In an arts classroom, critical thinking, metacognition, and self-regulation are all interconnected with the ability to absorb new skills and apply the creative process effectively. Each art medium requires a learnable set of subskills. Students have to understand that artistic "talent" is more about brain science and effort than about magically bestowed ability.
CHALLENGE: Students who do not already have a set of drawing skills think that those who do got them through "talent" and not through persistent practice. Students who believe strongly in talent are not willing to try something they think will be too hard for them to do. They need to be convinced otherwise through persuasion and examples of success.
Above is a picture of the steps in a perspective drawing. This can be a difficult skill to first learn for a student. By breaking down skills into smaller chunks and then working through them repeatedly, I try to move art skills from working memory (which is hard for students) to long term memory or muscle memory (which is easy for students). Once we have mastered on subskill, we can tack on a more difficult one successfully. I believe an essential skill for an art teacher is to consider how much the skill has to be broken down, where the students are at the start of the lesson, and how quickly you can move through the steps.
Reference images like this make visible the thinking that goes on in a skilled portrait artist's head when making a face from memory. Art teachers need to make their thinking visible (or auditory) to the students during demonstrations. Saying "now I am going to draw a flattened circle because that is the basic shape of your brain case" is much more effective than showing it without taking about it. You need to show students what you are thinking not just what you are doing. Then ask them to be aware of what they are thinking to avoid making the same errors each time.