Artistic Plastic Education Through The Contest Windows Towards The Light ’

Color and creativity

Plastic artistic creativity is a long and complex process of training and instrumentation in a language that, as a form of spontaneous manifestation, precedes the others, and as a form of learning-aprofundation begins with early education. The childhood opens windows to the magical realm of imagination and creative spirit. The first age of man is under the sign of the LIGHT-COLOR, of the solarity which has been fully affirmed by the amazing ability of any child to reinvent the world through word, sound, color, fascinating through the beauty of thought - image and purity of speech.

Humans evolved in the same chromatic environment that determined them to develop capacities and reactions to specific stimuli. Color has become for humans a means of expression, of communication, of projection of the inner tendencies, of the experiences and attitudes corresponding to the structure of his personality. The artist must take into account his chromatic language which includes at least partially a number of reversible meaningful signs for both the transmitter and the receiver. When the way of communicating information is symbolic, the receiver must perform the decoding of the hidden meanings. Thus, for educational purposes, the effects of color on people are dissociated into sensory and psychological, physiological and emotional, each oscillating according to the native endowment and the education of the subject. Vîgotski (1973) in the work ‘Art Psychology’ demonstrates the changing character of art (of color) through the words of Lev Tolstoi who compared the action of the artwork with the contamination, it is a very convincing comparison in this case, “I became infected with typhoid from Ivan, but I'm sick of my typhus, not Ivan's typhus. And the Hamlet I carry with me is mine, not Shakespeare's ... Every generation, every reader has a Hamlet of his or her” (Vîgotski, 1973, p. 52).

The palette of possibilities for color interpretation can be much more nuanced if by individual effort each of us adds a touch of color or personality. The affective valences of the colors are communicable by their impressive and expressive qualities. This is why the reception of art also demands creation: “in order to receive art it is not enough to truly relive the emotion that touched the author, it is not enough to understand the structure of the work itself - in addition, you must creatively overcome your own emotion , to find the catharsis, only then will the action of the art be fully manifested” (Vîgotski, 1973, p. 318).

Windows towards Light

The need to approach a competition for literary and artistic-plastic creations ’Windows towards Light’ is explained by the fact that the attitude, often reluctant, of the student towards art (literature, painting, music, etc.) must be changed, and the resulting behavior must be motivated in a special way, preferably playful, specific to the age of the children, taking into account their individual characteristics. Through this competition, I set out to attract schoolchildren towards the (re)discovery of art and to determine them to appreciate not only the action, the beauty of the images, of the artistic expressions that the book implies, but also the visual-palstical image created by the literary message. The window that the book opens is an inspiration for artistic-plastic creations. In its turn, the spring, (the season when the competition takes place), opens windows to the LIGHT of the soul, the Easter holidays becoming an inspiration for stimulating the imagination, creativity and originality. The main activities of the WINDOWS TOWARDS LIGHT competition, registered in CAERI 2019, have reached the eighth edition, and are oriented towards the development of communicative skills and artistic-plastic skills in students. Participation in the activities of the project, dissemination of the results on different educational communication channels and in the magazine WINDOWS TOWARDS LIGHT have a high educational impact on the target group, that are students from primary education throughout the country.

The contest is intended to be a window open towards ’light’, during the Easter holidays, towards the mind and the soul of the children, and the artistic-plastic creations, the products of the participants, are the RESPONSE in COLOR to everything that it proposes. The papers are classified and exhibited following a rigorous judgement, presented in this study through:

• The qualitative analysis (Table 01 )

• The quantitative analysis (Figure 01 )

The qualitative evaluation, in this competition, follows the analysis of the works in each edition, according to certain parameters of creativity.

The quantitative evaluation analyzes different indicators depending on the number of participants, gender, social environment, etc.

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The necessity of this study

The need to carry out this study is justified, in the context of the integrated approaches of the curricular contents of the primary education in Romania. The extracurricular activities, the artistic-plastic creation competitions, come to complete the motivational palette of the students that are eager to develop their creative potential.

Research premises

Creativity is a complex phenomenon determined by a number of factors (intellectual, related to personality, social, related to skills, etc.), and the development of the creative potential can only be done by encouraging freedom of expression using active-participative methods, working techniques, varied strategies. Using the principles of student-centered education, through this competition (through this study), individual or small groups experiments are encouraged, both in common and chosen activities, so that the students evolve at their own pace.

The research coordinates

The direction of the approach is longitudinally supplemented by a ‘panel study’ with successive measurements, at different times, more precisely every year, at each edition. The function performed is projective, for orientation. The level of intentionality is for practical-applied research that implies a high degree of intentionality and involvement, with self-reflexive approaches and interventions on a relatively small scale in the functioning of the real world, realized by the participants in the action, intentionally designed, organized and unfolded. The form of organization of the students is combined and intensive. The study is performed on a different sample from year to year, depending on the number of students enrolled in the competition. The results obtained are recorded in the tables and graphs that lead to the formulation of the conclusions. The beneficiaries of this study are the school where I work, the Baia Mare College of Arts and the ‘Education, reflection, development’ Doctoral School, where I am currently studying.

The research characteristics

The research is experimental with a specific purpose and it proposes an inductive approach, from a certain given situation to educational conclusions and decisions, to a more general objective. The contribution made by the ‘Windows towards light’ competition in developing the creative potential of students in primary education is the most important feature of this study.

The research objectives

The research objectives are constituted as ‘curricular cuts’ from the curricular areas Arts, Technologies, Language and Communication in the primary education, each contributing to the outline of the theme as a whole – ‘Windows towards light’, which is also reinforced by the metaphorical significance. These are:

• developing the capacity of plastic, metaphorical expression of the soul experiences, of the influences suffered from the outside through sensations and perceptions, using the valences of imagination and creativity to the maximum;

• consulting rich and diversified (with a theoretical but also practical character) information source about color, sensory and mental effects of color, elements of plastic language, visual-plastic creativity, etc .;

• applying diverse active-participative methods, working techniques, strategies to stimulate creativity on the sample of students;

• recording the progress achieved by applying the evaluation grid, year by year;

• drawing conclusions

• issuing predictions, suggestions for the future.

Hypothesis

The freedom of the chromatic expression and the freedom of the visual-plastic expressiveness of the children in response to certain stimuli (visual, auditory, etc.) through the ‘Windows towards Light’ contest leads to the development of the creative potential of the students in primary education. It is opposed to the null hypothesis that the freedom of chromatic expression and the freedom of visual-plastic expressiveness, without guidance, direction, leads to artistic-plastic works subject to chance, chance, without message, etc. Therefore, only strict coordination, through appropriate and creative teaching methods and strategies, can achieve the expected results.

• The independent variable is the ‘cause’ that leads to change, in this case the contest ‘Windows towards Light’, the contest being organized through games or extra curricularly.

• The dependent variables are the performance and the results obtained from the contest ‘Windows towards Light’, the artistic-plastic skills discovered during the competition and after, the difficulties encountered, the behaviours and attitudes of the students.

Some research methods used

The (systematic) observation was used in all stages of the research in order to obtain additional data related to various aspects of the investigated phenomena. The systematic observation was conducted according to the purpose of the research, the research hypothesis, all the pedagogical facts were recorded as accurately as possible and they were interpreted from the perspective of their intrinsic meanings.

. The method of analysing the portfolios / products of the activity of the subjects of the education involves the analysis, in terms of product, but also of process, from the perspective of the parameters of creativity, established in accordance with the purpose and objectives of the research, of the data offered by the components of the portfolio of the students participating in the competition. I believe that it is essential that the analysis carried out on the student portfolios should take into account both dimensions of the products of the students' activity, but also of the ‘product-processes’ which refer to the information, the search, the curiosity, the analogy, the power of essentialization, etc.

The teacher’s activity

I initiated this contest led by the thought that the metaphor ‘Windows towards Light’ will lead to an explosion of ideas in the minds of the students, being intentionally organized around the Easter holidays. Aided by the teachers whose students entered the competition, the multitude of methods to stimulate creativity, the various working techniques and the desire to be ‘creative’, we started our journey. The entire activity has been designed, coordinated, realized and evaluated year by year. Recording the results and storing them, allowed me to make them known through this article.

The students’ activity

During the eight years, 3745 students enrolled in the contest were motivated to bring the imaginary into the real plan and to develop it, to develop their creative imagination and artistic-plastic skills. They showed their chromatic and visual-plastic expression in response to certain stimuli (sensations and perceptions), through play and extracurricular activities thus developing their creative potential (Table 02 ).

The diagnosis regarding the level of the creative potential of the students was carried out following the parameters / factors of the creativity throughout the eight editions (Figure 02 ).

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From the diagnosis of the creative potential, one can observe the increased interest for the theme of this competition, year by year. Speaking in qualitative terms, Originality and Elaboration are the factors of creativity that demonstrate the ability to produce new ideas and develop them through their own filter, so that the final product is of great depth. There is a qualitative explosion of works in the 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 school years. This is due to the introduction of a new independent variable, namely the presentation of the contest in the form of a "digital story", made with the help of creations from previous editions (Covîza, n.d.). Fluidity and flexibility are relatively constant characteristics represented in this diagnosis, representing the ability to include in the composition a large number of elements, respectively colors, understanding the subject from different perspectives, and the ability to produce varied responses, through different analogies in different fields. Here we can talk about the special artistic-plastic aptitude, of the students enrolled in the contest, the average, from year to year, being between 80% -95%.

Aesthetic aspect

The behaviors and attitudes of the students, the performance and the results obtained from the study, the artistic-plastic skills, have registered a considerable evolution, demonstrating the development of the creative potential in the thematic context of the ‘Windows towards Light’ competition.

The utility of the study

Through this study it was shown that the intervention of the teacher in the creative process, with all his personality, his mastery and the baggage of methods, working techniques and strategies used, helps and develops the creative potential of the children with artistic-plastic skills until reaching the potential at the level called talent, respectively genius. This finding is reinforced by Cioca (2007) “visual-plastic activities can play an important role in unleashing creative powers and developing human creativity, especially between 2-16 years of age” (p. 14).

The participation and the provenance of the schools from different environments is shown in Table 03 :

• Urban

• Rural

Social factors play a decisive role in stimulating creativity. The school environment can influence creativity, teachers can exert a positive or a negative influence on students.

Heredity, age, sex and mental health are biological factors that condition the manifestation of creativity. The role of heredity in creativity is demonstrated by the existence of ‘wonder children’ who have shown special abilities with superior performances from very young ages: Mozart, Chopin, Enescu, Goethe, Eminescu, Grigorescu, Luchian etc. The occurrence of talents within the same family for several generations (Strauss, Bach, Dumas, Darwin, etc.), can show that they are influenced by heredity and environment.

Non-intellectual factors most commonly involved in creativity are: motivation, affectivity, temperament, character and intimate resonance. Creative motivation is the most important in this whole process because, on the one hand, it is subject to external influences, on the other hand, intrinsic motivation plays a fundamental role in creation. The special importance of affectivity in the human psychic system in general and in creativity in particular, results also from the association that Roco (2001) made between the two notions: ‘creativity and emotional intelligence’. Character is the way of being, feeling and creating of an individual.

We found out that the participation of schools from urban areas, but also of the teachers, had a close connection with the subject, but also the external motivation, respectively the culture and the specific of the school. It cannot be said that the participation of schools and teachers from rural areas is insignificant; in the meantime, many awards have been distributed to students from rural areas.

We noticed that the participation of a great number of schools in 2016-2017, the year in which the independent variable ‘digital story’ was introduced (Figure 03 ).

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The prizes were awarded according to the result obtained in the qualitative evaluation grids, having as a starting point the factors of creativity - Fluidity, Flexibility, Originality and Elaboration. A diagram of the winners in terms of environment and gender is shown in Figure 04 . Girls and boys from urban areas hold over 60% of the number of prizes, mainly girls, year by year. Girls and boys from rural areas are awarded a relatively small percentage, but not insignificant.

We observe a large number of participants in 2016-2017 when the independent variable "digital story" was introduced.

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The process of creation is “the inner psychological aspect of the collective activity, it includes all the moments, mechanisms and internal psychological dynamics: from the generation of the problem, the hypothesis, to the realization of the creative process” (Anucuța & Anucuța, 2005, p. 24). Creativity is not a chaotic phenomenon, it is a process that goes naturally through several phases and is influenced by different factors.