take the
impress of language in its conventional form. In addition, literacy is associated with
high-level forms of cognition. We tend to think that in order to know, one has to be
able to say. However, as Polanyi (1969) reminds us, we know more than we can tell.
7. Somatic experience is one of the most important indicators that someone has gotten
right. Related to the multiple ways in which we represent the world through our
multiple forms of literacy is the way in which we come to know the world through the
entailments of our body. Sometimes one knows a process or an event through one’s
skin.
8. Open-ended tasks permit the exercise of imagination, and an exercise of the
imagination is one of the most important of human aptitudes. It is imagination, not
necessity, that is the mother of invention. Imagination is the source of new
possibilities. In the arts, imagination is a primary virtue. So, it should be in the
teaching of mathematics, in all of the sciences, in history, and, indeed, in virtually all
that humans create. This achievement would require for its realization a culture of
schooling in which the imaginative aspects of the human condition were made
possible.
Topic 2. Characterizing Artistically Literate Individuals
Many classroom teachers regularly incorporate arts activities (music, movement and
dance, drama/theatre, visual art) into their teaching. Those who describe how their
students become more interested and involved with the learning at hand, and by doing
so, markedly increase literacy skills. These teachers also report that their students are
more likely to remember the content they are learning because they are able to create
and actively express the deeper meanings of that content through drawing, painting,
movement, dramatization, singing, group projects and more. Simply put, learning with
and through the arts enlivens instruction, increases student involvement, and deepens
both the meaning and memory of the learning at hand.
How would you characterize an artistically literate student? Literature on art education
and art standards in education cited the following as common traits of artistically literate
individuals:
 Use a variety of artistic media, symbols, and metaphors to communicate their own
ideas and respond to the artistic communication of others;
 Develop creative personal realization in at least one art form in which they continue
active involvement as an adult;
 Cultivate culture, history, and other connection through diverse forms and genres of
artwork;
 Find joy, inspiration, peace, intellectual stimulation, and meaning when they
participate in the arts; and
 Seek artistic experiences and support the arts in their communities.
Topic 3. Issues in Teaching Creativity
The arts can function as modes of communication. Creative ideas are
expressed through visual images, sound, movement and drama and, with the
assistance of technology, are presented in various forms in the electronic media.
While humans usually communicate verbally, they also use the arts to express their
feelings. On the one hand, body language, vocal inflection and graphic
representation can enhance verbal interaction, but arts expression can also present
ideas and meanings that are embedded within the art form itself (Stokes, S. 2002).
In the famous TED talks on creativity and innovation, Sir Ken Robinsin (Do
schools kill creativity? 2006; How to escape education’s Death Valley? 2013)
stressed paradigms in the education system that hamper the development of
creative capacity among learners. He emphasized that schools stigmatize mistakes.
This primarily prevents students from trying and coming up with original ideas.
Because of this painful truth, Robinson challenged educators to:
 Educate the well-being of learners, and shift from the conventional leanings
toward academic ability alone;
 Give equal weight to the arts, the humanities, and to physical education;
 Facilitate learning and work toward stimulating curiosity among learners;
 Awaken and develop powers of creativity among learners; and
 Views intelligence as diverse, dynamic, and distinct, contrary to common belief
that it should be academic ability-geared.

Douriah, 2001 & Anderson, 2003 proposed four essential components to developing
or designing curriculum that cultivates students’ artistic and creative literacy. These
approaches actively encourage the creative, constructive thinking involved in meaning
which are fundamental to the development of the systems of reading, writing, and
numbering.
1. Imagination and pretense, fantasy and metaphor
A creative curriculum wil not simply allow, but will actively support, play and
playfulness. The teacher will plan for learning and teaching opportunities for children to
be, at once, who they are and who they are not, transforming reality, building narratives,
and mastering and manipulating signs and symbols systems.
2. Active menu to meaning making
In a classroom where children can choose to draw, write, paint, or play in the way
that suits their purpose and/or mood, literacy learning and arts learning will inform and
support each other.
3. Intentional, holistic teaching
 A creative curriculum requires a creative teacher, who understand the creative
processes, and purposefully supports learners in their experiences. Intentional teaching
does not mean drill and rote learning and, indeed, endless rate learning exercises might
indicate the very opposite of intentional teaching. What makes for intentional teachings
is thoughtfulness and purpose, and this could occur in such activities as reading a story,
adding a prop, drawing children’s attention to a spider’s web, and playing with rhythm
and rhyme. Even the thoughtful and intentional imposing of constraints can lead to
creativity.
4. Co-player, co-artist
Educators must be reminded of the importance of understanding children as current
citizens, with capacities and capabilities in the here and now. It is vital for teachers to
know and appreciate children and what they know by being mindful of the present and
making time for conversation, interacting with the children as they draw. Teachers must
try to avoid letting the busy management work of their days take precedence and
distract them from the ‘being’.

Summary
 Creativity can be defined as the process of having original ideas that have
value.
 All children have capacity for innovation and creativity.
 Schools should work toward educating the whole-being of the child.

Teaching and Learning Activities

Answer the question below. Give relevant examples to support your answer. 
1. What is your personal definition of creativity?
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 2. Recall some of the creative classroom activities you had in school. What made
them creative?
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3. Is creativity the same with innovativeness? Read various definitions on these
two concepts and organize your notes using a Venn diagram.
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Answer the question below. Give relevant examples to support your answer. 
4. .Refer to the characteristics of artistically literate students. Examine yourself
and tell whether you possess any of the characteristics mentioned.
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Answer the question below. Give relevant examples to support your answer.
5. Explain this quote form Picasso:  All children are born artists. The problem is to
 remain as an artist as we grow up.
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6. Recommended learning materials and resources for supplementary

reading.
Eisner, E. W. (2002). What can education learn from the arts about the practice of
education? The Encyclopedia of Informal Education. Retrieved from
https://www.infed.org/biblio/eisner_arts_and_the_practice_or_education.htm
Robimson, K.(2006). iDo schools kill creativity? TED  talk. Retrieved from
https://www.oregon.gov/ode/educator-resources/standards/arts/Documents/
nccasconceptualframework4.pdf. 

Flexible Teaching Learning Modality (FTLM) adopted 

Online (synchronous) Google classroom Class Code dqubqxy
Remote (asynchronous) A Self-paced Learning Module 9 Artistic and Creative
Literacy uploaded also in Google Classroom for ready reference and printing. 
Assessment Task
Quiz 1. Answer the questions below. Give relevant examples to support your answer. 
7. What are some best practices in teaching that create an active or student-
centered learning environment?
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 8. Choose a grade level and topic. Design instructional plan showing creative
classroom activities that will engage learners.
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9. References 
Elen Joy Alata and Eigen John Ignacio 2019 1 Edition: Building and Enhancing New
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Literacies Across the Curriculum, 1 Edition

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Rex Bookstore