Schools and Cultural Citizenship: Arts Education for Life

179 Pages·2023·6.42 MB·English

by  Pat Thomson, Christine Hall

SCHOOLS AND CULTURAL
CITIZENSHIP
‘Why study the arts at school?’ This book offers a fresh perspective on this question.
Informed by rigorous research, the book argues that the arts help young people to
develop key skills, knowledge and practices that support them to become both critical
appreciative audiences and socially engaged cultural producers. Drawing on a three-year
study in partnership with the Royal Shakespeare Company and Tate art museum, Schools
and Cultural Citizenship sets out an ecological model for cultural citizenship that goes
beyond the classroom to include families, the media and popular culture.
The authors introduce new, interrelated concepts to challenge how we consider arts
education. Chapters provide fresh insights, guidance and practical recommendations
for educators, including:
• Key insights from the Tracking Arts Learning and Engagement research
• Detailed case studies featuring arts-rich schools and arts-broker teachers
• Analysis of the importance of immersive professional development for teachers
and the benefits of partnerships with arts organisations
• An ecological model for cultural citizenship
Focusing on the ways in which cultural citizenship can be taught and learnt, this is
an essential read for arts educators, education staff in arts organisations, researchers,
postgraduate students, arts education activists and policy makers.
Pat Thomson is Professor of Education at the University of Nottingham, UK
and Convenor of the Centre for Research in Arts, Creativity and Literacy
(CRACL). She was previously a school principal in disadvantaged schools in
Australia.
Christine Hall is Emeritus Professor and former Head of the School of Education at
the University of Nottingham, UK.
Their collaborative work on the signature pedagogies of artists working in schools
is widely cited and informs the work of Creativity Culture and Education in
Europe, Australia, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
SCHOOLS AND
CULTURAL CITIZENSHIP
Arts Education for Life
Pat Thomson and Christine Hall
Designed cover image: Photo by Sara Beaumont ©RSC
First published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2023 Pat Thomson and Christine Hall
The right of Pat Thomson and Christine Hall to be identified as authors of this
work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to
infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-0-367-55338-8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-55339-5 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-09308-4 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003093084
Typeset in Bembo
by Taylor & Francis Books
CONTENTS
List of illustrations vi

Acknowledgements viii

1 Introducing the Tracking Arts Learning and Engagement

research 1

2 Arts-rich schools 13

3 The arts-broker teacher 31

4 Immersive professional development 47

5 Signature arts pedagogies 63

6 The art of mediation 81

7 Students’ perspective on cultural capital 99

8 The school arts effect 116

9 Cultural Citizenship 135

Afterword: The arts-rich school ecology 156

Index 163
ILLUSTRATIONS

Figures
8.1 Student engagement in arts activities 129
8.2 Student engagement in arts activities 129
8.3 Student involvement in producing arts 129
8.4 Student involvement in producing arts 130
8.5 Student involvement in producing arts 130
8.6 Student involvement in producing arts 130
Images
1.1 Walking in 1
1.2 Starting the day 2
1.3 Habits of mind display 3
1.4 Watching and listening to the artist 4
5.1 Art room door 69
5.2 Art room curated corner 69
5.3 Art room equipment 70
5.4 Creative project past 70
5.5 Creative project in progress 71
5.6 Art room as repository 71
5.7 Drama room 1 72
5.8 Drama room 2 72
6.1 Art room equipped as a studio 87
6.2 Introducing disciplinary terms and concepts 89
List of illustrations vii
6.3 Building an evaluative artist habitus 90

6.4 Exams are a constant 93

Table
8.1 Six TALE schools’ academic results, free school meals and

ethnicity data 119
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The research in this book was funded by Arts Council England’s major research
fund. Our partners in this research were the Royal Shakespeare Company and
Tate. We are grateful to Jacqui O’Hanlon and Dr Emily Pringle for their con­
tinued support, engagement and conversations throughout the project and beyond.
We couldn’t have asked for more committed and knowledgeable research
companions.
We are hugely grateful to the 30 secondary schools, 60 teachers and 6000 stu­
dents who willingly engaged with the research. We hope that you recognise
yourselves in these pages and that you feel we have kept our promise to tell your
stories. We hope, as you did when you agreed to participate in the research, that
this book contributes to efforts to make the arts strong in every school.
Special thanks to Lexi Earl and Corinna Geppert whose work as researchers on
the Tracking Arts Learning and Engagement (TALE) research project informed this
book. We wish we could have employed you for longer. It has taken us quite
some time to do the further analysis that appears in this book.
Some of the book’s content has already appeared in various forms. We have
used writing as a means of developing our ideas, but we have worked further on
them here.
• Our website researchtale.net contains project records and a blog which
reported visits to the schools.
• An early paper, Thomson, Pat, Hall, Christine, Earl, Lexi and Geppert, Cor­
inna (2019) Subject Choice as Everyday Accommodation/Resistance: Why
Students in England (Still) Choose the Arts Critical Studies in Education, 61(5),
545–560, analyses why students chose arts subjects over others, and it provides
important background to the TALE research project.
Acknowledgements ix
• We developed our ideas about cultural citizenship by writing two book
chapters: Thomson, Pat, Hall, Christine, Earl, Lexi and Geppert, Corinna
(2019) Towards an Arts Education for Cultural Citizenship. In Riddle, Stewart
and Apple, Michael, eds, Reimagining Education for Democracy, Routledge; and
Thomson, Pat and Hall, Christine (2020) Beyond Civics: Art and Design
Education and the Making of Active/Activist Citizens. In Burgess, Lesley and
Addison, Nick, eds, Debates in Art & Design Education, Routledge. Chapter 9
draws on both chapters.
• We wrote about partnerships in Hall, Christine and Thomson, Pat (2021) Making
the Most of Arts Education Partnerships in Schools, Curriculum Perspectives,41(1),
101–106 and drew on this analysis in Chapter 3.
• We first wrote about atmosphere and signature pedagogies in art rooms in
Thomson, Pat and Hall. Christine (2021) “You just feel more relaxed”: An
Investigation of Art Room Atmosphere, International Journal of Art and Design
Education, 40(3), 599–614. We have substantially added to this initial analysis
by including drama rooms – see Chapter 5.
• Our paper on cultural capital, Thomson, Pat and Hall, Christine (2022) Cultural
Capitals Matter, Differentially: A Bourdieusian Reading of Perspectives from
Senior Secondary Students in England, British Journal of Sociology of Education,
doi: 10.1080/01425692.2022.2083582, forms the basis for Chapter 8.