2004 - Volume 23: Number 2
The Status of Graphical Presentation in Interior/Architectural Design Education
GUREL, MELTEM O, and BASA, INCI
Volume 23.2
This article argues that interior/architectural design education favours a dominance of final presentation over the design process in studio environment, particularly in the evaluation of a project. It suggests that the appeal of design juries for pleasant drawings, which may shift the emphasis from the project itself to its representation, may be recognized as a discursive habit with limited contribution on educational concerns. The theoretical stance argues that the interest for graphical presentation has primarily remained within an aesthetic agenda and has rarely been conceptualised beyond this convention.
To substantiate the argument, the study aims to reveal the status of graphical presentation in interior/architectural design education. With an understanding that a concept of graphical presentation - with its own sets and systems of values and norms - is formed through a “mass of statements,” produced and circulated in the field, it observes ‘statements’ in written, said and thought forms. First, books that set the tone in the topic are examined; second, both students and instructors are asked to express their opinions on the subject. The research and the findings indicate that final graphical presentation is appropriated as an utmost component of design education. In that regard, a set of intriguing questions is asserted to constitute awareness in the field of research and to reform approaches to the relationship between graphical presentation and design education.
The study argues for a relocation of the position of graphical presentation, central to the questions of its power and impact in studio environment.
Daily Life: A Pre-Service Art Teacher Educator and Her Work
GALBRAITH, LYNN
Volume 23.2
This paper reports on a case study of the daily life of an art teacher educator. It examines the intellectual, moral, emotional, and physical undercurrents of this work and how these qualities are reflected within the daily context of the pre-service university- or college-level classroom environment. To date, few research studies have examined the daily practices of university or college-level faculty members who prepare art teachers and how these faculty members go about their jobs. The author spent an academic term as a participant observer and researcher in the art teacher educator’s secondary art education methods course. Examples and narratives from this study are forwarded, as well as a discussion on the importance of this form of inquiry for art teacher education today.
The Doctorate in Fine Art: the importance of exemplars to the Research Culture
MACLEOD, KATY and HOLDRIDGE, LIN
Volume 23.2
The doctorate in Fine Art has had a troubled history in the UK. Although there are growing numbers of doctorates being undertaken and over forty institutions, which offer doctoral study, there is still little understanding of this research culture. There is a developing literature, but it remains curiously focused on research methods and protocols rather than on establishing the character of the culture through what is being produced by doctoral students. Macleod and Holdridge have produced an AHRB funded study of selected exemplars of doctoral submissions. The study seeks to make both a practical and strategic intervention in the ongoing ‘making/writing’, ‘theory/practice’ debate. It also seeks to clearly demonstrate how artist researchers have dealt with the academic requirements of the PhD and how the production of a substantial written text (generally 30,000 words plus) showing a keen knowledge and criticality of the subject field has been achieved. The exemplars demonstrate both the distinctive and the normative character of the PhD in Fine Art. However, the underpinning empirical research for the study (1996- ) has also demonstrated the critical independence of such exemplars within the broader field of academic research. Through a brief analysis of three doctoral submissions selected from the study, the paper seeks to draw out some of the more important findings and their implications for the developing research culture.
An Informetric Investigation into the Potential for Change in Belgian Art Education at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century
MAASWINKEL, PETER
Volume 23.2
The beginning of the twentieth century was a period of pedagogical enthusiasm and renewal in the field of education. Based on a list of articles concerning art education published in Belgian periodicals between 1903 and 1923, the author undertakes an analysis of the title words in order to study how the subject was able to evolve. For this purpose, the pertinent title words are grouped into content categories. It can be seen that these content categories demonstrate specificity compared to other periods. The specificity of the subject at a given moment implies that the transformation of the subject consists of the emergence, the decline or the exchange of categories, which can also be demonstrated. The connections of these variations to historical facts are substantiated. It can therefore be stated that these variations represent the historical evolution of the subject. However, such emergence, decline and exchange of categories is only possible on condition that each category is able to vary independently of the others. This is shown by an autonomy index as well as by an 2-test. Thus, art education did not drop from the sky as a ready-to-teach school subject. Art education is always what the people make of it, which makes reflection on what it could be or has to be so important at any given moment too.
The Assessment of GCSE Art: Criterion-Referencing and Cognitive Abilities
RAYMENT, TREVOR and BRITTON, BRIAN
Volume 23.2
In this paper Cognitive Abilities Test scores are compared directly with moderated GCSE scores awarded to the same group of pupils. For ease of interpretation the comparisons are presented in a graphical form. Whilst some provisional and tentative conclusions are drawn about the reliability of GCSE art, questions are raised about the general validity of criterion-referenced assessment in this area.
Open Minds and a Sense of Adventure: How Teachers of Art & Design Approach Technology
WOOD, JOYCE
Volume 23.2
How does the use of technology in Art and Design differ from its use in other subjects? What uses do art teachers make that might seem noteworthy to their colleagues in other subject areas? And are there respects in which ICT affects art teaching uniquely? The following report is drawn from two national, qualitative studies, carried out over four years and involving over two hundred skilled computer users in the UK teaching force [1]. The studies explored good practice in use of ICT in twelve separate curriculum subjects. Research addressed the following questions:
How does ICT help teachers convey the central concepts of their subjects? What can be learned with the aid of ICT that might not be learned as readily in any other way?
The study found that each curriculum subject uses ICT distinctively, has singular hardware requirements and is treated differently in terms of resourcing and access.
The Rehabilitative Role of Arts Education in Prison: Accommodation or Enlightenment?
CLEMENTS, PAUL
Volume 23.2
The prisoner constituency is one of the most excluded in society. Addressing recidivism requires amongst other considerations, an enabling of these individuals to fulfil rehabilitative intent. The article argues that this necessitates an educational discourse and methodology that is embedded in concepts of emancipation and empowerment, where creativity and heuristic learning enable personal transformation. The arts are one of the agents that can naturally encourage a spontaneous and participatory learning, enabling a more liberating and self-directed rehabilitative process. Notwithstanding, arts education in prison illuminates the struggle between individual creative needs and social accommodation. Historically the shifting paradigm of penal policy has reflected a wider political intention. But there is an irony as the New Labour government that champions social inclusion, has overseen the reduction of opportunity in prison to engage with the arts, replaced by an instrumental agenda concerning basic, key and cognitive skills. Furthermore, this has arguably been costly and ineffectual, hence the need to accommodate a more creative and expressive curriculum.
The article has been divided into two parts. The first examines competing discourses of penal educational provision in order to assess the role of the arts. The second part examines a radical educational agenda of inclusion based on emancipatory theory, as a conduit for personal transformation, in which the creative arts have a central role.
Speaking of Tongues
FUSSNER, HANNAH
Volume 23.2
In this paper I reflect on claims that artefacts, as alternatives to texts, can provide an effective means of access to learning. With reference to the work of Walter Benjamin, I analyse the role the “aura” of a ritual object played in engaging a group of Year 6 students, all of whom experienced various degrees of delayed literacy. Drawing on Levi-Strauss' essay, On the Effectiveness of Symbols, I consider how far a unit of work involving aspects of a ritual against slander allowed the students to develop their understanding of how performative language might function.
The Narrative Approach to Art Education: A Case Study
ESSER-HALL, GABRIELE; RANKIN, JEFF and NDITA, DUMILE JOHANNES
Volume 23.2
This case study takes as its focus the work of the Fine Art graduate Dumile Johannes Ndita, who visually narrates his experience of life in contemporary South Africa. The artist graduated from Border Technikon, East London, an institution, which teaches the narrative approach. It is the aim of the authors to illustrate how this method enables students to transfer lived experience into image. The three voices in this paper come from different backgrounds. The artist will explain the meaning of his drawings, the teacher will give background information on the community and culture in which he himself and the artist operate and outline teaching methods. Students taught by this method create work that has impact and meaning beyond the confines of the art school. To argue this point, the theoretician will add her voice and reflect on meta-narratives presented in Dumile Johannes Ndita’s drawings. Intricate inter-textual patterns, shared and inter-connecting institutional narratives tie our individual voices to those of the wider community and culture of present-day South Africa and beyond.