THREADS: Humanities in a union setting

THREADS is the Humanities project of the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU). THREADS also received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the New York Council for the Humanities and the Michigan Council on the Arts. The project has conducted programs for thousands of active and retired blue collar workers in 17 states. The programs are interdisciplinary and involve the active participation of the students. Three formats have been used: on-going discussion groups on the themes of work, family and community; programs conducted as part of regular union activities; and single programs or short series on topical issues. Programs utilized print and nonprint materials and were supplemented by appropriate field trips.THREADS was funded by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the New York Council for the Humanities and the Michigan Council for the Arts.     

Skills versus pedagogy? Doctoral research training in the UK Arts and Humanities

The traditional ‘lone scholar’ view of an Arts and Humanities doctoral student sits uneasily with the skills-based discourse underpinning policies aimed at enhancing researcher development and employability. This paper reports on a case study of a research training programme for doctoral students in the Arts and Humanities at a UK university. It calls for the embedding of the generic skills agenda within a more clearly articulated pedagogic discourse and formulates four pedagogic principles for research training programme design. Additionally, the paper problematises the research trainer role and highlights the importance of paying attention to the students' own learning agendas and the learning value they are prepared to derive from training.     

The core as an education for a democratic citizenry

J. Rufus Fears is professor of classics, chairman of the Department of Classical Studies, and associate dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Boston University, Boston, MA 02215. He is also director of the Boston University Humanities Foundation.     

Entering and exiting a teacher preparation program: What happens in between?

In determining whether graduates of the Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) Program at Southern Oregon University were developing the necessary knowledge, skills, and dispositions to teach, faculty members found themselves examining their own practice. This is just what Goodlad (1988) suggested we do: clarify our own beliefs in order to better understand our teacher preparation program. We discovered that the development of the MAT program is primarily shaped by the people who teach within the program. Who we are as people, influences who we are as teachers and, who we are as teachers influences the nature of the teacher preparation program. This discovery underscored the importance of our efforts to steward the development of our students’ personhood as well as their knowledge and skills.     

台湾《艺术与人文》教材编写的两点思考——以台湾康轩文教事业版《艺术与人文》教材为例

台湾《艺术与人文》教材的编写凸显对学生主体学习的尊重,编者打通了音乐、美术、表演三门艺术学科的内在联系,使学生站在更高的层次学习艺术,达到对艺术形式背后人文精神的理解,最终学会用艺术的方式表达感受。     

Slappers who gouge your eyes: vocal performance as exemplification of disturbing inertia in gender equality

This article is based upon a full‐time study of masculinity and singing funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). Empirical work was conducted with boy performers and ‘peer audiences’ for those performers in schools. The article focuses on girls’ attitudes to boy singers and reveals a significant difference between primary and secondary schooling. In primary schools, girls are the more responsible for discouraging boys but in secondary schools the male peer group becomes more critical whilst girls increasingly perceive boy singers as ‘cute’. It is possible to construct a strong case for single‐sex groupings but the empirical work suggests this may turn out to be misguided. The article concludes that there is an urgent need for girls and boys to learn mutual respect in the context of the music class. The evidence suggests that teachers require a significantly enhanced level of gender‐related subject knowledge, gender awareness and interpersonal skill.     

解读大学生人文素质教育中的“另类阅读”——以苏州工艺美术职业技术学院为例

人文素质教育对于当代大学生综合素质的提高有着不可替代的作用,而加强阅读是提高人文素质的重要途径之一。文章以苏州工艺美术职业技术学院人文素质教育的开展为例,介绍了不同于传统书面阅读的＂另类阅读＂途径。＂另类阅读＂的开展提高了大学生的阅读成效和人文素质,充分体现了阅读在大学生人文素质教育中的重要作用。     

Music Education for Pupils with Severe or Profound and Multiple Difficulties — Current Provision and Future Need

There is a general agreement about the important role that music can play in the education and daily lives of children with severe or profound and multiple learning difficulties. But what are the distinctions and relationships between music education, music therapy and music as a vehicle for other forms of learning, occupation, development or engagement? To what extent are professionals in schools aware of these issues and prepared to explore them from an informed perspective? In this article, Dr Adam Ockelford, Deputy Director of Education and Employment for the Royal National Institute of the Blind (RNIB), Sally Zimmermann, Music Education and Employment Advisor (RNIB); and Professor Graham Welch, Chair of Music Education and Head of the School of Arts and Humanities, Institute of Education, University of London, present and expand on the key findings from their recent research project, 'PROMISE', which examined the Provision of Music in Special Education and specifically in schools for pupils with severe or profound and multiple difficulties. The authors conclude their paper with an acknowledgement that a great deal of significant work takes place in these contexts at present but that further research, leading to the provision of new resources for curriculum and staff development, is crucial to the realisation of music's full potential in the lives of pupils with severe and profound and multiple learning difficulties.     

Making gazes explicit: facilitating epistemic access in the Humanities

This paper addresses the problem of curriculum design in the Humanities and Social Sciences, and more specifically the challenge of designing foundation courses for first-generation or ‘disadvantaged’ learners. Located in the social realist school of the sociology of education studies that builds on the legacy of Basil Bernstein, we emphasise the importance of knowledge and understanding the principles that generate ‘what counts’ in particular courses and disciplines. In order to operationalise this, we used Maton’s Legitimation Code Theory to uncover the knowledge/knower structures in eight first year courses in four of the most popular majors in a Faculty of Humanities. Our data sources were curriculum documents and exam papers in particular. The findings are presented and the ‘codes’, ‘gazes’ and ‘lenses’ for each set of courses delineated. The findings are being used to inform the design of a set of curriculum and pedagogic interventions that aim to offer powerful ways of knowing to novices in the Humanities and Social Sciences.     

Who matters to universities? A stakeholder perspective on humanities, arts and social sciences valorisation

Valorisation is at the centre of many debates on the future of academic research. But valorisation has largely become narrowly understood in terms of universities’ economic contributions through patenting, licensing, spin-off formation and technology transfer. This emergent restrictive definition of universities’ societal impacts is a worrying development, overlooking the potential of universities’ knowledge in the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS). Our hypothesis is that HASS disciplines’ disadvantage compared to the hard sciences (lesser policy attention and funding for commercialisation) arises because HASS stakeholders are not sufficiently salient as stakeholders to universities. Using case studies of three policy experiments, we argue that universities’ responsiveness to stakeholders does not evolve simply and functionally but in response to the networks of relationships in which they are situated. This has important implications for how stakeholder research is used in higher education research, and for the design and implementation of policies to improve universities’ societal contributions.     

浅析如何加强高校学生人文素质教育

人文素质是指人们在人文方面所具有的综合品质或达到的发展程度,是指做人应具备的内在品质和人生的定位,在学识上的积累、获取和应用知识的能力。人文素质的提高,既是人的全面发展的内容,亦是社会进步与发展的内容,也是人的其他方面（如专业能力、业务素质）发展的必要条件。     

以学生为本的“文科大学物理(人文类)”课程建设

文章介绍了北京航空航天大学开设"文科大学物理(人文类)"课程的初步设计和在随后的教学实践中进行的探索与收获。本课程的最终目的是使学生得到科学素质的培养,教学虽然采用课堂教学的传统手段,但是运用了一种全新的教学理念,取得了学生自主学习、教学相长的良好效果。鉴于我国目前的教育情况,文章提出了一条建设性意见。     

Disciplining writing: the case for multi‐disciplinary writing groups to support writing for publication by higher degree by research candidates in the humanities,arts and social sciences

This article addresses multi‐disciplinary writing groups in supporting writing for publication for higher degree by research candidates in the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences. Drawing on focus group discussions with postgraduate research students from the Faculty of Arts at Monash University in Australia who participated in the writing groups, it investigates the participants’ perceptions of the multi‐disciplinary nature of the groups and some of the benefits of sharing writing with fellow postgraduate research students from different fields of study. Discussing both the strengths and weaknesses of the multi‐disciplinarity of the groups as identified by participants, the authors suggest that such groups can provide a forum for postgraduates to develop their ‘professional’ academic identity and develop their writing beyond the context of their theses and can have some unexpected benefits to participants’ sense of themselves as disciplinary proponents. The multi‐disciplinary context is thus considered as providing a level playing field in which postgraduates may approach the writing process as a shared methodology, encompassing a suite of specialised but generic skills that cross‐disciplinary boundaries.     

Heidegger and Stiegler on failure and technology

Abstract

Heidegger argues that modern technology is quantifiably different from all earlier periods because of a shift in ethos from in situ craftwork to globalised production and storage at the behest of consumerism. He argues that this shift in technology has fundamentally shaped our epistemology, and it is almost impossible to comprehend anything outside the technological enframing of knowledge. The exception is when something breaks down, and the fault ‘shows up’ in fresh ways. Stiegler has several important addendums to Heidegger's thesis. Heidegger fails to fully appreciate the early Greek myth of Prometheus, and the technological depth that fire offers all human societies. The fall, or failure, is doubled in the myth of Prometheus, and is at the root of all cultures. Since the onset of Information Technology, the acceleration of life is disorientating our Being. I argue the fall in both Heidegger and Stiegler has encaptured their imagination. Education is vital for generating the imaginary, along with the ability to think critically, and ensures the authenticity of political processes, but as importantly, it helps us to imagine the future beyond the Armaggedon scenarios of climate change, and ecological devastation. The Arts and Humanities are at the core of generating a new future.     

高校美术学专业教学中的人文性

当代社会现代化进程的加速,美术作为图像的形式不仅仅是文化的载体,更具有了自己独特的文化意义.美术学教育,尤其是师范美术教育要涉及更多的文化内容,以实现其文化传播和综合素质培养的重任,体现其教师教育的特性.美术教育应该和丰富的人文性内容联系起来,在课程设置上渗入多学科的人文性知识,打破"技重于文"的传统,以实现其美术教师综合知识培养的目标.     

Gazes in the post-colony: an analysis of African philosophies using Legitimation Code Theory

This article reports on an analysis undertaken in the field of African philosophies using selected conceptual tools from Maton’s Legitimation Code Theory (LCT). In response to calls by South African students for ‘decolonising’ the Humanities curriculum, the practical purpose of the analysis was to generate theoretically-informed guidelines for developing a curriculum for an undergraduate course in a new African Studies major. The field of African philosophies is of theoretical interest because historically it has been premised on responding to and challenging dominant, Western ideas imposed on African intellectuals through processes of colonization and modernization. LCT was employed to uncover principles that legitimate knowledge claims in this field – with a view to determining what content should be selected, recontextualized and pedagogized for the new curriculum. The analysis includes the author’s meta-reflections on the affordances and limitations of LCT for working with knowledge in the South.     

简笔画在美术类中职校英语教学中的应用

本文以广东省中职学校英语教材《英语基础模块》的课堂教学为例,分析了美术类中职校学生的特点,论述了简笔画的特点及其在美术类中职校英语教学中的优势,阐述了有效利用简笔画在美术类中职校的英语教学有利干加深美术类中职生的感性知识认识,并探讨了简笔画在美术类中职校英语教学中的实践应用,强化学生识记效果,提高英语教学效率,优化英语课堂质量．     

人文社会科学与人文社会科学学

人科学、社会科学整合为统一的人社会科学并建立人社会科学学科是目前学科建设的必然走向，学科内部各分支学科的有机联系，科学内部分化与综合的运动发展规律决定了这一点，章就此方面进行了粗放的论证分析并提出了建立人社会科学学的些许构想。     

Drawing Pedagogies in Higher Education: the Learning Impact of a Collaborative Cross‐disciplinary Drawing Course

Drawing is taught in higher education across art and design but also, increasingly, in medical education, with a variety of aims and approaches. It is argued that there is a need, in both these disciplinary domains, to make more explicit the underpinning pedagogical approach to drawing and the impact that different approaches have on learning. The research described in this article focuses on an optional drawing course for undergraduate craft students and medical students. The course is run by the College of Arts and Humanities at a UK university and has a thematic focus on the human body. This qualitative case study sets out, in the context of selected theory about the teaching and learning of drawing, to explore what the learning impact of a particular collaborative model of teaching drawing was on a cross‐disciplinary student group. Findings included, with reference to Riley's framework of drawing pedagogies, that a range of philosophical and pedagogical ideas about drawing were blended from the teaching perspective in a way that enabled students from distinct disciplinary backgrounds to engage and learn. A shift was observed in students’ perceptions of drawing, with both sets of students questioning previously held assumptions about the use and value of drawing within their learning. Life drawing and anatomy laboratory drawing, in particular, provoked deep and challenging reflections about different cultural conceptions of the human body and the practice of collaborative drawing, with dialogic reflection, enabling insights to be developed into different disciplinary epistemologies.     

The Position of the Fine Art Student in the Context of Public Accountability of Higher Education,with Specific Reference to the Quality Assurance Agency Experience

This paper investigates the Quality Assurance Agency and the potential problems in applying its criteria to a Fine Art undergraduate degree programme. Starting with a suspicion that such a generic criteria cannot account for some of the attributes valued in Fine Art, the paper suggests that the QAA strategy needs to be addressed at the level of discourse. In the light of a general discourse of public accountability in Higher Education, I argue that the QAA experience naturalises certain forms of knowledge and marginalises others, some of which pertain in particular to Fine Arts education. In raising questions about what counts as knowledge and which 'skills' count as 'key', I argue that, contrary to appearances, the QAA structure is far from neutral as a measuring strategy.