Declaration of Preferred Approaches

In order to collate and organise my research, I have decided to employ my preferred model of logging the research I complete during my PGCE here on this blog.

My Secondary Art & Design Research Journal.

This post will document the research completed for the subject specific pre-course assignments.

Chapter 1 (particularly pages 2-3)

Addison, N., & Burgess, L. (Eds.). (2014). Learning to Teach Art and Design in the Secondary School: A companion to school experience (3rd ed.). Routledge.

Source: https://silo.tips/download/learning-to-teach-art-and-design-in-the-secondary-school

Notes:

- The importance of art and design education. Increasingly, art and design in primary education is seen as a vehicle for supporting the core curriculum, an adjunct to Literacy, Numeracy, Science and ICT; learning through art. This instrumental role, the ability of the subject to contribute to the whole curriculum can be beneficial, but you must not allow it, as a service subject, to deny the place of art and design as a different and fundamental part of knowledge and understanding (Eisner 1998). Page 2.

- Art and design as an expanding field. The expanding field of art, craft and design offers challenges and possibilities beyond the technical and formalist orthodoxies of secondary art education. Page 2.

- Exiting the gallery and the studio. Contemporary practice in art, craft and design blurs the boundaries between art and other forms of cultural production: The art object is no longer exclusively to be found in the gallery; the practitioner is no longer bound to their studio. Just as the sites of practice can be anywhere, from the natural environment to cyberspace, its methods can be interdisciplinary, from the anthropological to the psycho analytical. Page 2.

- Purpose. To engage pupils in stimulating learning activities, activities that enable them to ‘make informal value judgements and aesthetic and practical decisions [to become] actively involved in shaping environments’ (DfEE 1999: 14). In this way, art and design can be both a creative and a critical subject. Page 2

This book enables the reader to:

- Acknowledge the diversity of art, craft and design and its implications for learning and teaching.

- Develop your subject knowledge

- Consider how to translate your practice in art, craft and design into pedagogy

- Recognise that theory and practice are interdependent

- Understand and employ methods and strategies for effective learning

- Develop reflexivity: question, evaluate and revise your teaching

- Question existing orthodoxies, identify and develop new directions

- Consider the purpose of art education in a plural society

- Develop a philosophy for art education

As per the brief of this assignment, the two approaches I have highlighted are those I have elected as the most crucial in my approach to forming an educational philosophy.

While all of these are crucial, the two highlighted hold more weight on my personal philosophy. First, to develop a research-informed and theory-based practice of education. This will establish the importance of theoretical frameworks and encourage a keenness to study to develop personal practice.

And Second, to examine critically my own teaching methods. I am entering this course with humility, accepting that any preconceived notions of teaching and habits of experience are open to critical examination and reflection so I can be receptive to the high standard of teacher training here at UCL and refine my teaching practices.

The10 Lessons the Arts Teach by Eliot Eisner, from his book 2004 book The Arts & The Creation of Mind.

Source: https://www2.gvsu.edu/hipshean/resources/Ten%20LessonsArts.pdf

- The arts teach children to make good judgments about qualitative relationships. Unlike much of the curriculum in which correct answers and rules prevail, in the arts, it is judgment rather than rules that prevail.

- The arts teach children that problems can have more than one solution, and that questions can have more than one answer.

- The arts celebrate multiple perspectives. One of their large lessons is that there are many ways to see and interpret the world.

- The arts teach children that in complex forms of problem solving, purposes are seldom fixed, but change with circumstance and opportunity. Learning in the arts requires the ability and a willingness to surrender to the unanticipated possibilities of the work as it unfolds.

- The arts make vivid the fact that neither words in their literal form nor number exhaust what we know. The limits of our language do not define the limits of our cognition.

- The arts teach that small differences can have large effects. The arts traffic in subtleties

- The arts teach students to think through and within a material. All art forms employ some means through which images become real.

- The arts help children learn to say what cannot be said. When children are invited to disclose what a work of art helps them feel, they must reach into their poetic capacities to find the words that will do the job.

- The arts enable us to have experience we can have from no other source, and through such experience to discover the range and variety of what we are capable of feeling.

- The arts’ position in the school curriculum symbolises to the young what adults believe is important.

As per the brief of this assignment, the two lessons I have highlighted are those which I feel hold the most weight on professional art education.

First, the capacity for art to celebrate different perspectives. It is the purpose of art to present artist's perspectives to be considered, experienced and understood. It is concurrently the purpose of the art educator to observe a classroom not as a single body, but as a company of unique individuals each with their own story, voice and aspiration. Just as it is the active mode of a spectator to be receptive to the voice of an artwork, it is the most productive mode of an art educator to encourage, amplify and refine the creative voice of each student.

The second lesson, is also important. Artistic media is a vast and ever expanding category, but through consideration of art a child learns that they can express their nuanced experiences on canvases where words fail and empathise with the experiences of others through media which transcend barriers such as language, or age. Through the development of art appreciation, a child is empowered to raise their own artistic voice.