Diagnostic Enquiry Research.

Our first essay on the course asks us to answer the following question: 'What learning and inclusion strategies and /or policies do you recognise have influenced your development in the subject of art and design?'

For this task, we must reflect on the readings we have completed and an additional reading in order to reflect on our own experiences of art education.

Specifically, the guidance for this question are as follows:

You should do this by choosing at least three texts from the reading set in the first three weeks and a further text (which may be from the pre-course reading or the further / additional reading from Week 1 or 2).

Reflect on the content of the texts:

• generally in relation to your own experience (positive and/or negative) of art and design education

• specifically in relation to a significant piece of work you have created in an ‘educational’ context,

Your reflections may connect to ‘educational’ contexts at home, as a pupil in school, on foundation course, during degree course(s), or other relevant experience outside formal education but you do not need to write about them all!

How?

1. To help you connect your reading with your reflections create a spider diagram of themes that emerge from the texts, your memories of educational contexts and specific works you have made. Take a photograph or screen shot of the spider diagram and include it at the end of your writing so that we can see the development of your ideas.

2. From your spider diagram choose 1-2 themes to write about with reference to the texts, your experience and at least one work of art and design that you have made at some point in your art and design education journey (at school, on foundation, degree etc.).

3. Include one in-text citation and one direct quotation, providing a list of references at the end of the writing (before the spider diagram) using the Harvard referencing system (see the course Harvard guide).

4. You may illustrate your writing with appropriate images (of works created, yourself as a student etc.) but this is not compulsory.

Remember that the point of the enquiry is to answer the question not simply to describe your education timeline.

My introduction starts as follows:

We can understand learning, as the process through which we establish meaning from experience, thereby developing our understanding of the cultural tools with which we can affect our environment (Addison et al, 2007). We can then, by extension, define learning and inclusion strategies and/or policies as the means by which educators facilitate the social environment for learning. Effective strategies will maximise the learning experience, developing the student’s understanding of the cultural tools they are given access to and guidance to use.

Within art education specifically, the many varied modes, processes and materials for creating art form the cultural tool-belt, that we as educators teach literacy and proficiency to employ. By implementing effective strategies of learning, educators can curate meaningful experiences that demonstrate the development of each student.

There are a range of proposed conceptual frameworks by which to classify, critique and navigate learning strategies. However, to navigate these principles as an academic, I wish to accredit their concepts to the original author of the ideas instead of accepting it within a course textbook, although i do appreciate how it has been adapted.

Didactic and Heuristic Continuum:

I first encountered this in the reading: Learning to Teach Art and Design in the Secondary School - Second edition

These ideas were then expanded upon further in a university lecture. However, we were not told the author of these ideas. With some research I found a paper by Donald S Seckinger (Author on several books on education) which accredits these 'teachings of social foundations' to a professor (of the philosophy of education) Harry S Broudy.

https://mje.mcgill.ca/article/view/6978

In this article, Seckinger explains that in addition to the Didactic and Heuristic, Broudy also proposed the philetic approach. The Philetic approach which is defined by involving the teacher in relationships of loving concern within a loving community of learners.

In my academic writings, I will also extradite this third category as I do not see its academic value.

Seckinger describes this category of learning as that which prioritises popularity with students and attempting to fulfil the role of the therapist to students. As art educators we should not attempt to provide any therapy to students we are not qualified or employed to give as it is inn-appropriate to do so and we should not seek popularity with students, but instead prioritise effective learning.

I agree with the reading, which proposed that by finding balance between didactic and heuristic modes, we can access a responsive approach.

Three types of Curriculum

Proposed by Eisner, these are less so 'types of curricula' as much as they are as he describes them 'levels' which are present within any given lesson.

• Explicit Curriculum

This is what the school advertises that it does (the items on its "education menu").

• Implicit Curriculum

This is the "hidden" curriculum that is taught as a result of such things as a school's structure, the peer group, social interactions, cultural capital, and poor/excellent teachers.

• Null Curriculum

This is what schools do not teach. These include under-taught subjects (e.g. art, intellectual processes, things that are the first to go in times of economic hardship).Explicit Curriculum

My own experiences:

1.

A lot of my drive to work in education as a teacher has come from a severe deficiency in teachers that cared enough to teach the subject. It seems a harsh and extreme sentiment, but sadly this was a trend of disappointment that followed me for seven years. I've had good teachers, even in subjects I didn't much care for, and at every conjunction in these years I fully believed that 'if only i take art GCSE...' or 'if only I take art A-Level' then the teaching would improve. Instead, every lesson was given in the form of a single recurrent sentence:

'The next task is in the back of your books, as always, get on with it until the bell goes.'

The role of the art teacher, in my personal experience was no different to a cover teacher. And it is precisely this lack of passion that inspires me to want to be an art teacher, to give lessons with as much care and passion that I saw other teachers deliver in other subjects.

This persistent disappointment over seven years may well be the most influential experience of art education.

The lack of 'teaching' diluted a hole within myself, thereby encouraging me to access learning resources on the internet. And I would consume these purely didactic resources in an effort to satiate this need for education.

Plan for Essay:

1. (X/400)

• One approach won’t work for all students - no quote - summary (p27 Adison)

• One approach that followed me until Key stage 6 - purely Heuristic

• Reasons for difficulty of art education - state of art education - third reading?

• Differentiating between Heuristicism and Didacticism

• With this new language however, I can understand this experience as a purely heuristic approach to teaching. Further, this also helps me to recognise that the ‘teaching’ that I was disappointed to not be receiving was specifically the didactic approach that I felt I learned best through.

• Purely haptic learning, syncretistic and analytical - value placed in the syncretistic, by the null curriculum - lack of exposure to contemporary art concepts.

2. (X/400)

• This experience does also reveal the issues of a purely didactic education.

• Experience of attempting to gather information online to teach myself without clear direction.

• Online videos as the purely didactic lesson.

• Common issues with didactic lessons - balance pros and cons

• No access to materials - visual and haptic (Lowenfeld and Britain, 1987) purely visual - haptic and learning by doing as ‘experiential learning’ - clash with definition of learning?

3. (X/400)

• further than alternating these extremes, there must be a way to expand this dichotomy

• Perhaps this is due to a lack of language

• Philetic approach - relationship with every child to understand best how they can learn most efficiently

• Responsive teaching as a solution?

Creativity and the curriculum: educational apartheid in 21st Century England, a European outlier? Heidi Ashton & David Ashton

Published online: 20 Apr 2022, INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CULTURAL POLICY 2023, VOL. 29, - Available online from:

Notes:

- Over the last two decades, the state has progressively marginalised the role of the arts in the public education system in the belief that the ‘market’ does not value the arts.

- While the government has adopted a market orientation rationale in progressively reducing arts education in state sector, in the private education sector, the top schools have followed a contrary approach and increased the importance of arts education

- Because of both the market orienation of the english government and the divergence of the two educational sysemts within england - england represents an outlier in the european context.

- As arts are not a strategic priority in England and have been omitted from all measures of schools’ performance and success, funding is inevitably diverted.

- Together the use of school measurements that exclude the arts and culture and the cuts in funding has led to a reduction in the opportunities for those in state schools to engage with the arts and culture.

- The difference in the approach toward arts education in England is such that we can realistically describe the system as one of educational apartheid. One system preparing young people for elite positions in the state and economy and another preparing young people for positions in the middle and lower orders.