‘The art of democracy’: Young people's democratic learning in gallery contexts

In this article the authors report on research which aimed to explore the opportunities for democratic action and learning in a number of artist‐led gallery education projects in the south‐west of England. The research takes an approach to citizenship learning and democracy that is less focused on citizenship as a specific subject in the formal school curriculum and the achievement of specific citizenship outcomes that can follow from it. Rather, it is more focused upon understanding how democratic practices that are embedded in the day‐to‐day lives of young people contribute to their democratic learning and participation as citizens. Drawing upon conceptual categories and concepts that illuminate the process, the authors demonstrate the nature and character of young people's democratic learning. An implication arising from this is the need for practice‐orientated research in other contexts (e.g. work, leisure and home) to fully understand the nature of democratic learning.     

Making Art,Teaching Art,Learning Art: Exploring the Concept of the Artist Teacher

The article explores the concept of the artist teacher, drawing upon an overview of relevant literature and two related pieces of research: the first investigated practices within the Artist Teacher Scheme (ATS); the second sought to understand the perceptions of practice‐based coursework in an MA Art Education programme at Roehampton University in London. Commonalities and differences between the perceptions and understandings of artist teachers (including masters' students), their tutors and gallery educators were explored. The data for each piece of research were collected through unstructured, open‐ended interviews. A significant reflexive and autobiographical dimension for the research was motivated by my own identity as an artist teacher, and by the exploration of reflective practice as a potential framework for realising and sustaining an artist teacher identity and practice. The research concluded that connections between art practice and teaching are complex, diverse, difficult to articulate, challenging to implement and do not easily lend themselves to simple impact measurement. The ATS operates in a context that includes languages, cultures and identities from frameworks in education and art that can be both complementary and oppositional. Artist teachers need to develop skills of negotiation through which they can articulate and continuously reappraise their art practice and, at an appropriate stage, use that practice to inform their teaching.     

Conversational Pedagogy: Exploring Interactions Between a Teaching Artist and Young Learners During Visual Arts Experiences

In many early childhood classrooms, visual arts experiences occur around a communal arts table. A shared workspace allows for spontaneous conversation and exploration of the art-making process of peers and teachers. In this setting, conversation can play an important role in visual arts experiences as children explore new media, skills, and ideas. The investigation of informal conversations during visual arts experiences will serve to improve understandings of the cognitive, imaginative, social, and affective components of young children’s creative endeavors. In particular, the exploration of conversational discourse contributes to understandings of conversation as an integral component of pedagogy in early childhood arts. As an exploration of the nature of conversation as pedagogy in early arts experiences, I present a ‘telling case’ (Mitchell 1984) featuring the collaborative work between a teaching artist and two young students as they explore and create together. The findings from this research have important implications for early childhood and art education teacher educators striving to develop supportive educational practices that will assist early childhood teachers in promoting supportive visual arts practices.     

Changing Play – writing,researching and learning in an early years arts project

ABSTRACT

‘Changing Play’ is an ongoing project initiated by education curators from the Serpentine, a prestigious London art gallery, working with the Portman children’s centre nursery. Viewed by curators as a collaboration between artist, children’s centre staff and parents, and the gallery, Changing Play combines art and action research, and expands the boundaries of the gallery. In the words of one of the education curators, ‘the project is about social change’. It is not for the gallery curators to develop proposals but to ‘co-develop work’. Ethnographic evidence employing narrative, visual arts informed analysis is being used by the gallery to report to funders, inform iterative planning and inform future directions. The paper focuses on methodological questions on ways in which ethnographers might meet artistic projects both during and after being in the ‘field’. It takes the form of a ‘loose parts’ montage which reflects the ways in which the art project was conducted.     

‘Download’: ‘Postcards Home’ Contemporary Art and New Technology in the Primary School

‘Postcards Home’ using photography, scanning, digital image manipulation, text and colour printing was the third ‘Download’ project devised by the education department of the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, England. It was led by artist Laurie Long with teachers and pupils from Pooles Park primary school in Islington, an inner city borough in North London. Based on the production of a postcard featuring an image of personal significance, the children were involved in exploring and constructing their own and others' identities whilst developing their technology skills in creative ways. The project raises interesting questions about the applicability of contemporary art practices to the primary classroom. The research is based on participant observation and includes the voices of the artist and teachers involved.     

Learning to Be: The Modelling of Art and Design Practice in University Art and Design Teaching

Learning to be an artist or designer is a complex process of becoming. Much of the early phase of ‘learning to be’ occurs during the time emerging artists and designers are students in university art/design programmes, both undergraduate and postgraduate. Recent research reveals that a critical role in assisting students in their maturing identities as artists and designers is played by artist/designer‐academics teaching in university art and design programmes. By maintaining active art/design practices and drawing from these in their teaching, artist/designer‐academics model professional practice to students. Witnessing and interacting with such modelling is part of the process of students learning the shared discourses, views and practices of the art or design worlds to which they aspire to belong. The modelling of professional practice is critical to an artist or designer's ‘learning to be’ experience because it enables students to access the tacit and nuanced behaviours, languages and cultures that constitute contemporary art or design practice. This article outlines findings from a recent Australian study revealing the role of professional practice modelling in university art/design teaching. It highlights the centrality of professional practice modelling to artist/designer‐academics in their beliefs and approaches to teaching their academic disciplines. In critically exploring the research data and findings this article describes the role that modelling of practice plays and how it comprises a core part of the value that artist/designer‐academic participants contribute to the teaching of art/design education.     

Multidisciplinary Approaches to Anti‐Racist Education: An Introduction to the Talacchanda Exhibition and Education Project

The Talacchanda project took place as an independent research/exhibition undertaking supported by the Glasgow School of Art. Over seventeen months an exploratory education programme was introduced at various levels of schools and higher education. The education programme sprang from a contemporary art exhibition and dance performance called Talaccahnda which was informed by ancient Indian thought on art and drama. The exhibition and performance took place in Glasgow's Tramway Project Room and Theatre in October 2002. It had been shown previously in the British Council Gallery in New Delhi in 2000, and later in 2001 at the artist run space ‘Out of the Blue’ in Edinburgh. Thanks to Scottish Arts Council Lottery funding, Talacchanda Glasgow was accompanied by an education programme, which offered workshops and events in schools, at the gallery, through community groups as well as at GSA and Reid Kerr College, Paisley. By demonstrating connections between apparently disparate activities, the project aimed to serve as a catalyst for fresh thinking on inter‐cultural and anti racist education, and to strengthen connections between the community groups and institutions involved.     

Taking Control of Their Lives? A comparison of the experiences of unemployed young adults (18-25) in England and the new Germany

This paper explores the experiences and actions of young adults who have had difficulties in entering and sustaining a place in the labour market. The research was carried out in selected localities undergoing economic transformation in England and the new Germany, as part of the project 'Taking Control' in the ESRC's Youth Citizenship and Social Change Programme. The 18-25 age group has been newly 'targeted' for interventions through programmes such as 'New Deal' and 'JUMP'. Through a combination of questionnaire survey and group interviews the research has explored how, in different ways, choice and uncertainty can be important dimensions in young adults' biographies in the current moment. Their experiences and actions are not exclusively determined by socialising and structural influences, but also involve elements of subjectivity, choice and agency. The article discusses findings on the lives and perspectives of 300 young people affected by unemployment. The sample is drawn from a wider questionnaire survey ( n = 900) and a series of group discussions in the three cities of Derby (England), Hannover (Western Germany) and Leipzig (Eastern Germany). The research builds on and extends the authors' previous comparative research into the education and training experiences of younger age groups in the two countries.     

The Nineteenth‐Century Artist‐Teacher: A Case Study of George Wallis and the Creation of a New Identity

‘Artist‐teacher’ is a conceptually rich term in the field of art and design education used to describe the professionally distinct roles of artist and teacher. George Wallis (1811–91), a nineteenth‐century artist and teacher, the subject of this article, first used the term ‘artist‐teacher’ to describe himself and his theories of art education. To better understand this new term, the researcher organised the diverse aspects of Wallis's life from 1811 to 1845 as a network of enterprises to track the streams of thinking that contributed to this professional statement. Through comparison, ordering and sequencing the various enterprises, a deeper and reflective understanding of Wallis's teaching developed. In fact, the network of enterprises displays the growth of Wallis's thought as a slow and evolving process, eventually highlighting the turbulent situation that provoked Wallis to defend his theories and practices when he conjured the new term.     

Up or down and out? A systemic analysis of young people's educational pathways in the youth justice system in England and Wales

Many young people in the youth justice system in England and Wales are educationally marginalised and systemic barriers to their engagement with education persist. This article presents an analytical framework for understanding how education and youth justice practices shape young people's educational pathways during their time in the youth justice system with the aim of understanding the systemic dynamics that encourage or impede young people's engagement with education. It draws on data from a case study of 32 young people who were serving either a community or a custodial sentence under the supervision of one youth offending team in England and Wales. Using as analytical starting points Bourdieu's and Wacquant's conceptualisations of competing dynamics within the ‘bureaucratic field’ of state governance and Hodkinson's careership theory, this article discusses the interplay between exclusionary and inclusionary interests operating within and between the agencies of education and youth justice and the extent to which they play a role in sustaining young people's involvement in education or compounding their educational and social marginalisation.     

Attitudes of a sample of English,Maltese and German teachers towards media education

Media education forms part of the National Minimum Curriculum of England, Malta and Germany. Teacher training courses differ greatly in how teachers are prepared to teach media education. In this paper we shall investigate the attitudes of a sample of teachers trained in England, Malta and in Germany towards their perceived importance of media education and the teachers' preparedness to teach the subject. This preliminary study had a sample of 132 participants, 33 teachers from England, 47 from Germany and 52 teachers from Malta. The tool used to collect data was an online questionnaire. The results show that teachers taking part in this study were not given enough training, or any training at all to be able to teach media education with the result that they do not feel sufficiently prepared to teach the subject. It is suggested by the authors that media education becomes a compulsory component of the initial teacher training courses as well as advanced training for teachers.     

Education policy and social class in England and New Zealand: an instructive comparison

This article explores the ‘middle-class pressure thesis’, the extent to which recent education policy in England under New Labour may be shaped by the need to respond to an increasingly large and anxious middle class. It discusses why the intensification of middle-class pressure on education policy in England could be expected and outlines how New Labour's education policies can be seen as a response to that pressure. In the latter part of the article the case of New Zealand is used to ‘speak back’ to the middle-class pressure thesis in England. New Zealand highlights the potent influence of England's historic and recent class context on policy by demonstrating a setting where market policies have been embraced by policy makers but where class has played a less important role. The article suggests that although the means by which social class at the local level might act back on and help shape the direction of national education policy will be difficult to investigate, it would be a rewarding direction for future policy research related to social class.     

Disabled children's evolving digital use practices to support formal learning. A missed opportunity for inclusion

This paper takes an interdisciplinary approach combining digital education with disability theory to investigate disabled children's digital use practices for formal learning. Evidence suggests that children's lives have been transformed through engagement with digital technologies, eg, computers, laptops and mobile devices. Even so, empirical studies about disabled children's uses of technology remain limited, particularly studies that engage with disabled children's own views in context. In response, an exploratory, participatory research study was designed to gain up-to-date insights into how visually impaired children, as an illustrative case, experienced digital technologies for learning within the context of inclusive education policy. Disabled children and teachers were interviewed in mainstream schools in England; results were analysed using social practice theory to identify digital use practices characterised as digital learning and digital accessibility practices alongside children's experiences. Outcomes were mixed. Youngsters saw benefits to using digital technologies, particularly tablets, for learning. Nevertheless, digital accessibility practices were potentially stigmatising and carried an extra task load to overcome barriers that occurred when teachers had not developed inclusive digital pedagogy. The paper discusses the implications of these findings and calls for further research to guide schools to use digital technologies to support inclusion.     

教育国家主义与世界科学格局的变动——以20世纪前20年诺贝尔科学奖金获得者为例的考察

诺贝尔科学奖金是衡量各国和各组织的科学教育与科学研究水平的重要尺度.20世纪前20年诺贝尔科学奖金数的分布情况,反映出19世纪末20世纪初世界科技发展中心从英国向德国转移的明显趋势.德英两国大学对科学教育与科学研究重视程度的显著差异,以及两国政府对教育国家主义的不同践行,导致德英两国科学教育和科学研究水平的升降,并最终引起世界科技发展中心的易位和科技基本格局的变动.     

Parents' representations of their children's mathematics learning in multiethnic primary schools

There is a growing concern that governmental calls for parental involvement in children's school mathematics learning have not been underpinned by research. In this article the authors aim to offer a contribution to this debate. Links between children's home and school mathematical practices have been researched in sociocultural studies, but the origins of differences within the same cultural group are not well understood. The authors have explored the notion that parents' representations of school mathematics and associated practices at home may play a part in the development of these differences. This article reports an analysis of interviews with parents of 24 children of Pakistani and White origin enrolled in primary schools in England, including high and low achievers in school mathematics. The extent to which the parents represented their own school mathematics and their child's school mathematics as the ‘same’ or ‘different’ are examined. In addition, ways in which these representations influenced how they tried to support their children's learning of school mathematics are examined. The article concludes with reflections on the implications of the study for education policy.     

Risky Voyages: Navigating changes in the organisation of work and education in Eastern Germany

The contrasts between the regulated German and unregulated British approaches to young adult transitions have been the subject of the authors' previous Anglo-German Foundation studies, published as Youth and Work: transitions to employment (1991) and Becoming Adults in England and Germany (1994). The 'reunification' of Germany from 1990 has involved economic and political transformations whose effects will shape the future development of Germany and its place in the Union for years to come. This new study focuses on directions young people in the new Lander have taken in order to navigate through new education, training and employment structures and on new transition behaviours into and out of employment with regard to career outcomes. Far from 'catching up' with the rest of Germany, the erosion of the Dual System in the East may portend the future for the Lander of Western Germany. The issues raised have considerable resonances with the problems and contradictions which have beset British education and training policy in the 1980s and 1990s.     

Practices of boundary-work in the collaboration between principals and private sponsors in England’s academy schools

This article presents one of the few qualitative studies to empirically examine the collaboration between private sponsors and principals in the context of England’s academy schools policy. It uses the concept of boundary-work to illuminate the multiple dynamics involved in the collaboration between principals and business sponsors. By analysing qualitative interviews with principals and sponsors from a local authority case study the article reveals the working relationship between these actors to be characterised by three boundary-work practices: drawing, negotiating and contesting boundaries. These practices are described before exploring their implications for existing understandings of England’s academies policy. This analysis directly answers calls in the literature for in-depth case study research which explores the collaboration between academy sponsors and principals, and the article’s interpretivist approach to boundary-work is shown to be a valuable theoretical approach which has received little attention in studies investigating the role of private actors in education. The article concludes by advocating for more studies of education policy to use boundary-work as a lens through which to understand the role being played by new actors in education, and argues that this perspective would be particularly valuable for examining the context of England’s increasingly diversifying schooling landscape.     

Art‐Based Action Research for Art Education in the North

This article introduces the art‐based action research (ABAR) methodology as part of the international discussion of art‐based educational research (ABER). The participatory and dialogical approach of ABAR was inspired by a consideration of the pressure for change in art education stemming from the practices of relational and dialogical contemporary art. The need for ABAR as a tool of culturally decolonising, sustainable art education research was identified in multidisciplinary collaboration with the University of Lapland's (UoL) northern and circumpolar network. The methodology was developed collaboratively by a group of art educators and researchers at UoL to support the artist/teacher/researcher with professional skills for seeking solutions to recognised problems and to promote future actions and aspirations in the changing North and Arctic. This article describes how ABAR has been used in school projects, in doctoral theses and finally in a development project with an impact on regional development in the North. These examples show how art education developed through the ABAR method has supported decolonisation, revitalisation and cultural sustainability in schools, communities and businesses.     

Interdisciplinarity in action: the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, 1964–2002

The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at the University of Birmingham in England, launched in 1964, highlights contested issues of knowledge production in relation to the disciplines in modern universities. It constitutes a fascinating example of the social formation of configurations of knowledge that can be subjected to historical analysis such as those conducted for example by Richard Selleck, Geoff Sherington and other recent historians of education. It enacted an explicit ideal of interdisciplinarity in its approach to research, teaching and social practices, unlike for example educational studies which in the same period generally held to a weaker model of multidisciplinarity. Archival documents and interviews with some of those who were participants or witnesses of its development shed light on CCCS's approach to interdisciplinarity in action. This generated significant works such as Unpopular education: schooling and social democracy in England since 1944 and a collegial style of teaching and research, but also led to isolation, political vulnerability and its eventual closure in 2002.