Art Education in a Postmodern World

Collected Essays

Tom Hardy

• Publisher: Intellect Books
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781841509587
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Teaching Art

This volume presents a series of papers concerned with the interrelations between the postmodern and the present state of art and design education. Spanning a range of thematic concerns, the book reflects upon existing practice and articulates revolutionary prospects potentially viable through a shift in educative thinking. Many of the essays pinpoint the stagnancy of teaching methods today and discuss the reductive parameters enforced by the current curriculum. The radical tone that echoes through the entire series of papers is unmistakable. Throughout the book, postmodern theory informs the polemical debate concerning new directions in educative practice. Contributors shed new light on a postmodern view of art in education with emphasis upon difference, plurality and independence of mind. Ultimately, the paper provides a detailed insight into the various concepts that shape and drive the contemporary art world and expands the debate regarding the impression of postmodern thinking in art education.

Chapter 1: A Manifesto for Art in Schools

John Swift & John Steers

This Manifesto proposes alternative ways of improving Art in Education. It is addressed to all who teach and learn art, who work in fields where art and education are important, and to administrators and policy makers in education, the arts and government.

Rationale and proposals for art

Preface

This manifesto bases its suggestions on a postmodern view of art in education with an emphasis on difference, plurality and independence of mind. The proposals derive from the rationale and argue for more decision-making and autonomy for teachers and learners within a climate that emphasises and expects enquiry, experiment and creative opportunity. For this to happen the subject matter of art, ways of approaching it, and improved means of encouraging diversity and innovation must be developed. This implies that the values within the current statutory Orders for Art, the initial education and in-service development of teachers, and the nature and purpose of assessment must be reconsidered. This manifesto addresses the areas that impinge on the activity of art in schools, makes critical comment on the effect of current ideology and practice, and provides a rationale and proposals for its implementation.

Rationale
The rationale is based on three fundamental principles: difference, plurality, and independent thought. Through their application in art practice and theory, knowledge and knowing will become understood as a negotiation of ideas which arise from asking pertinent questions, and testing provisional answers rather than seeking predetermined ones. The emphasis is on the learner and learning, negotiating what they learn, learning how to learn, and understanding knowledge as a multiplicity of changing hypotheses or theories which are subject to evidence, proof, argument and embodiment. As such difference becomes a locus for action and discussion at a personal and social level, plurality points to a variety of methods, means, solutions and awareness for any issue, and independent thought develops individuality, the capacity to challenge, and creativity through introspection into the nature of learning and teaching in art. These abilities are as vital for teachers as they are for learners.

The value of art education
Rationales are commonly understood as either intrinsic, i.e., for values only obtained through the study of art, or extrinsic, i.e., for values obtained across many subjects and in which art plays a contributory role. In reality the two may be more intertwined than is generally acknowledged. For clarity of understanding, practice and theory are listed separately and then together – in reality, the two activities work together and are seen as symbiotic.

Practice develops the ability to use materials and techniques intelligently, imaginatively, sensuously and experimentally in order to respond to objects and ideas creatively through personally meaningful, communicable artefacts in school, later life or professionally.

Theory enables the use of ideas, images and text as means of interrogating received opinion in order to form knowledge and understanding based on an awareness of how art functions and is valued in different cultures, societies and times.

The combination of art theory and practice therefore serves to develop a sense of enquiry, an ability to take practical and intellectual risks, to be conscious of decision-making in a reflexive manner, to seek for and evaluate creative responses in self and others, to be able to articulate reasons for preference, qualitative judgments, or comparative aesthetic values, and engage with art and nature in the public world.

Art (and other subjects) serve to develop proactive, creative thought and action, sensitivity to difference of approach and outcome, e.g., gender, culture, ability, age, etc., a flexible understanding of changing values in different societies and periods, the ability to use a specialised vocabulary effectively within other forms of communication, a broad view of what constitutes culture, and pleasure and satisfaction in such forms of life.

In the broadest sense, art and other subjects, through an emphasis on difference, plurality and independence of mind develop wider individual and social advantages such as interpersonal tolerance, awareness and sensitivity, creative solutions for different situations, informed habits of matching evidence and deduction, the means to learn for oneself, and to apply considered values towards human culture and the natural environment.

Art also contributes to the development of key skills valued by employers. Improving one’s own learning and performance, problem-finding and solving, working with others, standards of literacy, communication and using the new technologies for a variety of purposes are among the personal attributes that may be developed positively through good programmes of art education.

Proposals

Introduction
The proposals below are made within a framework that recognises the different and distinct values, kinds of knowledge and practices of ‘arts’ subjects. The proposals deal with Art only, which is not to deny that many of the ideas are common to the arts, (especially those of attitude, provision, and the relationships between theory and practice), but to recognise that they are also common to all aspects of learning. Therefore no claims are made for any grouping of arts subjects, although the proposals are not hostile to this as a strategy given that each subject is allocated sufficient guaranteed time. The proposals argue for the inclusion of art as a mandatory school subject for all pupils throughout their period of compulsory schooling (i.e. from age 5 to 16). This does not necessarily imply the need for detailed statutory Orders. In part the proposal is based on the necessity of such study in an increasingly visual world, and in part on the significant number of pupils who opt for art as an examination subject.

The proposals question the undue emphasis that has been placed on the ‘Curriculum’. Thus the proposals below cover a wider range of the factors that can be used to improve all forms of education, viz., the teacher, the learner, the subject, and forms of assessment. Further, these are linked with initial teacher education and in-service opportunity in order to suggest that the four areas should gain a new and revivified attention both at the beginning and during a teacher’s career.

Problems and proposals
The items are listed as follows: teacher, learner, subject, assessment, teacher training and development. The left-hand column identifies what is seen as problematic; the right-hand column offers solutions based on the rationale. Thus there is some reactive criticism but a much larger amount of proactive and constructive suggestion.

Teacher
Restricted scope of action	More autonomy in deciding and planning an art curriculum, recognising that a range of distinctive rationales may be appropriate.
Restricted skills and expertise
Primary and generalist trained	More time for art study, but more importantly, a different approach to experiment, response, and contextualisation of art work.
Secondary and specialist trained	Teachers need to develop a clearer personal understanding of aims and objectives. Less school-based study and more study of innovative pedagogy, contemporary art forms and practices, theories of the social construction of the child, the teacher and schooling, and the history and philosophy of art education.
Orthodox art approaches	Less text books that offer ‘easy’ answers or recipes, which encourage reliance on the ‘new academicism,’ and more emphasis on confidence building and risk taking, i.e. experimental activities where the results and procedures are impossible to predict (especially in ITT and InSET). Teachers need innovative and imaginative approaches to art and design activities that stimulate their imagination and encourage such qualities as empathy, playfulness, surprise, ingenuity, curiosity and individuality. Teachers should be helped to enjoy the means of discovery and risk-taking inherent in experimental practice and thought.
Limited media and learning opportunities	Construct a variety of approaches where no single obvious route is evident by devising a range of ways of working across different media and types of learning.
Outcome or product-led work	Employ reflective means to enable the learner to understand the relation of theory and practice while engaged (predominantly) with either, i.e., to study themselves during the learning process, and to help learners to become conscious of their patterns and procedures for learning.
Standardised sets of criteria	To understand the different intentions and reasons of learners rather than superimposing a standardised response, e.g. based on ‘the elements’, ‘perspective’ or ‘realism’.
Limited teaching approach	Welcome difference by acting as a role model – being open to experiment, change, challenge, and also being identified as a participating discoverer and learner.
Learner
Entitlement	All pupils, including the most able, should be entitled to study art throughout their period of compulsory schooling.
Limited ambition set by limited education	Identification of the personal as a subject for art, and in the understanding of art.
Alienation from art	Placing the personal within the social, historical and other contexts in such a way as to encourage enquiry and develop ideas of evidence and relevance for the learner.
Lack of theoretical and practical coherence	Activities that heighten awareness of theory and practice in combination, and the tensions within and across them.
Orthodox approaches	Challenge ‘typical’ responses with innovative ideas and example which show changes in perception, identity, cultural grouping, etc.
Insufficient learner autonomy	Offer learners a real opportunity to question and influence their education by negotiation of a variety of approaches, e.g., with more or less emphasis on theory or practice according to need, age, devel...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Introduction: Nailing Jelly: Art Education in a Postmodern World
• Chapter 1: A Manifesto for Art in Schools
• Chapter 2: Nick Stanley and Sarat Maharaj: A Discussion
• Chapter 3: Censorship in Contemporary Art Education
• Chapter 4: Post-it Culture: Postmodernism and Art and Design Education
• Chapter 5: The Trouble with Postmodernism
• Chapter 6: Postmodern Feminisms: Problematic Paradigms
• Chapter 7: The Knowing Body: Art as an Integrative System of Knowledge
• Chapter 8: Postmodernism and the Art Curriculum: A New Subjectivity
• Chapter 9: Challenges to Art Education from Visual Culture Studies
• Chapter 10: Who’s Afraid of Signs and Significations? Defending Semiotics in the Secondary Art and Design Curriculum
• Chapter 11: On Sampling the Pleasures of Visual Culture: Postmodernism and Art Education
• Chapter 12: A Critical Reading of the National Curriculum for Art in the Light of Contemporary Theories of Subjectivity
• Chapter 13: Assessment in Educational Practice: Forming Pedagogised Identities in the Art Curriculum
• Notes on contributors
• Index