2007 - Volume 26: Number 2
Supporting Pupils with Dyspraxia in the Visual Arts Does Drawing from Observation Function as an Official and Discriminatory Discourse?
CLAIRE PENKETH
Volume 26.2
This article examines the demands that pupils with dyspraxia may face when engaging with the secondary art and design curriculum in a mainstream secondary school. It explores the possibility that there is an exclusive approach to art and design, prioritising a formalist approach to the teaching of specific skills and mastery of techniques, and considers the implications that this may have for such pupils. Specific attention is paid to the role of observational drawing and the demands that this may make for pupils with dyspraxia. The article will explore existing guidance offered for subject-based practitioners and aims to contextualise this within the current debates on art and design education and the recollections of individual experiences of art and design. It will outline the hypothesis that pupils with dyspraxia may be one group of pupils amongst many for whom their art and design experience does not offer an inclusive experience, and it seeks to question the existence of a hierarchy of practice and its subsequent relevance.
A Conceptualisation of Emotion within Art and Design Education: A Creative, Learning and Product-Orientated Triadic Schema
DAVID SPENDLOVE
Volume 26.2
There is a resurgence of interest in the powerful concept of emotion in current educational policy and practice. This article calls for the recognition and conceptualisation of a triadic schema for theorising the location of emotion within a creative educational experience. The schema represents emotion within three domains within current practice: Person, Process and Product.
The principal focus of the article is pupils aged 5-16 and consideration is given to the application of the conceptualised schema within art and design education as represented by the national curriculum statement of importance. The central hypothesis of the work is that greater recognition of an emotional dimension within a triadic schema - developing emotional capacity in students to engage in a creative process (person); stimulating emotional engagement through appropriate learning contexts (process) and facilitating the emotional interfacing with outcomes (product) - will help conceptualise the powerful interrelationship between emotion, creativity and learning.
Based upon an extensive synthesised literature review a schema, developed through abductive reasoning and grounded theory, ultimately conceptualise the overarching theme of emotion within a creative, learning and product-orientated experience within the primary and secondary stages of England's education system.
Transitional Spaces: Mapping Physical Change
JULIET SPRAKE and HELEN THOMAS
Volume 26.2
Museums and buildings are both considered immutable by the majority of people who use them. A small team from Goldsmiths College, the V&A+RIBA Architecture Partnership and Pimlico School set out to challenge this preconception. The Victoria & Albert museum was taken as a case study to investigate how buildings are a physical manifestation of an institute, and how their physical presence records the way the museum has to respond to outside criteria, from government funding strategies to cultural trends.
This article puts forward the argument that a museum building as a subject is a constantly changing environment, through which young learners can develop their historical imagination and critical abilities. It describes the process and findings from a project carried out with students from Pimlico School, who were asked to find and respond to evidence in the fabric of the V&A museum buildings of the substantial physical changes that it is currently undergoing. By choosing specific sites, the students put together a series of PDA-based threads to describe and archive different narratives about the museum at the moment of their mapping. These are made for future visitors to see, hear and compare the museum environment they are experiencing with the one that the students recorded.
Recording the Creative Process: An Empirical Basis for Practice-Integrated Research in the Arts
BILL GILLHAM and HELEN MCGILP
Volume 26.2
A case is made for a form of narrative reporting (the Creative Process Journal) as a methodology for practice-integrated research in the arts. It is argued that this stage of research creativity, which applies in all domains of academic study but is often not reported, is fundamental to the kind of arts research which allocates practice a central role. The practical and technological character of making a CPJ, and its consequent benefits to the maker-researcher are outlined.
Conditions for Learning: Partnerships for Engaging Secondary Pupils with Contemporary Art
LESLEY BURGESS and NICHOLAS ADDISON
Volume 26.2
This article examines the findings of the London Cluster research, ‘Critical Minds’, in which the Institute of Education, University of London (IoE) worked in collaboration with Whitechapel Chapel Art Gallery (the lead London gallery), Bow Arts, Chisenhale Gallery and Space -The Triangle, and four east London comprehensive schools. By collaborating with art departments and by focusing on learning within the gallery context, the research team questioned whether the perceived constraints of traditional art and design pedagogy can be overcome by changing the conditions in which learning takes place. The following analysis focuses on these conditions as outlined in the research report's recommendations.
Provoking Points of Convergence: Museum and University Collaborating and Co-evolving
NADINE KALIN, KIT GRAUER, JILL BAIRD and CHERYL MESZAROS
Volume 26.2
This article outlines art education courses undertaken in museum and gallery contexts as a component of the Certificate Programme in Visual and Material Culture within the University of British Columbia's Department of Curriculum Studies. With the creation of this programme and through the forging of relationships with area museums, unique ways have evolved for graduate students from diverse areas of education and art teacher education candidates to interact with works of art, museum professionals, artists, and the museum space itself. The purpose of these courses is to use museum and gallery settings as sites to test ideas, critique educational programmes, and advance new approaches for teachers to use museums in more creative and integrated ways in their teaching while expanding theoretical knowledge and interpretive repertoires. Through participating in this collaborative venture we have learned that when you invite teachers into museums, make efforts to increase their comfort within these spaces, while recognising what interpretive insights they offer as active participants in museum discourses, points of convergence between teachers, universities, and museums are formed.
An Analysis of the Presentation of Art in the British Primary School Curriculum and its Implications for Teaching
JENNY HALLAM, HELEN LEE and MANI DAS GUPTA
Volume 26.2
This article presents an analysis of the way art is conceptualised in the British primary school curriculum and provides an historical framework that maps an evolution of ideas that have shaped the way art is presented in the modern day primary curriculum. In order to achieve this a Foucauldian style genealogical analysis is utilised to trace the discourses (systems of meaning) surrounding the nature of children's artistic development and how these discourses are used in the present day British primary curriculum to construe art in different ways. The analysis in this article is threefold. It explores the presentation of art in the curriculum as (1) an expressive subject, (2) a skills based subject, (3) a subject which focuses on art history and art appreciation. Second, the teaching positions associated with each approach are identified as follows (a) the facilitator, (b) the expert and (c) the philosopher; as well as the issues teachers face when adopting these positions. Third, attention is given to how these theoretical principles might be linked to practice. In so doing this article contributes to the debate surrounding the value of art in the primary curriculum and the way in which the curriculum serves to shape teaching practice.
An Analysis of the Political Complexion of the 1835/6 Select Committee on Arts and Manufactures
MERVYN ROMANS
Volume 26.2
The 1835/6 Select Committee on Arts and Manufactures is generally acknowledged as being the key political event in the establishment of a system of public art and design education in Britain. The immediate outcome of its deliberations was the opening of the Normal School of Design in London in 1837 followed by the steady expansion of the system over the course of the nineteenth century, with art schools being opened in most major towns and cities throughout the country. The Minutes and Report from this Select Committee therefore represent the most important primary source for historians seeking rationales for the introduction of governmentally funded art and design education in Britain. Despite this, the workings of this Select Committee remains under-researched in a number of important directions. This article sets out to look at one of these – namely, the politicians who sat on the 1835/6 Select Committee on Arts and Manufactures.