2017 - Volume 36: Number 2
Artistic Constitutions of the Civil Domain: On Art, Education and Democracy (pages 134–140)
GIELEN, PASCAL
VOL 36.2
How can we understand the relationship between art, education and democracy in the contemporary Western political condition? The recent presidential elections in the USA showed that the classical model of liberal representative democracy is shaking on its foundations. The question is how can artists and education respond to this political condition? In this article it is argued that art has a special quality to address political, and especially democratic, issues. It can strengthen education in its lessons in democracy and citizenship. Art has a special quality to walk on an alternative path of democracy, namely that of the civil domain. In the civil sphere artistic qualities and skills of designing and of imagination can play a crucial role.
DOI: 10.1111/jade.12146
Without Criteria: Art and Learning and the Adventure of Pedagogy (pages 141–152)
ATKINSON, DENNIS
VOL36.2
A key aim of this article is to present a discursus on learning and teaching in the context of art education that softens transcendent historical and ideological framings of art education and its purpose. In contrast it places emphasis upon the immanence and necessary transcendence of local events of learning that occur in whatever framing and which have the potential to extend our comprehension of what art and learning can become. It recommends a ‘pedagogical reversal’ whereby external transcendent lenses and their respective knowledge and criteria for practice are relaxed and proposes a pedagogy ‘without criteria’. A key pedagogical issue revolves around ‘how something matters’ for a learner in his or her experience of a learning encounter and trying to comprehend this ‘mattering’ constitutes a pedagogical adventure for a teacher. The notion of mattering in the context of art practice and learning cannot be divorced from the force of art which is the motive force that precipitates a potential for learning and can expand our understanding of what art and learning can become. The article is therefore premised on the idea that it is not a case of coming to understand art through established knowledge and practice but the force of art challenging us to think. The force of art, or art's event, can be conceived therefore as a process with a potential for the individuation of new worlds or to see that other worlds might be possible.
DOI: 10.1111/jade.12089
Inclusion and Art Education: ‘Welcome to the Big Room, Everything's Alright’ (pages 153–163)
PENKETH, CLAIRE
VOL 36.2
This article offers an exploration of the art room as part of a broader project to consider the ways in which normative practices in art and design education can include and exclude students. The art classroom is explored here as a ‘disrupted space’ and one that can promote movement between the structures and boundaries that affect our ways of being in, and experiencing, the world. The art room offers a space for colonising otherness, as well as an ‘alternative’ or risky physical space, a refuge, or one with the potential to disrupt the dominant educational landscape.
10.1111/jade.12084
Collaboration in Visual Culture Learning Communities: Towards a Synergy of Individual and Collective Creative Practice (pages 164–175)
ANDREA, KARPATI; FREEDMAN, KERRY; CASTRO, JUAN CARLOS, KALLIO-TAVIN, MIRA and HEIJNEN, EMIEL
VOL 36.2
A visual culture learning community (VCLC) is an adolescent or young adult group engaged in expression and creation outside of formal institutions and without adult supervision. In the framework of an international, comparative research project executed between 2010 and 2014, members of a variety of eight self-initiated visual culture groups ranging from manga and cosplay through contemporary art forms, fanart video, graffiti and cosplay in five urban areas (Amsterdam, Budapest, Chicago, Helsinki and Hong Kong) were studied through interview, participant observation and analysis of art works. In this article, collaborative group practices and processes in informal learning environments are presented through results of on-site observations, interviews and analyses of creations. VCLCs are identified as inspiring, collaborative spaces of peer mentoring that enhance both visual skills and self-esteem. Authors reveal how identity formation is interrelated with networking and knowledge sharing. Adolescents and young adults become participants of global communities of their creative genres through reinterpretation and individualisation of shared visual repertoires. In conclusion, implications for art education from the VCLC model for creative collaboration are suggested.
DOI: 10.1111/jade.12099
The UK National Arts Education Archive: Ideas and Imaginings (pages 176–187)
ADAMS, JEFF; BAILEY, ROWAN and WALTON, NEIL
VOL 36.2
The National Arts Education Archive (NAEA) is housed and maintained by the Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP), and managed by YSP coordinators and educators with a well-established volunteer programme. This year, 2017, as part of the celebrations of the YSP's 40th anniversary, the Archive will hold its own exhibition entitled Treasures Revealed: a collection of items selected by people who have been involved in the Archive, whether as donors, volunteers, researchers, artists, trustees or steering group members. In parallel with the exhibition, this article aims to give voice to a selection of individuals and groups associated with the Archive, discussing their interests and experiences of it, and their thoughts on its value and importance as a repository of arts education materials, ideals and practices. Our primary motivations were to consider these different voices in relation to the purpose, direction and relevance of the NAEA today. These exchanges raise fundamental questions and debates about what art education is and what it might become, and how these historical collections, and creative engagements with it, might help to shape our contemporary thinking.
DOI: 10.1111/jade.12150
Online Collaboration in Design Education: an Experiment in Real-Time Manipulation of Prototypes and Communication (pages 188–199)
DREAMSON, NEAL
VOL 36.2
The features of collaboration in design education include effective and efficient communication and reflection, and feasible manipulation of design objects. For collaborative design, information and communication technology offers educators the possibility to change design pedagogy. However, there is a paucity of literature on relative advantages and disadvantages of online collaboration for real-time manipulation of design objects and prototypes, particularly in web design education. Using survey instrumentations, this study investigated online collaborative design practices with an application by measuring experiences of communication and interaction among twelve designers who are enrolled in a Master's programme in interactive design. The study identified barriers to online collaboration design: (1) real-time manipulation of design objects and prototypes may increase complexity of communication interaction; (2) records of communication and invisibility of team members may attenuate quality and frequency of critical feedback to each other; (3) students’ attitudes towards collaboration, individual students’ learning goals, and completing tasks in a timely manner could reduce their engagement and increase their reliance on teacher intervention.
DOI: 10.1111/jade.12079
Becoming Teacher: A/r/tographical Inquiry and Visualising Metaphor (pages 200–214)
BOULTON, ADRIENNE; GRAUER, KIT and IRWIN, RITA L.
VOL 36.2
A great deal has been written about the representational use of metaphor to understand teacher candidates’/new teachers’ conceptions of teacher practice. This article will discuss recent research that explored secondary visual art teacher candidates’/new teachers’ visualising of visual metaphors to provoke their a/r/tographical inquiry into their perceptions of practice. This article engages with the Deleuzian conception becoming as well as the ontology of difference to provoke the reimagination of metaphor in research. We offer new understandings about visualising the visual in research and the methodological implications of relational research practices.
DOI: 10.1111/jade.12080
‘That Tricky Subject’: The Integration of Contextual Studies in pre-Degree Art and Design Education (pages 215–225)
RINTOUL, JENNY and JAMES, DAVID
VOL 36.2
Contextual studies (CS), ‘theory’, ‘visual culture’ or ‘art history’ (amongst other labels) refer to a regular and often compulsory feature in art and design education. However, this takes many forms and can sit in a variety of relationships with the practical elements of such courses. This article is based on mixed method research on CS in the BTEC Extended Diploma in Art and Design, a course that makes up a substantial proportion of pre-degree provision in the UK. We describe aspects of the wider study then draw on two cases to illustrate and discuss the implications of different approaches to the curriculum and its integration. Our analysis suggests that a seemingly progressive flight from a discrete CS towards a designed form of integration can have unintended negative consequences, and in the light of this we suggest some ways in which course teams might reflect on their practices.
DOI: 10.1111/jade.12077
Improving Design Understandings and Skills through Enhanced Metacognition: Reflective Design Journals (pages 226–238)
KURT, MUSTAFA and KURT, SEVINC
VOL 36.2
The main aim of this study was to investigate and discover whether going through the process of reflection by keeping reflective design journals (RDJ) enhances architecture students’ metacognition and whether this enhanced metacognition improves their design understandings and skills. The study was a mixed-methods design and utilised content analysis method to identify the metacognitive actions of the participants. The study also investigated participants’ attitudes towards RDJs and their views regarding the effect of enhanced metacognition on their design understandings and skills. Twenty college students registered to an undergraduate course offered by the department of Architecture participated in the research. The findings of the study revealed that by writing in their RDJs, participants were able to progressively enhance their metacognitive skills and performed several metacognitive actions by using the four main metacognitive strategies: awareness, organisation and planning, monitoring, and evaluation. The results also disclosed that participants found RDJ keeping exceptionally effective and stated that their enhanced metacognition improved their design understanding and abilities.
DOI: 10.1111/jade.1209
To access this issue and all other issues of iJADE, members should first log in to the website and then use the iJADE search facility. The Search and Advanced Search facilities are available only to NSEAD members.