Art and Science of Observation Follow Up Session

Questionnaires on artistic ability Take a look at your handout and remind yourself of the statements that you had to consider We are now going to score the questionnaire! This is a little tricky, pay attention! !!

Scoring your questionnaire On questions 1, 4, 6, 8, 9 you need to reverse the scores you have given yourself before you add up your total so… if you scored 3, then give yourself 0 if you scored 2 give yourself 1 if you scored 1 give yourself 2 if you gave yourself 0, give yourself 3 Add these scores to the scores for the other questions (2, 3, 5, 7)

If you scored 0-7 you have a fixed mind set on artistic ability 7-14 you have a fixed mind set on artistic ability with some growth ideas 15-21 you have a growth mind set on artistic ability with some fixed ideas 21-27 you have a growth mind set on artistic ability

Why did we go drawing? Taking you out of your comfort zone? A level is likely to take you out of your comfort zone – you certainly won’t always succeed first time Getting you to do “something different” Recognising how experimenting and trying different ways of doing something can jolt you out of old habits and old anxieties Learning to focus on the process and actually having as go Just “having a go” instead of worrying about the final outcome is an essential way of making progress in your academic studies Drawing was a metaphor for studying at A Level in general and for studying psychology in particular!

Fixed and Growth Mindset The questionnaire was adapted from work by American psychologist Carol Dweck who has written extensively on fixed and growth mind-set Watch the as she speaks about fixed and growth mind-set regarding academic ability intelligence and “the power of yet”

Why is this important right now? Mind-set can affect your academic studies fixed mind set thinkers sometimes find it really hard to bounce back from what they perceive as academic failings, e.g. getting a low mark its important to understand that ability can change with practice Your induction assignent is about a study which shows that the brain actually undergoes structural changes the more you practice a certain skills (neuroplasticity); the study is about observational drawing but the same is true of practising your acadmeic skills

What was your mind set score? Create a tally chart (frequency table) to show how many pupils fell into each category This type of data, where you count how many people fall into different categories is called NOMINAL DATA Descriptive statistics allow us to summarise data; here we could: calculate ratios, percentages, state the mode and/or draw a pie chart

Your scores We could also put all of your scores in order and rank them You now have a rank position within the group with regard to your mind-set on artistic ability This is called ORDINAL DATA Descriptive statistics could include: calculating the median and the range drawing a box and whisker plots

Memories of the Guildhall We collected some qualitative data (in words) by asking you to describe the guildhall in words Count how many words you used (turning qual into quan) When our data has “standardised units”, e.g. number of words used in a description, we call it INTERVAL or RATIO DATA Ratio data has a true zero but interval data can have minus values such as temperature We can summarise our data using: the mean and standard deviation drawing bar charts

Carol Dweck: The Power of Yet The mind-set scores for this activity show whether people think artistic ability is innate and unchanging or that it can change with practice Did people’s mind-set seem to consistently affect their experiences of the session? Chris has an “extreme growth” mind-set when it comes to artistic ability - why do think this might be? How do you think having a growth mind-set affects your engagement with a task? How do you think it affects a person’s perseverance in the face of a challenge? How might this have affected your recall of the building? Look back at the questions that were asked in the artistic mind- set questionnaire do you wish to discuss any of them?

The good news psychologists now question old theories that led us to believe that intelligence is fixed Now they believe that the brain is like a muscle that develops with use research suggests that artistic ability is certainly not fixed Chris is right, artistic technical skills AND creativity can grow with practice

Marian Diamond and the Brain

Learning artistic skills alters the brain There is a massive literature on how hours spent engaged in many activities from juggling to meditation actually changes the structure and function of your brain, allowing you to do things that you could not do before supporting the idea that we can get better at anything we turn our mind to artistic ability and intelligence therefore may not be fixed after all Certainly believing that they are won’t help you to improve ! The induction assignment article discusses how the structure of the brain actually changes with the amount of time spent engaged in observational drawing

The bigger picture you tried out multiple different ways to observe/study the building sometimes it might have felt tough; when things feel difficult, this is because you are on the brink of discovery crossing new frontiers in your skills and in your understanding When things feel tough; feel excited, this is a sure fire clue that your brain is working! When things are easy or you feel very little, it may be a sign that you are coasting, you could… end up drifting off course lose precious practice time miss the chance to make the most of opportunities available at any one point in time.

Academic ability and Sixth Form The drawing exercises = a multiplicity of different ways to create drawings trying new things can help us to achieve different (and therefore, potentially better) outcomes. pupils often say they are studying hard but their outcomes don’t change? Why? The drawing exercise has hopefully underlined the importance of giving new things a go. Don’t get stuck in a study habit that doesn’t work for you! meeting Chris and reading up neuroplasticity will hopefully help you realise that the more time invested in something, the more connections are made in the brain and the more readily certain outcomes can be achieved; same is true in your academic studies.

Group Discussion and Feedback look at your drawings and ratings together talk about your experiences of the drawing task compare the quantitative data from your ratings scales and the qualitative from the comments that you made what did you think about what you were being asked to do? How might this have affected the outcomes?

Look at everyone’s first drawing Why are there differences between the drawings that have been made? If you had all taken a photograph would the outcomes still have differed? Why? Can the camera lie? How can this be related to the way psychologists study behaviour?

What do you understand by the terms objective and subjective? How do these terms relate to the drawings made by the different people in your group? How do these terms relate to psychology?

Is it easier to study people or buildings? Compare buildings and people; what features do they share, how are buildings and people different? What is special about people that makes them easier or more difficult to study? Remember, you are a person not a building, why is it easier or more difficult for you, a person, to study people than buildings?

What does it mean “to study” (think; to study an object, a person, an academic subject? How do people study things? Why do they study things in a certain way? How does this affect their conclusions? How do we judge whether we have been successful in our “study” of people or of buildings? Can we change the way we study? Can we improve our outcomes by changing the way we do things? Why might people be reluctant to change the way they study?