Resultados de aprendizaje una perspectiva didáctica en artes desde la investigación en la práctica pedagógica

Learning Results (LR) as part of didactics

One of the first perceptions of Learning Results is that they are simple definitions or statements. Their implementation is limited to putting a new box in the programs or in the lesson plans. But, from our didactic perspective, they are related to the process of teaching, learning and assessment. They “become real” in several procedures that materialize in the classroom, in the development of the subjects, in the learning experiences that derive from them and, therefore, they are configured as one of the components of the educational practices of educators in the modes of professional performance that they carry out in the institutions and communities where they work. Thus, it is not only a matter of writing or planning the LR. Therefore, in our case, they are conceived as a constituent element of the didactics of the theatrical arts since, as specialized knowledge of the teachers, it is not only related to the methodological, but has more to do with the very meaning of teaching and learning:

La didáctica ha de responder a los siguientes interrogantes: para qué formar a los estudiantes y qué mejora profesional necesita el profesorado; quiénes son nuestros estudiantes y cómo aprenden, qué hemos de enseñar y qué implica la actualización del saber y especialmente cómo realizar la tarea de enseñanza al desarrollar el sistema metodológico del docente y su interrelación con las restantes preguntas como un punto central del saber didáctico. (Didactics has to answer the following questions: why train students and what professional improvement teachers need, who are our students and how do they learn, what do we have to teach and what does the updating of knowledge imply, and especially how to carry out the teaching task by developing the teacher’s methodological system and its interrelation with the other questions as a central point of didactic knowledge.) (Medina & Salvador, 2009, p. 7)

To this effect, the teacher’s didactic knowledge allows him/her to articulate several variables and elements that are present when “a person teaches another person, something, with intentional actions within the framework of an institution or places where teaching and learning take place” (Sensevy, 2007, p. 7). Didactics is not “a rule” or a “series of steps to follow” to achieve learning. Since the 1990s, it has been understood more as the research, reflection, understanding, and substantiation of teaching and learning processes in diverse contexts and how this leads to improving the living conditions of communities through educational intervention (Medina & Salvador, 2009).

For Astolfi (2001) , simplistic ideas that accused students of not achieving success in learning as a result of their personal traits, their “lack of effort or motivation”, should be left behind. In addition, it is necessary to recognize the epistemological, conceptual, procedural, axiological, and cultural problems and difficulties of some disciplinary contents (Chevallart, 1991), as is the case of artistic disciplines when they are taught. Some of them are related to teaching habits and traditions, the differences between teaching contexts, the different types of learning, the difficulties in the pedagogical and didactic training of teachers, among others. This set of problems, issues and difficulties implies that didactics is a process of research on the very practices of arts educators: “Se debe comprender la didáctica como un auténtico programa de investigación, que requiere tiempo para la reflexión y que produce conocimientos nuevos sobre la enseñanza, el aprendizaje y el funcionamiento de las aulas” (Didactics should be understood as an authentic research program, requiring time for reflection and producing new knowledge about teaching, learning and classroom functioning) (Astolfi, 2001, p. 12).

However, in this “functioning of the classroom”, in addition to grades, which until recently were the only formal trace of the level of learning, there must be learning outcomes, evaluations and evidence. Thus, didactics as a space for research on pedagogical practices is responsible for analyzing how these processes or products are articulated with teaching and learning in higher education. Since, precisely from this didactic perspective, it is not possible to think of the results as isolated statements of what is planned and occurs in the classroom.

The context of teaching and learning of the arts implies a cooperative relationship and joint training between teachers and students on artistic construction. Sensevy (2007) states that Joint Didactic Action (JDA) are the relationships, dialogues and exchanges, among others, that mutually and collaboratively produce learning and teaching. This communication process between teachers and students generates various types of relationships that materialize in the classroom.

(…) la concepción de la actividad conjunta en didáctica parte del hecho que la acción del alumno está determinada en gran parte por las tareas de aprendizaje que propone el profesor y que, por su parte, la acción del profesor se orienta y ajusta en función de los comportamientos y acciones del alumno. (…) Por el contrario, una de las características de este tipo de actividad es la asimetría de roles y funciones de los agentes, sin la cual no habría posibilidad de aprendizaje. ((...) the conception of joint activity in didactics is based on the fact that the student’s action is largely determined by the learning tasks proposed by the teacher and that, in turn, the teacher’s action is oriented and adjusted according to the student’s behaviors and actions. (…) On the contrary, one of the characteristics of this type of activity is the asymmetry of roles and functions of the agents, without which there would be no possibility of learning.) (Rickenmann, 2007, p. 4)

In a necessarily cooperative correlation, teacher and student must act “jointly” so that their actions lead to learning about knowledge, which is brought to the classroom with didactic means designed by the teacher. In this sense, the Learning Results, their evaluation and qualification must also be agreements of joint actions on the knowledge and competencies proposed in the classroom.

Research in didactics of theatrical arts (Falla, 2020; Huertas, 2020; Merchán C., 2020; Merchán P., 2019) allows us to affirm that the anticipation of the formative actions by the teacher from planning and socialization (agreements, dialogue and constant formative evaluation with the students) improves performance and allows the student to understand the various processes in which he/she participates, as well as to define what is expected at the end of the subject. However, it also favors that the processes can be flexible, and even reach new agreements during the course, when the expected progress is not being achieved or when it is achieved in less time.

Thus, the learning results understood from this didactic perspective obey to a dialogue, information and agreement between the group of teachers as well as teachers and students about the curricular process; the training profile, the competencies, the integrating cores of experiences¹ have materialized in the classrooms in the academic programs development. These actions allow recognizing the learning and teaching processes and achievements that will be jointly.

Within these ideas, teachers change their role from transmitters of knowledge to researchers on their educational and artistic practice, which implies constantly reflecting on the processes carried out with students, even building forms of systematization in accordance with the types of artistic knowledge. In that order of ideas, thinking about learning results implied, for our team, to recapitulate which are the pedagogical and didactic ideas that mobilize us and the urgent need to transform, beyond the rules (or in spite of them), the classrooms, since contemporary generations —especially after the pandemic— require other conceptions, an academy that does not seek to pigeonhole them and lead them by the ideas of adults, but that receives them from their knowledge, from their lacks and artistic and subjective richness. An academy that helps them to live in the uncertainty that corresponds to us today.

Table 1. allows us to identify the main differences between the most common pedagogical ideas and what is proposed by the Bachelor of Theatrical Arts from the critical re-reading of didactics together (TADC) (Sensevy, 2007) and the theory of didactic actions (TSD) (Brosseau, 2007) and the bachelor’s research.

Table 1: Comparison between different didactic intentions

Source: Prepared by the authors based on the Qualified Registration Document.

Therefore, to consider learning outcomes requires a conscious review of pedagogy, of the curriculum, but especially of the didactic processes in the arts, in terms of their planning, execution and evaluation. In this, the role of the teacher and the student must be transformed because higher education requires complex processes that go beyond training professional competencies in the arts and, in our case, arts educators, capable of adapting to a changing world and to new functions of the arts in societies and cultures. Even to new activities of the same profession.

Results or learning?

During the seminar of the Diploma in Assessment of Learning in the Arts, the question arose as to which word we give more emphasis to: results or learning? This discussion is not just a question of form. When we think about learning outcomes, we are uncomfortable thinking about results, evidence, observable, quantifiable objects and standards. But when we refer to apprenticeships, we may not have the same certainties. Arts programs have structures in which there are diverse epistemological, pedagogical and political perspectives from which the arts are understood, interpreted, constructed and created. For some, it is not even the arts, but art. What is certain is that in the various arts there are different types of learning that are specific to their processes with which a student can know the discipline and recognize himself as an artist from those learning, knowledge and competencies (Ginocchio, 2017). Gone should be the ideas according to which learning was to imitate the master and follow the traditions of European or American authors.

Currently, learning the arts implies processes of construction of creative and critical thinking; having corporal experiences of diverse types that promote creative acts and make possible the foundation of new subjectivities and intersubjectivities. Likewise, to constantly reflect on one’s own and other people’s aesthetics, which reveal ideologies, cultures and diversities. Not to mention the emerging forms of research in the arts, where the constant are the debates and the wide range of methods, structures and destructures that allow creation. Apparently, learning the arts is not a subject that allows us to easily think of measurable structures or quantifiable results. Thus, when we refer to the ideas of learning arts, it seems that we find ourselves in a wide, rich and surely very complex terrain. According to Ginocchio, (2017) there are also some traditions about what is considered learning in arts:

The best arts education is not easy to define, simple to measure, nor can it be boxed (Carpenter, 2006). Arts learning has been considered too visual, affective, and qualitative to be objectively measurable (Wilson, 1968) and, moreover, is by nature ambiguous (Hope & Wait, 2013) and dynamic in nature (Boughton, 1997). These characteristics pose significant challenges in attempting a measurement and classification of its products. (Ginocchio, 2017, p. 177).

Thus, learning outcomes force us to think about what learning in arts is. Identifying the diversity of learning in arts and differentiating them allows us to think about what processes are necessary and what types of outcomes would be possible to achieve in the times and contexts of training. In addition, it is essential to recognize one of the main challenges posed by the confinement at the time of the pandemic: What are the basic arts apprenticeships that the academy should foster? And what are the learning processes that should only be installed so that the students themselves are the ones who build their own processes? Likewise, there will be learning and results that are not predictable, quantifiable, nor do they necessarily require grading.

But, from the responsibility in the formation, it is necessary to build points of arrival in the learning, which allow the students to know what to expect from the processes, even to homologate them when they already have them. But this also implies respecting the types and rhythms of artistic learning. Contrary to scientific learning or other disciplines, some students require different times to achieve the basic standards of the technique and to be comfortable with their process. This will imply that arts programs, with clear competencies and learning outcomes, can be flexible in terms of time for learning techniques, knowledge and creation. In this way, students would not have to drop out of arts careers because of the pressure of results but will be able to work resolutely on the aspects they require to achieve the learning outcomes. For example, it is well known that achieving certain types of technical movements with the body is not only a matter of willingness to learn, but also of time spent practicing, acquiring habits and routines.

On the other hand, professions are not static, they evolve and there is no denying the external demands and transformations that are required of professionals every day. Higher education focused on the training of professions, oriented to labor fields, based on professional identities, labor flexibility, entrepreneurship and all the principles proposed by modernity are seriously questioned. According to Carrillo Hernández & Benavides Martínez (2022) , the ideas of professional competencies have been transformed by the diversities of the changing labor and social worlds, and professional knowledge is constituted on the relationships between real work contexts and professional knowledge:

Si bien las profesiones en la modernidad establecieron una especie de sincretismo entre lo disposicional (vocación) y lo profesional (orientación hacia la práctica), con la legitimación del saber performativo el substratum de las profesiones comenzó a depender de un discurso de las actuaciones o desempeños plurales, orientados hacia las prácticas dependientes de contextos, cada vez más sistémicos. (Although professions in modernity established a kind of syncretism between the dispositional (vocation) and the professional (orientation towards practice), with the legitimization of performative knowledge the substratum of professions began to depend on a discourse of plural performances or actions, oriented towards context-dependent practices, increasingly systemic) (Carrillo Hernández y Benavides Martínez, 2022, p. 32)

Consequently, at present it could be said that learning the discipline of art is insufficient to be an art professional. There is another interdisciplinary knowledge that seem to be important. There are even diverse fields from research, technology, cultural management, education, health and social fields where artistic knowledge is required. On the other hand, our young people face a world of uncertainties, which implies spaces to understand the relationship between the arts and the environment, politics, diversity, gender, among others. In the same way, for Carrillo Hernández and Benavides Martínez (2022) it is convenient to think of plural, flexible curricula that allow the development of diverse professional identities with diverse learning that complement knowledge, of which it is also necessary to identify their place in the learning process and the possible results. In this sense, learning in higher education, as stated by Morchio (2015, citing Vermunt, 2005, p. 209), “is the development of a way of thinking and acting that characterizes the culture of a professional community”. It is understood that students trained in a profession, “construct, modify and employ mental models” about objects of knowledge to interpret specific situations and act upon them, and in the case of the arts to create upon them.

Then, on the one hand, it is necessary to define the competencies and basic learning of a career in order to recognize which results are possible to evaluate and which cannot be quantifiable in a given time. Likewise, it is necessary to understand that educating for the exercise of an artistic profession implies the development of diverse competencies and knowledge, since knowing how to exercise a profession such as the artistic one is far from, and cannot necessarily be limited to what the Comisión Nacional Intersectorial de Aseguramiento de la Calidad de la Educación Superior (National Intersectoral Commission for Quality Assurance in Higher Education or Conaces) states that “what is essential is that (the LR) show what the graduate will know and be able to do with this knowledge at the time of exercising his/her profession” (Conaces and the Consejo Nacional de Acreditación (National Accreditation Board or CAN), 2021, p. 3). Many of our graduates create professional fields and transform them.

According to Morchio and Difabio (2015) , university students are able to become aware of their own learning processes, self-regulate them and develop autonomy, which allows them to obtain quality learning and improve competencies. The authors also raise the diversity of learning from the different areas, but there are few indications of how students learn from the different arts. Consequently, two of the essential learning processes in the artistic field will be metacognitive and metacreative. Therefore, with regard to the former, it is proposed that the students themselves become aware of their own learning process, of their strategies and act accordingly. Examining their experiences, identifying internal motivations, beliefs and the social component of learning allows them to recognize the cognitive, affective, sensitive and bodily processes involved in learning to learn from metacognition.

Teaching as a process of co-training

Although according to Conaces the process is centered on the student. This is understood from the banking education as a subject to whom the learning is delivered, so that he/she can respond to the teacher’s evaluation, and with the current standards guarantee that they will be suitable to perform in a job position:

Teniendo claridad en que el proceso formativo, en la perspectiva de los resultados de aprendizaje, se centra en el estudiante, se debe propiciar un proceso de diseño y planificación coherente entre los contenidos, las estrategias didácticas y evaluativas, las metodologías de evaluación y los resultados que se espera logren los estudiantes. En este sentido, los resultados de aprendizaje son una referencia para valorar la calidad del proceso educativo, y también ponen a disposición de los empleadores y de la sociedad en general un enunciado explícito de las capacidades con que egresan los estudiantes. (Being clear that the formative process, in the perspective of learning outcomes, is student-centered, a coherent design and planning process must be propitiated between contents, didactic and evaluative strategies, evaluation methodologies and the results that students are expected to achieve. In this regard, learning outcomes are a reference to assess the quality of the educational process, and also make available to employers and society in general an explicit statement of the skills with which graduate students.) (Conaces & CNA, 2021, p. 3).

The joint didactic model proposes that there is a triadic relationship between the teacher, the knowledge and the student (Sensevy, 2007). It implies that the center of the educational process is neither the teacher, nor the student, nor the knowledge, but the processes of joint formation or co-training where we all learn from each other (Freire, 1987) and our objective is not only individual competence.

To focus the processes on student learning is to reduce it to being a receiver of knowledge, to individualize it and to consider that what is learned are immovable truths, which is not very profitable in the future for the changing productive sector (Carrillo Hernández & Benavides Martínez, 2022). According to our research in didactics, the application model that proposes that theory is learned first and then put into practice is not very useful in the artistic field, since the processes of creation and learning in the arts require simultaneous processes and constant practice (Merchán, 2020). Thus, students and teachers are researchers of their own teaching and learning processes in the arts (Falla, 2020; Huertas, 2020; Huertas et al., 2021).

While the perspective of learning outcomes as a benchmark may be logical and desirable as a “return on investment,” it is questionable in the higher education environment, especially in arts. There, students require precisely learning to promote other or new art forms by creating and deploying new forms of thought and technique that are advancing every day. Curricular models cannot be based only on doctrines of preparation for jobs or ideas of the trade.

On the other hand, as Hernández & Sancho (1993) point out, “to teach it is not enough to know the subject”. In the case of art careers, many educators have not had pedagogical and didactic training to help them understand the complexity of teaching and learning in the field. This, from the outset, implies other professional competencies and a different role inside and outside the classroom. Learning outcomes require the development of didactic competencies, with a more rigorous planning of classes in higher education. It is necessary for trainers to acquire knowledge in the educational field on a constant basis, which will allow us to resize this co-training. For example, it would be important for teachers to build LR from didactic sequences² (Díaz Barriga, 2013) and for this to be socialized democratically with students. Educators need to define their place in the curriculum and syllabus; this would allow students to identify the process and its results, overcoming educational clichés such as “it is part of the process”, “one day they will understand it”, or “I learned this way” when faced with students’ concerns about their learning. It is as if university teaching corresponded to a “mystery” that only the professor recognizes.

In addition, didactic sequences in classes and across the curriculum could break down the isolation of teachers and produce interdisciplinary and deeper learning outcomes. If this is not the case, what will happen in a few years is that students will be discouraged from responding to various types of learning outcomes with little depth and little relation to professional training. This oversaturation that is currently experienced in the contents, make students see the “academy” in the artistic areas more as an obstacle to overcome or as a requirement than as a space for professional enrichment.

Likewise, if teachers and students co-train together, we will be developing art professionals capable of learning from and with others, of recognizing that there are complex artistic problems and diverse ways to learn. If we teachers declare ourselves “ignorant”, as Ranciere says, we can open spaces for the collective construction of knowledge.

Finally, joint training implies conceiving the higher education educator as a researcher of his/her own pedagogical practices. The pedagogical and didactic field of arts education in higher education is just being born. Only if we teachers convert and transform our own ways of learning in and with the professions will we be able to find in teaching not only a means of subsistence, but a mean to grow, learn and form ourselves from and with our students.

Collaborative work among professors at the pedagogical and didactic level would now be important. But the biggest challenge for joint training among professors in universities, is the scarcity of spaces for academic meetings and the fact that the existing ones are almost always used to solve administrative issues.

Learning results and assessment

One of the advantages of LRs is that they involve clearly stating methodology, content, assessment and grading. In higher education, this is only done in the program, but is rarely revised or real. According to Moreno (2011) , the evaluation and grading programmed by professors is a determining element in the ideas that students have about the requirement of the programs, their quality and the academic culture they promote.

If we reflect on this, learning outcomes and evaluation have always been part of artistic processes. Persistently those who participate in these processes give an account of their progress in the construction of the dances, the character, the work, the body, the management, the creation and in other cases of the work. However, few questions are asked about these ways of evidencing, evaluating and analyzing the results. Since they are not related to didactics, in some cases they remain in the culture of evaluation³ installed in educational processes, such as competitiveness, individualism or isolation (Santos, 2005). In other cases, it seems that they remain in the subjectivities of those who evaluate and/or grade in their “common sense”; or in the traditional evaluation, which is only related to attendance, participation and relationships that are interwoven with the theories and authors of the arts. Or simply in the “valuation of effort”, or based on the type of evaluator-evaluated relationship (Moreno, 2011).

Thinking about learning outcomes requires looking at assessment and grading as didactic activities specific to the arts; therefore, they are articulated with the teaching and learning processes, since they allow, more than fulfilling a requirement, to resize what is taught and learned, how they can be evidenced and what assessment processes will be necessary, as well as how they will be graded.

However, evaluation tends to be confused with learning results. In this sense, from our didactic proposal, learning outcomes are statements of what is learned at different levels for the achievement of competencies that are stated in the curriculum. And assessment are the systematic processes that allow, from a formative point of view, to have information about learning and how to help students achieve the best results (Moreno, 2011).

From the evaluative, critical and alternative perspective, evaluation is for learning and knowledge (Álvarez, 2001). Teachers and students can learn from and with evaluation in order to transform education. Contrary to traditional evaluation, where examination and measurement prevail, pedagogical evaluation corresponds to formative, dialogic and summative processes and how these processes are evidenced with various methods and instruments.

Thus, with the structure of the LR, evaluation is necessarily diagnostic, formative, dialogic, democratic and summative. Diagnostic, because the learning results must be based on the student’s knowledge of the subject. Formative, because students are developing their professional knowledge, which implies not only the acquisition of knowledge, but also ways of thinking, ethics and structures to continue learning. Dialogic evaluation (Anijovich and Cappettelli, 2017) implies that the student learns from error, learns from others and learns with them. This makes students able to act and plan on their own learning from autonomy. There must also be “safe spaces” for this dialogue for a training free of violence and, in the case of our country, allows them to resolve conflicts. Likewise, as a democratic space, the LRs, their evaluation and qualification favor timely information, commitment and transparency in the processes. It is essential to recognize that in the fields of art, results are at the center of many processes. Assessment allows students to reflect on processes and the teacher to adjust learning outcomes. And, in a joint action, adjust the process in a realistic manner to obtain the best artistic results.

However, there may also be diverse views of the LR and this will affect their evaluation. For example, a technical and instrumental perspective requires assessment with very specific criteria based on artistic and technical traditions. This may be useful in the formation of core competencies for major arts but may be unimportant, even limiting, for competencies and learning outcomes related to creativity and creation. On the other hand, other knowledge and learning are more focused on the procedural aspects of the arts (movements, techniques, management, research, among others), which implies another type of the LR, where the evaluation of processes will be the protagonist. There may also be knowledge that favors the development of critical, creative and disruptive thinking to make innovative proposals. In these cases, the role of formative evaluation will be important as a space for reflection and even systematization of processes. Thus, in view of the various purposes of the LR, it is necessary to have consistent evaluation processes.

Evaluation, then, is not only evidence to demonstrate the LR; it is a space for “stopping to move forward”, for reflection and decision making on the part of students, teachers and curricula.

Preliminary conclusions

The construction of the fields of knowledge of the arts and the training of artists involves pedagogical and didactic processes in higher education. In the face of epistemological, political and cultural changes, specific didactics is a privileged place to transform imposed ideas, such as learning outcomes, but also to transfigure the training of artists. This implies that didactics should not be thought of as “teaching methods”, but as research on and from the teaching, learning and evaluation of the arts.

Thus, for example, as a result of the didactic research of the Bachelor’s Degree in Theatrical Arts of the Universidad Pedagógica Nacional, from a didactic perspective and redefining its meaning from the pedagogical, the learning results would be:

Democratic agreements, known by all about what is learned, taught and evaluated in the formative and summative process. They are not learning goals, they are agreements on what we do, why we do it and what we do it for; they provide a horizon of meaning to the actions that everyone performs with respect to the contents and didactic means. This allows “learning about what is learned or created”, but especially, “learning how different types of disciplinary contents are learned, individually and collectively. This makes teachers be researchers of their practices and students develop metacognitive and metacreative processes on how they learn and develop diverse ways of accessing knowledge and information. It is precisely the assessment for joint and co-training learning is based on these learning agreements, which are declared, socialized and accepted by all.

The structuring of learning outcomes can be an opportunity in higher education to qualify the teaching-learning and evaluation processes, from a didactic perspective, which understands the new challenges of training professionals in artistic fields that evolve and transform every day. In addition, it implies that university professors and artists reinforce their specific didactic and pedagogical competencies that allow them to advance co-training processes in accordance with the nature of the arts