Professional Masters of Education Art and Design with Digital Media
Emma Finlay
The Sketchbook as a Tool to Promote Authentic Artmaking and the Emergence of the Visual Voice of the Student in the Art and Design Classroom
This action research study investigated how teachers can support students to activate a more self-driven, authentic creative inquiry within the art and design classroom; with a focus on the sketchbook as a tool to support students to cultivate their artistic voice. Underpinned by theoretical perspectives by Allen (2013), Power (2018) and Culp (2015), this study explored how the sketchbook might be used to overcome the barriers and shortcomings of authentic artmaking within the Senior Cycle Art curriculum. The objective of the study was to evaluate how creative inquiry prompts could be employed to structure sketchbook practice during the incubation phase of the creative process, as per Wallas’ four stage model (Wallas, 1926), to support students to describe, contextualise and expand their creative choices and processes. The findings of the study determine that the implementation of creative pedagogy, such as the use of the sketchbook, can encourage students to activate a more authentic creative inquiry in the classroom and become more autonomous in their artistic journey while meeting the learning objectives of the formal curriculum. The results of this study demonstrate the effectiveness of creative inquiry prompts to propel students to embark on a personal journey of creative discovery and artistic growth that can transcend to usefulness when considering the sketchbook as a curriculum tool in second-level art education.