Art in Education: Identity and Practice

211 Pages·2002·7.181 MB·English

by  Dennis Atkinson (auth.)

Art in Education
Landscapes: The Arts, Aesthetics, and Education
VOLUME 1
SERIES EDITOR
Liora Bresler, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, U.S.A.
EDITORIAL BOARD
Magne Espeland, Stord University, Norway
Minette Mans, University of Namibia
Bo Wah Leung, The Hong Kong Institute of Education
Gary McPherson, University of New South Wales, Australia
Janice Ross, Stanford University, U.S.A.
Christine Thompson, Pennsylvania State University, U.S.A.
Francois Tochon, University of Wisconsin-Madison, U.S.A.
SCOPE
Thisseries aims to provide conceptual and empirical research in arts education, (including
music, visual arts, drama, dance, media, and poetry), in a variety of areas related to the
post-modern paradigm shift. The changing cultural, historical, and political contexts of
artseducation are recognized to be central to learning, experience, and knowledge. The
books in this series present theories and methodological approaches used in artseducation
research as well as related disciplines - including philosophy, sociology, anthropology and
psychology of arts education.
ART IN EDUCATION
Identity and Practice
by
Dennis Atkinson
Department of Educational Studies,
Goldmiths University of London, U.K.
KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK,BOSTON, DORDRECHT, LONDON, MOSCOW
eBookISBN: 0-306-47957-5
Print ISBN: 1-4020-1084-2
©2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers
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CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii
ABOUT THE AUTHOR ix
INTRODUCTION 1
MEMORY SEED 1
THEORIES OF LEARNING 5
LEARNING THEORY IN ART EDUCATION 6
REPRESENTATION AND SIGNIFICATION 8
IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE 9
THE IDEA OF EXPERIENCE 10
OUTLINE OF THE BOOK 12
PART ONE: INTERPRETATION AND PRACTICE 15
CHAPTER 1. SEMIOTICS AND HERMENEUTICS 17
INTRODUCTION 17
SEMIOTICS 18
The Saussurian legacy 19
The Peircian legacy 21
Metonymy and metaphor in drawing practices 26
HERMENEUTICS AND THE PROBLEM OF INTERPRETATION 28
Phenomenology and hermeneutics 29
Hermeneutic circle 30
HERMENEUTIC STRATEGIES 32
Hermeneutics of reproduction 33
Hermeneutics of dialogue and tradition 35
Phenomenological hermeneutics: narrative and textuality 36
Hermeneutics of emancipation 38
Gadamer, Habermas and Ricoeur: a summary of implications
for art in Education 40
POST-STRUCTURAL HERMENEUTICS 42
Surveillance, regulation and power 42
Dissemination, deconstruction and differance 44
Summary 45
iii
iv CONTENTS
CHAPTER 2. SEMIOTICS, HERMENEUTICS AND
OBSERVATIONAL DRAWINGS 47
CHAPTER 3. THE SEMIOTICS OF CHILDREN’S DRAWING
PRACTICES 57
LANGUAGE GAMES, DRAWING GAMES 62
DRAWINGS FROM AUSTRALIA 66
CHILDREN DRAWING OBJECTS 67
MYSTERY 76
SUMMARY 77
CHAPTER 4. EXPERIENCE AND THE HERMENEUTICS AND
SEMIOTICS OF VISUALITY 79
PERSPECTIVE AND VISUAL REPRESENTATION 84
VISUALITIES OF DIFFERENCE 86
PART TWO: IDENTITY AND PRACTICE 93
CHAPTER 5. CONSTRUCTIONS OF IDENTITY 95
THE TRUMAN SHOW 95
CHANGING THE SUBJECT 96
ALTHUSSER 98
FOUCAULT 98
NORMALISATION 99
DISCOURSE 100
DISCOURSES OF NORMALISATION AND IDENTIFICATION IN ART
EDUCATION 102
POWER-KNOWLEDGE 104
VIDEO SEQUENCE 109
CHAPTER 6. IDENTITY AND PSYCHOANALYSIS 113
LACAN: THE IMAGINARY, THE SYMBOLIC AND THE REAL 114
The imaginary 114
The symbolic 116
The Other is always lacking 117
The Other and marginalized identifications 118
The subject of discourse and the subject of desire: a
rapprochement 119
The Ambassadors 121
Assessment and the pedagogised other 121
Pedagogised identities: inclusion and exclusion 124
Identity and objet petit a 125
Point de capiton 126
Fetishism, assessment and identity 129
CONTENTS v
Identity and the Real 131
Summary 134
CHAPTER 7. THE FIELD OF ART IN EDUCATION 137
RECENT PEDAGOGIES FOR ART EDUCATION IN ENGLAND 138
THE NATIONAL CURRICULUM FOR ART IN ENGLAND 140
BOURDIEU’SNOTIONSOFFIELDANDHABITUS 145
CHANGE IN THE FIELD 147
CHREODS AND EPIGENETIC LANDSCAPES 148
TEACHER AND LEARNER IDENTITIES IN THE FIELD OF ART
EDUCATION 151
NARRATIVE 1 151
NARRATIVE 2 153
NARRATIVE 3 155
NARRATIVE 4 156
PART THREE: DIFFERENCE AND PRACTICE 159
CHAPTER 8. EXPERIENCE, DIFFERENCE AND PRACTICE 163
FORMS OF LIFE 163
TWO NARRATIVES 164
PRACTICE AND CHANGE 167
EXPERIENCE AND EXPERIENCING 169
DIFFERENCE 172
STUDENTS’ WORK 173
CHAPTER 9. EXPERIENCE AND PRACTICE: THEORISING
NEW IDENTIFICATIONS 185
CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRITIQUE OF EXPERIENCE FOR ART IN
EDUCATION 188
END PIECE 194
REFERENCES 197
SUBJECT INDEX 203
NAME INDEX 205
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I want to thank a number of people who, over the years, have helped me to
develop my thoughts in relation to the contents of this book. Tony Brown, Paul
Dash, Alex Moore, Anna Horsley, Sheila Cox, John Matthews, John Willats,
John swift, Jacquie Swift, John Johnston, Steve Herne, Rosalyn George, my
PGCE, MA and MPhil students at Goldsmiths University of London, Keith
Walker. Special thanks must go to Bill Brookes my former tutor who has
always supported my work and provided constant advice, comment and
stimulation. Thanks must also go to Tony Brown, Paul Dash and Rosalyn
George for reading and commenting on drafts of the manuscript.
I want to thank a number of teachers and their children and students for
allowing me to reproduce art work. John Johnson and his students at Thomas
Moore School and Crofton School, Folami Bayode, Jonathan Archibald, Andy
Gower and his students at Fortismere School, Carla Mindel and her students
at Highgate Wood School, Sarah Dore and Robin Tipple. I am also grateful
to John Johnson, Folami Bayode, Jonathan Archibald and Andy Gower for
participating in a series of interviews contained in Chapter 7.
I am grateful to the International Journal of Art and Design Education
for allowing me to reproduce images from previous publications. I thank
Irene van den Reydt and Michel Lokhorst from Kluwer for their initial encour-
agement and enthusiasm for the project and their constant support. A final
but special mention for my wife Karen, my daughter Emma and my son
Luke.
Dennis Atkinson
September 2002
vii
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dennis Atkinson studied art at Cardiff College of Art and art and education
at Bretton Hall College of Education from where he received his Certificate
in Education in 1971. This was followed by three years of teaching art at Batley
High School for Boys. In 1974 he moved to Southampton where he taught
art at Glen Eyre Comprehensive School becoming Head of Art Department
in 1977. He began studying for a part-time Masters Degree in Education in
1979 at the University of Southampton. This led to further study culminating
in 1987 when he received his PhD, which focussed on the relationship between
language and action in teaching art and design. In 1988 he was appointed to
the Department of Educational Studies at Goldsmiths College, University of
London, as a tutor for the PGCE Art and Design (secondary) course. He
became course director in 1992. He is now Senior Lecturer with responsibil-
ities for masters degrees and research supervision. His research interests include
art and design in education and initial teacher education. He has a particular
interest in employing hermeneutic, post-structural and psychoanalytic theory
to explore the formation of pedagogised identities and practices within edu-
cational contexts. He is currently Principal Editor of The International Journal
of Art and Design Education and has published regularly since 1991 in inter-
national academic journals such as The Journal of Curriculum Studies, The
International Journal of Inclusive Education, The International Journal of Art
and Design Education and Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of
Education.
ix
INTRODUCTION
MEMORY SEED
My introduction to teaching art began in September 1971 when I took up a
post as artteacher in a secondary school in the West Riding ofYorkshire. Apart
from my desire to survive and establish myself amongst students and staff I
remember holding firm ideas about what I should be teaching. In relation to
drawing and painting I had clear expectations concerning practice and
representation. Students’ art work which did not correspond to these I rather
naively) considered as weak and in need of correction. I assumed wrongly
that when students were making paintings and drawings from observation of
objects, people or landscape, they should be aiming to develop specific
representational skills associated with the idea of ‘rendering’ a reasonable
likeness. I was reasonably familiar with the development of Western art and
different forms of visual representation and expression and I knew, for example,
that the projection system perspective is only one and not the correct repre-
sentational system for mapping objects and their spatial relations as viewed
from a particular point into corresponding relations in a painting or drawing.
Nevertheless I still employed this mode of projection as an expectation or a
criterion of judgement when teaching my students. In retrospect the conse-
quence of my approach to teaching observational drawing or painting practices
was that in expecting students to be able to produce a particular representa-
tional form I could be accused of assuming that all students had the same
perceptual experience. That is to say, that all students viewed the world in a
similar way and therefore in order to produce a good representational drawing
it was a matter of them acquiring the appropriate representational techniques.
My teaching practice was, therefore, grounded upon the idea of a universal
vision that could be represented, given sufficient degrees of perception and
drawing skill, which it was my job to teach and develop. Looking back, in
many ways my teaching was a strange mixture of unquestioning acceptance
of specific cultural traditions of visual representation that I had received in
my training and education, coupled with my awareness of contemporary art
practices and their eclectic use of representational form.
It was during this early period that I had to teach whole classes of boys from
India and Pakistan, who spoke very little English. I introduced a variety of
art activities to these students including printmaking and collage, however
lessons concerned with observational drawing and painting left me feeling quite
bewildered but also fascinated. The work they produced in these lessons was
quite different to those of Western students to whom my training allowed
me to respond. Essentially the Asian students’ drawings and paintings were
1