Art and Design Blogs: a Socially‐Wise Approach to Creativity

Many images of the ‘artist’ or ‘designer’ pervade the media and popular consciousness. Contemporary images of the artist and creativity that focus solely on the individual offer a very narrow depiction of the varying ways creativity occurs for artists and designers. These images do not capture the variety of creative processes and myriad ways artists and designers work. Young creatives in particular are choosing to work with a social approach to creativity. An example of this approach is the world of blogging, a form of social media where young creatives have a very active voice. This article explores how creative bloggers, that is, artists, designers and makers who blog about their practice, use a social approach to foster creativity with a sense of community, environmental and ethical awareness, a value framework that is in opposition to the market‐driven notion of liberal individualism. Is there a way to include participation in the broader art and design blogging world as part of art and design education? What can we learn from such a social approach to learning in higher education art and design programmes? This article explores these questions and shares findings of an ethnographic approach to an analysis of art and design blogs. In doing so it argues for a socially‐wise approach to creativity in art and design education as a means of promoting values other than those usually connected to the market.     

Art and Creativity in the Global Economies of Education

Creativity: what might this mean for art and art educators in the creative economies of globalisation? The task of this discussion is to look at the state of creativity and its role in education, in particular art education, and to seek some understanding of the register of creativity, how it is shaped, and how legitimated in the globalised world dominated by input‐output, means‐end, economically driven thinking, expectations and demands. With the help of Heidegger some crucial questions are raised, such as: How can art maintain its creative ontological and epistemological potential in the creative economies of globalisation? Is it possible for art and the creative arts to act as a process of ‘revealing’ and ‘becoming’ and ‘throwing light’ on the world while working within the market economies of innovation and entrepreneurship where creativity has become a generalised discourse? What matters in this discussion is to find a way to argue for the sustainability of art education as a creative mode of enquiry through which self and the world may be better understood, identity might be realised as difference and being‐in‐time might be possible.     

Seize the opportunity to think differently! A Deleuzian approach to unleashing becomings in education

If the purpose of philosophy is creating concepts that make it possible to think differently, education surely needs philosophical assistance. Sketching a Deleuzian approach to education, this article explores a practice of thinking about and performing ‘school,’ ‘teacher,’ and ‘learning’ differently. A complex social situation such as a school needs routines and clear role expectations, to ensure efficient action. How do we resist, nonetheless, that concepts aimed at thinking education just redouble an already existing practice by submitting to explain everyday and policy-induced practice. Suggesting an understanding of theory and the construction of concepts as a much wider endeavor, the article introduces concepts such as strata, Bodies without Organs, order machines, and desire. With reference to education, it hints at a creative endeavor to explore potential lines of flight, and exploit cracks and inconsistencies in current school regimes, when they no longer appear appropriate. In this spirit, the ‘competence nomad’ is proposed as a conceptual persona that may help thought to connect and plug into new becomings, by means of alternative tactics in current learning environments that are already heavily traversed by existing schooling order machines.     

美术教育中幼儿创造力的培养

幼儿美术创造力是幼儿感受美、创造美的能力,是基于兴趣的更高层次创造性思维的审美体现,兴趣和思维进展水平是对美术教育中幼儿创造力发展的评判标准。因此,培养幼儿美术创造力的基本途径应当包括依据幼儿年龄和个性特点针对性的采用合理的教学方法和手段,利用不同绘画形式激发幼儿创造性思维以及对幼儿进行情感教育来激发他们的创造灵感等教育方法。     

‘Being’ a critical multicultural pedagogue in the art education classroom

Art educators continuously struggle to understand what multiculturalism ‘looks like’ in the art classroom. This has resulted in multicultural art education becoming superficial, in which art teachers guide students through art projects like creating African masks, Native American dream catchers, Aboriginal totems, and sand paintings, all without communicating the context of the art. This type of multiculturalism essentializes cultures, and builds Western, myopic narratives about groups of people, specifically about their ‘Art’. Critical multiculturalism is a power-focused upgrade of multiculturalism that calls for a critique of power and demands recognition that racism and other discriminations are enmeshed in the fabric of our social order. Teaching through a critical multiculturalism framework helps teachers dismantle Western, normalized narratives and produce counter-hegemonic curriculum that contextualizes culture and reveals its fluidity. In this article, the author shares a teacher action research study in which she describes what critical multiculturalism looks like in her art education classroom. The study focuses on ‘being’ a critically multicultural educator versus ‘doing’ critical multiculturalism. Such a position counters the idea that critical multiculturalism is a thing to complete, but instead is an ongoing process that rests on specific ways of thinking and considering the classroom, curriculum, and students.     

美术教育有利于创新人才的培养

创新是社会的发展和进步的源泉。而创新能力来自于好奇心、想象力和批判性思维能力。这三种基本要素,都与美术教育有着息息相关的关系。因此,在大学生中推广美术教育有利于创新人才的培养。     

试论电脑美术在学前教师教育专业美术教学中的定位

随着现代文明的发展,电脑美术迅速普及到了社会的各个层面,渗透到美术教育领域。在学前教师教育专业,电脑美术教学应与专业特性结合,使它成为培养学生创造性思维与创业素质的载体,培养出更适合新时代需要的幼教人才。     

试论在创造思维的培养过程中美术教育所起的作用

我国的德、智、体、美、劳全面发展的教育方针，对创造思维的培养提出了更高的要求．美育作为美术教育的重要部分，有内容丰富、手段多样、普及性强等特点。本主要从破除“心理屏蔽”，克服旧习惯思维、掌握辩证思维、建立良好的创造氛围这四个方面，谈在创造思维的培养过程中美术教育所起的作用，为中小学教育工作进行这方面的理论和实践研究做引玉之砖。     

5x5x5=Creativity: Art as a Transformative Practice

The purpose of this article is to share ideas from 5x5x5=creativity, a research initiative established in Bath (UK) in 2000, with the aim of developing and embedding a creative and reflective pedagogy in schools and early years settings. 5x5x5=creativity research, in partnership with schools, educators, artists, creative professionals, mentors and cultural centres, aims to raise the aspirations and improve the life chances of children and young people as creative learners. In our research we want to develop creative reflective practice and influence systemic educational change. This research defends the special role of the arts in developing a more flexible concept of education through curiosity and creativity, together with the capacity for the arts for allows ‘possibility thinking’ through a creative and critical pedagogy. In this article we analyse the impact of the artists’ involvement on the development of a creative, reflective pedagogy in schools. As both artists and educators we believe it is necessary to challenge current orthodoxies and establish creative and critical thinking at the heart of learning for both children and adults.     

The 6Rs: Inclusive Creative Methodology for Design Research

In fashion design, pedagogy balancing a strong technical foundation with a more disruptive attitude during the ideation and development procedures provides the potential for diverse, emergent, aesthetically and critically poignant outputs. The ultimate goal in this is to offer a learning environment that is inclusive and accesses dormant design curiosity, also, as a teacher, to devise methods that will lead to discovering a personal and distinct aesthetic vocabulary. ‘Ratio’, ‘resize’, ‘repeat’, ‘reduce’, ‘remix’ and ‘rearrange’ are the 6Rs that can challenge the creative design process and reprogramme the design brain into unearthing radical new forms, concepts and aesthetics. This article will address the established literature on the ways of nurturing creative thinking as it supports the methodology of serious play directed by the 6R terms to exercise ideation generation in fashion education. This discussion will be evidenced with a case study to show that the 6Rs can successfully introduce and/or expand creative thinking in fashion design processes. The aim of this is to provide students with tools, habits and tasks that empower a creative mindset when approaching the early conceptual and compositional stages of garment development, while also addressing the tutor’s role in establishing and exemplifying a creative ethos that is integral to initiating these methods and pedagogy. Most importantly, this approach is fundamentally driven by the need to invest in a more diverse student body to potentially reach unnoticed and less privileged fashion talent.     

‘The falcon cannot hear the falconer …’. The Pedagogical Turn and the Negative Space of Irish Art Education

Current education policy discourse in Ireland, as elsewhere, is replete with reference to innovation, creativity and enterprise. Meanwhile, the ‘pedagogical turn’ is a dominant motif in current discourse in art practice, curating and critique, in Ireland and internationally. This article firstly considers some of the implications of the ‘turn’ as a concept in art and education. In that context, it goes on to address changing patterns of curriculum design, development and reform in Ireland. Next, it describes the evolution of Irish education policy over the past decade in the context of global experiences. The particular experience of art education in Ireland is then considered in the light of the curriculum culture and the wider policy discourses already identified. Finally, some implications of the Irish experience are addressed, in terms of art practice at the edges of art education, and art education at the edges of education practice.     

How do primary pre‐service teachers in a regional Australian university plan for teaching,learning and acting in environmentally responsible ways?

Integrated unit plans with an environmental focus can provide opportunities for school students to develop critical thinking skills, and to act in responsible ways – that is, to develop ‘action competence’. In this study, environmentally focused integrated unit plans, developed and implemented by final year pre‐service teachers at an Australian regional university, were analysed to determine the extent to which they contained concepts that promoted action competence. Results here suggest that more work could be done in the area of pre‐service education to prepare teachers for teaching, learning and acting responsibly in relation to complex environmental issues. In particular, there could be more emphasis on developing integrated unit plans that empower school students and promote critical thinking, democratic processes and action‐oriented knowledge.     

Life skills for ‘real life’: How critical thinking is contextualised across vocational programmes

Background: This article presents an analysis of how critical thinking is contextualised in everyday teaching in three vocational education and training (VET) programmes: Vehicle and transport, Restaurant and management, and Health and social care.

Purpose: The main question addressed is: What knowledge discourses permeate different VET-contexts, and hence what kinds of opportunities for critical thinking do they offer students?

Method: The qualitative analysis draws on data from a four-year ethnographic project exploring learning processes that can be characterised as civic education in Swedish vocational education. The analysis presented here used data collected during 85 days of observations of teaching in six VET classes, interviews with 81 students and 10 teachers, and collected teaching material. To explore why some contextualisations provided more opportunities and encouragement for critical thinking than others, we applied Bernsteinian concepts of ‘horizontal and vertical knowledge discourses’ and ‘discursive gaps’.

Findings and conclusions: Overall, teaching that was observed focused primarily on ‘doing’. However, in all three programmes, the analysis identified that there were also situations that touched upon critical thinking. Three major themes were identified: critical thinking related to ‘Personal experiences’, ‘The other(s)’ and ‘Wider perspectives’. It appeared that the frequency and nature of such situations varied with the knowledge discourses permeating the programme. Furthermore, we discuss the manifestations of critical thinking in relation to the wider context of what Bernstein refers to as pedagogic rights; individual enhancement, social inclusion and development of the competence and confidence to participate in political processes.     

Art Education and the Moral Injunction to be Oneself

A primary function of schooling is to impart moral discipline, and art education distills this role to its core imperative of mandated pleasure, summarised by Jacques Lacan as the ‘will to enjoy’. This manifests in the insistence that, despite producing similar outcomes, students come to recognise themselves as unique and creative. In the twentieth century, art education in the USA has developed methods for extracting supposedly intimate personal expressions from young people, albeit without demanding the technical versatility, historical knowledge and critical reflection required of mature artists – the exception to this, despite its many flaws, being so‐called Discipline‐Based Art Education, or DBAE. In this article, I begin with reflections on the untapped potential of DBAE to relate to contemporary art practices. My ideas on moral instruction are expanded upon in the second section, when I undertake a ‘backwards’ history of British and American art education, in which the ideal of art class as a site of intrinsic and authentic meaning‐making is challenged by the functional requirements of education. My last section takes up a critique of critical pedagogy, in which I use the example of a project my high school students did about Michael Jackson to challenge ways in which trauma and pleasure are seen by critical pedagogues as features of experience that conflict fatally with the educational ends of individualist autonomy.     

Developing Design through a Creative Problem‐Solving Process: A Group Community Art Project

For the past few years, creativity has gradually become an important element in the national cultivation of talent in Taiwan. Although traditionally art education is closely linked with creativity, the academic research on general art education is very insufficient. Therefore, the goal of this research is to investigate how creativity could be cultivated in curriculum planning for general art education at technology universities as well as what students’ learning process was when they participated in a course's creative activity. The research applied the theory and steps of creative problem‐solving (CPS) on a general art course to design a group practical activity combining with the local community. This involved converting the steps of creative problem‐solving into different stages of group design activities with the goal of constructing a design process equivalent to the process of problem‐solving. The main research results revealed that students could experience the problem‐solving process through group design activities and develop their divergent and convergent thinking at the same time. Moreover, the cooperative learning model is the most appropriate teaching strategy for students from non‐art‐related departments when cultivating their creativity.     

A Decline in Drawing Ability?

This research surveys changing attitudes to drawing pedagogy, in the context of digitisation, moves toward student‐centred learning in art & design higher education, and anecdotal reports of declining competence. Based on student, teacher and examiner’s experiences, it has been possible to gain insights into how drawing instruction has changed over the past generation. This article examines the attitudes, values and concerns of students and educators regarding drawing instruction. The study reveals that, in the UK, drawing skills are considered to be gradually declining, while traditional notions of skill are called into question. Drawing as a means of visual recording, representation and communication remains valued, although no longer essential as it once was; drawing to augment thought process is increasingly recognised as an integral skill which enables innovation. The latter is rarely ‘taught’ but relies on core competencies that many lecturers fear are being eroded. Increasing value is placed on drawing ‘as process’, as provision is moving towards individualised instruction requiring students to work independently. While new technologies are a factor, this article re‐frames the issue as an imbalance between creative outcomes and creative process, with a disparity between school and university levels. This article calls for a renewed emphasis on ‘drawing as process’ as preparation for university, and for further consideration of the core competencies underpinning the use of drawing as a tool of thought, and how these might be standardised.     

Sensors,programming and devices in Art Education sessions. One case in the context of primary education / Sensores,programación y dispositivos en sesiones de Educación Artística. Un caso en el contexto de Educación Primaria

The pedagogical integration of computing is interesting in educational contexts based on the contributions of Seymour Papert and Wing’s concept of computational thinking. Integrating arts in education can lead to the design of activities using Scratch combined with devices. The main goal is to evaluate the integration of computational thinking in art education making use of technological resources, sensor cards and minicomputers, with a student-centred pedagogical approach. This research assesses the results of a control group of 35 students and an experimental group of 109 students in four different schools, using Mann-Whitney’s U-test for independent samples assessing ‘Active Learning’, ‘computational concepts’ and ‘fun’ scales. Applying data triangulation, and consistent with design-based research, the results of interviews and focus groups reinforced the results obtained in the aforementioned test, providing validity to the study. There are advantages regarding student interest, motivation and commitment related to programming technologies in art and education, particularly pedagogical sessions with music. Handling devices, sensors and Raspberry Pi provides participating students with a factor of commitment and enthusiasm, with significant improvements. Working with coding and devices brings an additional advantage in the development of computational thinking and digital competence. The results show an increase in creativity and artistic competence related to the ability to create music from the activities and technological resources described in the technological intervention.     

利用 改造 创新——从秧歌看延安文艺对民间文艺的创造性转化

"推陈出新"是毛泽东为延安平剧研究院的题词,"中国传统的创造性转化"是美籍华裔学者林毓生提出的概念,二者的精神实质都是强调"批判地继承"与"创造性发展"相结合。延安艺术家们就是在"推陈出新"原则指导下,从利用民间艺术、改造民间艺术到创制出具体鲜明民族特色的新艺术形态,最终实现了对民间艺术资源的"创造性转化"。其中,以对秧歌的利用、改造、创新最具代表性。     

Assessing highly‐creative ability1

This paper presents a psychological perspective of the educational dilemma of assessing highly (high‐level) creative ability (with some connections to contemporary philosophical debate). Assessment of highly‐creative ability is a topic of longstanding debate involving questions of what constitutes creativity; whether the creative mental process is essentially intuitive or essentially rational; whether creative ability could or should be reduced to quantifiable parameters; and whether the most important aspects of creative achievement reside in the initial thinking (invention of ideas) or in the subsequent process of development of the idea (making a work of art, design, etc) or in the end product (the work of art or design itself). The debate is fueled by various philosophical, psychological and educational perspectives, all of which are continuously evolving. As a consequence, learning objectives and assessment criteria are ambiguous and confound the enhancement of creative ability that is the primary purpose of higher education. This paper traces the research and development path that led to an innovative ‘authenticative assessment’ approach to assessing highly‐creative ability that offers a promising solution.     

论艺术设计教育中创造性思维的培养

创造性思维是艺术设计中处于核心地位的思维能力,它以发散性思维为主要特征,讲究科学理性和艺术感性的融合,并强调灵感和直觉的运用。在艺术设计教育中培养学生的创造性思维能力,要让学生突破思维定势,学会发散思维;了解创造性思维的过程,学会捕捉灵感,形成创意;要改进评价机制,营造富有竞争力的艺术设计教学氛围来激励和启发学生的创造能力。