ATP: A Framework for Teaching Artistic Decision-making

They are in every art class, those confident decision-makers. Oozing with plans and ideas, they hardly even need teacher direction (and may, more often than not, thrive in its absence). One way to think about these students is as “gifted” or “natural artists”.

Another way to think about what some students do so well may be to look at the creative decision-making they've mastered as a set of skills that EVERYONE can be taught.

The framework that I developed to plan the teaching of making decisions, the Artistic Think Process (ATP), focuses on three essential questions:

• What do I want to make? (Inspiration)

• How do I make my idea visual in the best way that I can? (Development)

• How do I apply what I've developed into a successful artwork? (Creation)

When students are taught a range of methods for making decisions as they move through the stages of Inspiration, Development and Creation they become empowered to work as artists.

However, working creatively is an emotional risk for many secondary and later elementary students. So much learning in school is focused on remembering the right answer, following directions, on making the correct choice between A, B, C, and D. When we ask students to start to find, develop and use their own ideas to make art, many are unsure and overwhelmed. So we must take small steps at the beginning and build trusting relationships that support learning ( please read more about these essential relationships here).

As I build relationships, both between me and each student, as well as work to establish a culture of collaboration in the studio, I teach strategies for finding ideas, polishing them, and applying them.

As students learn these strategies they start to develop creative confidence and, so importantly, preference. Do they prefer to list or sketch or experiment to develop ideas, or maybe, instead, to jump in and try, then find solutions? Do they have a strong attachment to one media, love many or make decisions about materials based mainly on the concept behind the work?

Once students start to have opinions when asked these sorts of questions I know they are thinking like the artists and, more importantly, so do they.