Progression in the Expressive Arts
'... progression must be embedded in learning and teaching and should form the basis of thinking in schools when designing and planning the school curriculum.'
Curriculum for Wales
Curriculum for Wales places the learner at the heart of curriculum design. This quote from the guidance emphasises the importance of understanding how learners progress and how this understanding will provide the starting point as schools design a curriculum for their learners. In order to support learners to progress along the learning continuum, practitioners need to develop a shared understanding of progression.
This workshop will address the four questions below, which come directly from the 'Supporting learner progression' guidance and which have been set by Welsh Government to guide you as you design your school curriculum:
What is progression?
What is a shared understanding of progression?
Why is a shared understanding of progression important?
How should schools and settings develop this shared understanding?
Curriculum for Wales requires an understanding of progression in learning before moving on to discussions on how the learning will be assessed.
This workshop aims to support you to develop a shared understanding of progression in the Expressive Arts.
Response and Reflection
As a team, school, or within a cluster, think about how might define progression for :
Your learners
Your curriculum design
Also consider in what ways you would want to see learners make progress.
Progression may be defined as:
Moving forward
Improving
Gaining depth and breadth in learning
Increasing sophistication
Transferring and applying
In what do we want our learners to make progress?
What learners know (knowledge)
What they understand (understanding)
What learners can do (skills)
Their capacity
Their attributes and dispositions
'Progression in learning is a process of developing and improving in skills, knowledge and understanding over time. This focuses on understanding what it means to make progress in a given area or discipline as learners increase the depth, breadth and sophistication of their knowledge and understanding, skills and capacities, and attributes and dispositions.'
Curriculum for Wales
We can clearly see these ideas reflected in the definition of progression as provide in the CfW guidance. Therefore, when planning for learning you will need to support your learners to increase their knowledge, to deepen understanding and to improve their skills, but also support them to develop their capacities , attributes and dispositions.
What is a ‘shared understanding of progression’?
Developing a shared understanding of progression means that practitioners, collectively within your school or setting, across your cluster, and with other schools beyond your cluster together explore, discuss and understand:
your joint expectations for how learners should progress and how knowledge, skills and experiences should contribute to this in schools’ and settings’ curricula
how to ensure coherent progression for learners throughout their learning journey and in particular at points of transition
how your expectations for progression compare to those of other schools and settings.
Why is a ‘shared understanding of progression’ important?
Practitioners understanding the progress they want learners to make throughout their education, and how to put this into practice in a coherent way across your school and cluster, is vital to ensure:
Coherence: Curriculum for Wales provides schools and settings with flexibility within a national framework. Coherence ensures learners’ experiences are joined-up, authentic and relevant and also helps identify how to sequence learning effectively.
Smooth transitions: to ensure the best possible transitions within and between settings and primary schools and primary and secondary school for learners. Schools and settings should understand what and how learners have been learning, what and how they will be learning and what their next steps in learning should be to support their education and well-being.
Pace and challenge of expectations: A shared understanding of progression is vital to ensure that the pace and challenge of expectations – for all learners are sufficiently challenging and realistic.
What is the role of the statements of what matters, the principles of progression and the descriptions of learning?
‘The statements of what matters, principles of progression and the descriptions of learning articulate the essence of what should underpin learning and provide the same high expectations for all learners.’
Curriculum for Wales
There are 3 key parts of the guidance that support the understanding of progression at AoLE level and provide the same high expectations for all learners across Wales.
When designing your curriculum, they should be used in the following order, as they appear in the guidance:
statements of what matters (mandatory)
principles of progression (mandatory)
descriptions of learning (not mandatory).
When you decide what you learners need to learn, you go to the statements of what matters. They are mandatory and encapsulate the learning required to realise the four purposes.
When you want to understand progression in this learning , you go to the principles of progression.
The descriptions of learning serve as signposts to show how learners should progress in different threads of learning within each statements of what matters.
Understanding progression in learning - the principles of progression
In order to develop a shared understanding of progression in learning, you need to start with the Principles of Progression.
The principles of progression provide a mandatory requirement of what progression must look like for learners.
They are designed to be used by practitioners to:
understand what progression means and should look like in a given Area
develop the curriculum and learning experiences to enable learners to progress in the ways described
develop assessment approaches which seek to understand whether this progress is being made.
Understanding progression in the arts
Research suggests that progression in Expressive Arts is likely to grow out of gradual use and reuse of known skills, but also could on occasion present as a big qualitative jump. It is not a linear process and there is not one common pathway. Learners may easily move backwards and forwards as they experience Expressive Arts activities and different learners are likely to progress in very different ways within the disciplines – a competent confident grade 8 piano player may not be as efficient with a paint brush in hand or an accomplished photographer may not be the best choreographer.
Factors relevant to progression in Expressive Arts:
Complexity: Issues dealt with by learners early on the learning continuum can be revisited by learners later on in more complex and sophisticated ways.
Control: Learners should acquire increasing control of the means of expression in the Expressive Arts.
Depth: Learners move from a broad range of experiences in the Expressive Arts to exploring their learning in more depth.
Independence: Learners become increasingly autonomous.
These factors are relevant to progression within the Expressive Arts are articulated through the Principles of Progression.
The principles of progression
When working with the principles of progression, either as the overarching principles for CfW or with the principles as defined in each AoLE, the headline statements are the same and each principle of progression is supported with a rationale, which further explains what progression means in this Area in relation to that particular principle. These cover the whole continuum across 3-16 and they are not age or year specific. Within the principles of progression and their supporting rationale is where we can find what progression means to the Expressive Arts Area as a whole and upon further exploration of these principles of progression – you can see how a learner would and should progress with regards to complexity, control, depth and independence.
Looking at the headline statement for each principle of progression more closely, it may be beneficial to simplify the language and reflect on their meaning.
The column on the right is one interpretation of the principles. Sharing this understanding and engaging in professional dialogue across the school and between schools will help to secure a common understanding and importantly a common language around progression.
This simplification of the language may help us engage with and find greater clarity in these principles of progression.
Developing a shared understanding of progression
As you read through each Principle of Progression in turn you may start to pick out key phrases and language that helps to identify what progression in learning may look like. Highlighting or underlining key phrases in each of the principles, in teams or in clusters, will help to start the process of developing a shared understanding of progression.
Increasing effectiveness as a learner (effectiveness)
Progression is demonstrated in moving from doing something with support towards autonomy and sophistication. Progression is likely to grow out of gradual use and re-use of known skills, but could also, on occasion, present as a big qualitative jump.
As learners make progress they increasingly evaluate and create more and more sophisticated creative work independently and with increased collaboration with others. They gain greater confidence by being able to explore, experience, interpret, create and respond through the expressive arts’ disciplines within a safe environment. Their evaluation of their own and others' work reflects a developing understanding of process as well as product, and resilience in receiving, and persistence in acting upon feedback.
Increasing breadth and depth of knowledge (knowledge)
Learners demonstrate progression in the Expressive Arts Area of Learning and Experience (Area) by exploring, experiencing and creating increasingly complex meaning. Linking new learning to existing knowledge develops an increased sophistication of conceptual understanding. Moreover, learners learn and refine different types of knowledge and skills including the techniques, processes and skills required to create and interpret in each field of the arts. Additionally the integral skills of creativity; synthesis; critical thinking; and understanding of social and cultural contexts are crucial to this Area.
Deepening understanding of the ideas and disciplines within areas of learning and experience (understanding)
Progression is demonstrated through the continuing development of the knowledge, skills and capacities required to appreciate, create, explore, respond and reflect both within specific disciplines and in combinations of disciplines. In the early stages, learning is characterised by a growing curiosity for being creative and innovative by exploring with a range of resources and materials in various domains. Combining disciplines occurs purposefully but remains organic. As learning progresses, learners become increasingly aware of the expressive arts’ disciplines and their key features, including (though not necessarily limited to) art, dance, drama, film and digital media, and music. Learners make links in the creative process across the disciplines to explore, create, interpret and respond.
Refinement and growing sophistication in the use and application of skills (skills)
Levels of control, accuracy and fluency in using a range of arts' skills will grow as learners progress. For example, in early stage learning this might be characterised by using simple body movements in composing a dance and identifying fundamental aspects such as speed, direction and levels when evaluating one’s own work and the work of others. At a more advanced stage of progress, learners might create and evaluate the success of interaction among various aspects of movement in a complex choreographed dance. As they progress, learners continually develop in depth and refine with a growing sophistication these key arts' skills in different disciplines and/or in interdisciplinary activity.
Making connections and transferring learning into new contexts (application)
Learners increasingly appreciate the possibility of combining disciplines within the Area in order to appreciate and to achieve/produce creative outcomes. Progression is also characterised by more sophisticated use of relevant skills within individual disciplines and the growing ability to transfer existing skills and knowledge into new contexts within this Area and across other Areas.
Response and reflection
Read and discuss the narrative for each principle of progression in the Expressive Arts.
Summarise each paragraph into bullet points.
Here is one possible example.
Selecting learning from the statements of what matters
'In Curriculum for Wales, the principles of progression and the statements of what matters, which form the mandatory basis for progression, must directly inform planning for progression.'
Curriculum For Wales (Priorities for Curriculum development and learning)
Before understanding progression within the Expressive Arts and before a discussion of how learners make progress in the disciplines within the Expressive Arts AoLE, schools and clusters will have to go through the process of identifying the concepts and threads of learning that sit within each SWM. As we know, the Expressive Arts Area of Learning and Experience (Area) spans five disciplines: art, dance, drama, film and digital media and music. Although each discipline has its own discrete body of knowledge and skills, it is recognised that together they share the creative process of exploring, responding and creating. – the creative process is the common thread.
The creative process of exploring, responding and creating are demonstrated clearly through the statements of what matters.
The statements of what matters are the basis of learners’ progression and as stated in the guidance documents – they must directly inform planning for progression:
Exploring the expressive arts is essential to developing artistic skills and knowledge and it enables learners to become curious and creative individuals.
Responding and reflecting, both as artist and audience, is a fundamental part of learning in the expressive arts.
Creating combines skills and knowledge, drawing on the senses, inspiration and imagination.
On the right you can see a version of identified concepts and high level threads of learning taken from the SWMs – you may have done such an exercise within your school or cluster and identified similar learning. You may have grouped your learning differently.
Learners should make progress, in alignment with the Principles of Progression in the concepts and learning that are embedded within the SWMs.
Discussions may look like the example below.
Here we can see that techniques and technical control has been identified as a focus for learning from the explore statement of what matters. Following the identification of the learning that is going to be the focus, discussions can then take place and to identify from the principles of progression the aspects that relates to this learning. This example shows aspects from 3 principles of progression to develop an understanding of how a learner might make progress as they develop technical control – it would mean that they would move from support towards autonomy and as they develop better technical control across the arts they would create more sophisticated creative works independently and become better collaborators – thus becoming more effective as a learner.
This example shows some of the possible responses that may come from further discussions surrounding progression based on the learning taken directly from the SWMs about what would that learning look like in a more practical way for a learner who was early on on the learning continuum and how would that progress.
Your discussions will undoubtedly develop a more detailed response as you use your professionalism and understanding of learners at different points along the 3 - 16 continuum. However, what this activity does is provide a clear focus on the mandatory principles of progression as a starting point for discussions on how a learner makes progress within the arts and not confined to a specific discipline.
Response and reflection activity
Consider a 'thread' of learning that you have identified from the statements of what matters for the Expressive Arts. A 'thread' of learning is the learning that you have selected from the statements of what matters that will run through the 3-16 continuum of learning. (table 2)
Next consider aspects of the principles of progression (table 1) that may be observed through this learning.
Finally, working in teams or within a cluster, discuss how the learners might be progress in that learning with a focus on the identified principle. Record your discussions in a table such as the one above. (blank template on the right)
How the descriptions of learning can help us to understand progression in learning
Once you have considered the knowledge, skills and experiences needed for your identified learning and have collaborated with others from within the school, settings and cluster to consider how a learner might progress using the principles of progression, you can then use the descriptions of learning as a means of cross-referencing your deeper thinking around progression. You will know by now that the descriptions of learning in the Expressive arts are overarching and not discipline specific and that's why it's so important that you have a good grasp of how learners will make progress in the arts and not solely in one of the disciplines.
Although the descriptions of learning are not mandatory, they are there to support you to plan for progression in different threads of learning within each statement of what matters. Below you can see the descriptions for learning from the explore statement of what matters and they are applicable to the thread of learning, technical control that was used in the earlier example. You can see that on this continuum - which encompasses 12 years of learning - a learner will move from exploring and experimenting with a variety of creative techniques to exploring and experimenting while demonstrating technical control. The aspects of the principles of progression should be the basis of discussions as to how a learner moves along the continuum: the CfW guidance is clear in how the descriptions of learning are to be used in the curriculum design process – they are points of reference, signposts that help practitioners test and validate planning approaches. They are there to guide practitioners towards designing learning opportunities that contribute to that bigger picture of progression. What you will have created through discussion will be a more holistic picture of the progression along the continuum than what has been described in the 5 progression steps within the Descriptions of Learning.
Discipline specific progression
Having focussed on the mandatory Principles of Progression, discussions may lead you to think next about the unique nature and nuances of each discipline-and the specific knowledge, skills and experiences needed in order for a learner to make progress.
Within the Principles for designing your curriculum part of the guidance document, there is a section for the role of disciplines in learning. It clearly states that 'as learners progress, they should have greater opportunities to engage with different disciplines and to specialise within them, particularly when they reach the later progression steps. However, this should be a process of evolution, with learners gradually having greater opportunity to specialise.' However it also states that 'while learners should have opportunities to specialise, the curriculum must remain broad and balanced and each learner should continue to draw on learning from each Area throughout their time in compulsory education.' Therefore, schools and settings need to have an overarching understanding of how learners will make progress in the Expressive Arts but there also needs to be an understanding of progression within each of the disciplines to ensure that learners are equipped with relevant knowledge, skills and experiences if and when they want to specialise. This discussion should happen after schools have understood and explored the overarching progression within the are based on the principles of progression.
Within each AoLE there is a Designig your Curriculum section and it sheds light within the EA on discipline specific considerations which are not exhaustive.
They are not grouped, arranged or sequenced in progression steps or to represent progression.
If developing a shared understanding of progression is partly about a cohesive curriculum and ensuring smooth transitions for learners how do you ensure that there is a coherent approach within schools and clusters to the knowledge, skills and experiences that are inherent to each discipline? Is there a need for schools and clusters to develop a cohesive approach to the elements and forms within each AoLE?
How can we share our understanding of progression?
You may want to consider how you will capture this progression in order to be able to share it with others within your school and cluster.
The image below could be one way to represent this progression. In this progression model example, we have selected concentric circles which has allowed us to show how learning in one thread builds in layers over time, becoming broader, deeper and more sophisticated for an individual learner. We have also made reference to how the principles of progression could apply here. This is an example and not an exhaustive list.
In this example the 'thread' of selected learning is overcoming creative challenge with a focus on feedback and refinement.
Early learning in feedback and refinement means that learners understand that they are the artist but also the audience and they begin by listening and responding to simple feedback and by giving simple opinions or responses. For learners with ALN or PMLD the routes to learning pathway would support in understanding how a learner's simple response to stimuli could be seen as simple feedback.
A learner would then continue to make progress when receiving and giving feedback with the the aim of refining creative artwork and they would develop their use of critical and discipline specific vocabulary. They would also develop resilience when receiving feedback. In the final, outer circle' learners would demonstrate further progression when analysing their own and others' creative works showing how they interpret feedback and make links across their learning. On the right hand side of the graphic, you can see how the progress learners make are reflected within the Principles of Progression and that it is not discipline or content specific.
How should schools and settings develop a shared understanding of progression?
Within all schools and settings
Within each cluster – to support coherence of approaches to progression between primary schools, between primary and secondary schools and around points of transition.
Where possible involving other schools or settings beyond the cluster. Secondary schools in particular should participate in professional dialogue with other secondary schools to support collaboration and coherence across secondary providers.
Between schools and settings, involving school collaboration with funded non-maintained settings, PRUs and other EOTAS providers with whom they have relationships.
Next steps
Reflect on your understanding of progression and how it is articulated in your curriculum.
Identify threads of learning and consider progression along those threads.
Work with practitioners in your school, cluster, and where possible other similar schools, to develop a shared understanding of progression.
Think about how this shared understanding might be captured and shared with others.
Here's a video that consolidates this page that you may want to use for training purposes.
