Changing Pedagogies in the Art College: Learning and Teaching Art and Design in Higher Education

A special issue of Arts (ISSN 2076-0752).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (1 February 2019) | Viewed by 32534

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Reader in Art and Education, UCL Institute of Education, University College London, London WC1H 0AL, UK
Interests: art education; including recent histories of art education; art and artists in sites for learning, art and curatorial practices and the shaping of knowledge in galleries and museums

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Guest Editor
Lecturer in Art Culture and Education, UCL Institute of Education, University College London, London WC1H 0AL, UK
Interests: art; art education; neoliberalism and the university; the creative and cultural industries

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The 21st century has been witness to many changes in the ways in which students experience university, not least of which are the massification and marketization of higher education and the mobilization of an international student body. In the maelstrom of reconfigured learning experiences, new fee structures and concomitant expectations, art and design education, a relatively ‘new kid’ on the university block, has been subject to pedagogic reconfiguration. From studio learning environments, application and entry processes, curriculum structure to the standardization of assessment, very little has been left untouched.

As the neoliberal university’s entrepreneurial agenda eclipses many of art education’s social and cultural imperatives incubated in the modernist era, new paradigms for learning become necessary to reflect the less certain practices and modes of production that we still call art and design.

Although these changes register in different ways across the globe and across the spectrum of subjects available for study, they, nevertheless, beg questions about the study of art from schools to universities and through the wider consequences for culture and society.

We invite potential contributors to submit scholarly papers including case studies, archive and on-going research in relation to these fields of change.

Dr. Claire Robins
Ms. Annie Davey
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • art and design pedagogies
  • entry processes to the art university
  • the effects of standardization in higher education
  • liberal education / Neoliberal education
  • alternative models
  • entrepreneurialism
  • ambiguous pedagogies
  • the rhetoric of risk taking and experimentation
  • the spaces and communities of art and design education in a networked culture

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Published Papers (7 papers)

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Research

11 pages, 1645 KiB  
Article
And Shift! A Review of Approaches That Support Transition from A-Level Art and Design to Fine Art Undergraduate Study
by Judy Thomas
Arts 2019, 8(2), 46; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts8020046 - 2 Apr 2019
Viewed by 2912
Abstract
The profile of students applying to BA Fine Art undergraduate programs has shifted in the United Kingdom (UK). Until recently the usual academic pathway was to proceed after A-level to a one-year Art Foundation program; this route is increasingly challenged by a sense [...] Read more.
The profile of students applying to BA Fine Art undergraduate programs has shifted in the United Kingdom (UK). Until recently the usual academic pathway was to proceed after A-level to a one-year Art Foundation program; this route is increasingly challenged by a sense of urgency to enter university earlier. Students more frequently enter straight from school. To accommodate the recruitment of younger applicants there are significant implications for Higher Education Fine Art pedagogy. This article reports on some of the approaches implemented at Northumbria University to support positive transition and learning within the BA Fine Art program. Using the Year 1–Level 4 Fine Art as a case study this reflects on how one university fine arts team has responded to the challenge of induction. Full article
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14 pages, 213 KiB  
Article
What We Do and What Is Done to Us: Teaching Art as Culture
by Dean Kenning
Arts 2019, 8(1), 31; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts8010031 - 5 Mar 2019
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 5359
Abstract
Carl Andre’s opposition between an activating art and a pacifying culture becomes the impetus for wider reflections on artistic autonomy and agency with special reference to how fine art is taught at college. I propose that artistic agency might better be accounted for [...] Read more.
Carl Andre’s opposition between an activating art and a pacifying culture becomes the impetus for wider reflections on artistic autonomy and agency with special reference to how fine art is taught at college. I propose that artistic agency might better be accounted for and enacted by conceiving of it not as something set against or at a distance from culture in general, but ‘as’ culture. Through an overview of various institutional and discursive accounts of artistic production which describe the ways in which art is itself influenced and determined by external factors, and an extended analysis of Raymond Williams theory of culture as ‘collective advance’, I propose that fine art education needs to confront the question of contemporary art’s wider cultural embeddedness, and the political culture of art itself—a politics based in the nature of the social relationships art practice engenders. Full article
11 pages, 1413 KiB  
Article
Redrawing the Timeline: Teaching the History of Fashion in the Networked Conditions of the Twenty-First Century
by Rachel Matthews
Arts 2019, 8(1), 24; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts8010024 - 20 Feb 2019
Viewed by 5356
Abstract
It is important for the history of fashion curriculum, to acknowledge the post-digital environment within which fashion and education now operate. One way to address this, is to move concepts of change in fashion beyond the singular narrative of fashion’s evolution that is [...] Read more.
It is important for the history of fashion curriculum, to acknowledge the post-digital environment within which fashion and education now operate. One way to address this, is to move concepts of change in fashion beyond the singular narrative of fashion’s evolution that is visualised in the fashion timeline. This paper describes an approach to developing historical consciousness in fashion students who are native to the networked conditions of the twenty-first century. These students need frameworks capable of analysing the increasingly decentralised drivers of change in fashion, as well as developments in the fashion system that do not show themselves in garment styles and silhouettes. The study describes how visual metaphors have been used in the study of the history of fashion, to encourage students to view the changing characteristics of fashion from a range of viewpoints. It is an approach designed to open alternative discourses on change, as an inherent feature of fashion. Using these alternative perspectives, it becomes possible for today’s students to engage with the history of fashion in a more critical and reflexive manner, and better understand the interconnected and contingent nature of change in fashion, both, in the past and in the current context. Full article
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12 pages, 1348 KiB  
Article
A Life-Line for the Pedagogic Goose: Harnessing the Graduate Perspective in Arts Education
by Amanda Tinker, Katherine Greenhough and Elizabeth Caldwell
Arts 2018, 7(4), 88; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts7040088 - 26 Nov 2018
Viewed by 3634
Abstract
Studio-based art and design education provides high levels of individual attention but has been criticized for the high demands for space and staff time that it places on institutions. Furthermore, retention and attainment rates in art and design subjects demonstrate that not all [...] Read more.
Studio-based art and design education provides high levels of individual attention but has been criticized for the high demands for space and staff time that it places on institutions. Furthermore, retention and attainment rates in art and design subjects demonstrate that not all students develop the supportive, individual relationships with their tutors that facilitate development as creative practitioners. This article reports a case study of an initiative to improve retention amongst first year students studying Art, Design and Architecture subjects, by utilizing recent graduates, employed as Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs), to create a communications bridge between new students and their subject tutors. The project found that retention rates improved by 50% for these first-year students, who also reported that GTAs are welcoming, approachable, more accessible, and easier to talk to than academic staff. Tutors felt that communication with their students was enhanced by GTAs helping build clear narratives for each student. As the role of GTA becomes more established, further developments will include facilitating peer-to-peer collaboration in the studio through the harnessing and integration of peer mentors to more quickly foster a collaborative and supportive studio culture for new students. Full article
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12 pages, 192 KiB  
Article
Teaching and Learning with Matter
by Tara Page
Arts 2018, 7(4), 82; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts7040082 - 21 Nov 2018
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 4471
Abstract
Through bodies with matter, we are always making, performing and learning, so material pedagogy(ies) are embodied; they are intra-actions between bodies and matter, where with matter, bodies are being taught and are learning. But as learners, we are not always conscious of this [...] Read more.
Through bodies with matter, we are always making, performing and learning, so material pedagogy(ies) are embodied; they are intra-actions between bodies and matter, where with matter, bodies are being taught and are learning. But as learners, we are not always conscious of this intra-action or able to easily articulate it. The intention of this paper is to explore and share the creative acts of learning and teaching of bodies with matter and between spaces, where matter teaches us what it can and cannot do—a material pedagogy. Underpinned by new materialist scholarship, where socio-materiality is emphasised, this paper focuses on the relationalities of learning and teaching so that we can become conscious of our ways, materials and spaces of pedagogy. From this, we can then ensure that we explicitly acknowledge and support the creation of these places to enable a sustained pedagogic engagement for all learning environments that can be transformative and emancipatory. Full article
16 pages, 254 KiB  
Article
Towards a Fair, Rigorous and Transparent Fine Art Curriculum and Assessment Framework
by Angela Clarke, Shane Hulbert and Fleur Summers
Arts 2018, 7(4), 81; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts7040081 - 16 Nov 2018
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 4177
Abstract
Assessing creative work is a complex issue in fine art education, particularly with the academy’s push toward the standardisation of assessment practices. This creates particular challenges for art educators such as defining creativity; balancing assessment of the person, the process and the outcome; [...] Read more.
Assessing creative work is a complex issue in fine art education, particularly with the academy’s push toward the standardisation of assessment practices. This creates particular challenges for art educators such as defining creativity; balancing assessment of the person, the process and the outcome; identifying suitable assessment criteria; moderating subjective responses of assessors; providing feedback that does not inhibit future risk-taking, experimentation and creativity; and considering assessment for, as and of learning. This paper reports on a five-year curriculum and assessment project in the fine art undergraduate degree within an Australian university. The project was designed to provide greater clarity and transparency in the assessment of all aspects of creative and written works within the degree. Using case study and action learning methodologies, we found that assessing in fine art requires artistry and engaged dialogue. This dialogue must allow the language of the discipline to emerge and take into account the pedagogical purpose of assessment. When this process is systemically enacted across the curriculum of a program, assessment can move towards a fairer, more rigorous and transparent approach. We present a fine art curriculum and assessment framework that embeds the values of art educators and simultaneously acts within institutional requirements for assessment. Full article
7 pages, 169 KiB  
Article
The Journal Block and Its Art School Context
by Neil Walton
Arts 2018, 7(4), 74; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts7040074 - 5 Nov 2018
Viewed by 3583
Abstract
This paper examines an important moment in the recent history of UK art education by examining the magazine Block, a radical and interdisciplinary publication produced from within the art history department of an art school in the late 1970s and 1980s. Block [...] Read more.
This paper examines an important moment in the recent history of UK art education by examining the magazine Block, a radical and interdisciplinary publication produced from within the art history department of an art school in the late 1970s and 1980s. Block was created and edited by a small group of lecturers at Middlesex Polytechnic, most of whom were art school educated; it was formed by, and in turn influenced, the milieu of studio-based art education in the UK. Despite the small scale of its operation, the magazine had a wide distribution in art colleges and was avidly read by lecturers looking for ways to incorporate new theoretical, often Marxist, feminist, poststructuralist, perspectives into their teaching. Full article
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