Accountability,transparency, redundancy: Academic identities in an era of ‘excellence’

Higher education institutions (HEIs) in the UK and elsewhere are having a hard time, pushed into the marketplace with the turn to ‘academic capitalism’ and now suffering the effects of the economic downturn. Increasingly, the discourse of ‘excellence’ is being invoked as HEIs are held to account and public funding for research is predicated on the basis of ‘impact’. What effect is this having on the long‐established ideals appealed to in the idea of a university (if such an idea can be said to exist)? This paper adopts an autoethnographic approach in order to examine the ways in which dominant discourses are operationalised in the university through everyday communications and how, in turn, this impacts on the development of academic identities. The aim of this paper then is to examine the often uncomfortable point of insertion between the personal and the institutional in and through which subjectivities and identities are constituted as a means to understand the state we're in.     

Learning How to Learn,Art Education and the ‘Background’

This paper describes the conditions that make learning how to learn in art possible. Rather than privileging risk-taking or the playfulness of primary process thinking, I will use a Wittgensteinian understanding of mind to argue against this approach in favour of one that raises students’ awareness of the cultural and cognitive ‘backgrounds’ (forms of life and language games) against which our individual actions and risks are framed and understood. Instead of building art education on a metaphysical view of the self, this paper will advocate a social constructivist approach to curriculum, pedagogy and assessment to create a cognitive map for ‘the background’ of art. When these three are practised in a mutual way they connect individual minds to the resources or mind of culture which, in turn, makes lifelong learning possible, reclaiming the idea of art-for-life’s sake.     

Looking Beyond ‘Skills’ and ‘Processes’: Literacy as Social and Cultural Practices in Classrooms

This article explores the thinking and research that has led to a view of literacy as social and cultural practices. Literacy is described not as an internal cognitive state or a universal set of skills and processes that individuals must learn, but as social and cultural ways of doing things through the use of text. This view adds to our understanding of literacy by switching the focus to the ways in which individuals, groups, communities and societies put literate practices to work. For teachers, this means thinking about the sorts of literacies they are trying to produce through their programmes. This implies studying classrooms and preschools as social and cultural settings where particular practices count as good work – asking which kinds of texts, ways of talking, reading, writing and behaving are preferred and why.     

Being ‘nuff’ and ‘scudding class’: exploring girls’ and boys’ perceptions of popularity,gender and achievement in Antiguan secondary schools

This paper will report on the findings from classroom observations and focus group discussions conducted on the topic of popularity and fitting in at school with girls and boys from four government secondary schools in Antigua. The findings show that whilst boys did experience difficulties negotiating academic success and acceptable masculinities, the consensus was that popularity was associated with low achievement for both girls and boys. However, there was evidence that some girls were able to work hard and maintain better peer relations than other high achieving students, but that this ‘balancing’ required conformity to hetero‐feminine norms as well as the espousal of rigid views about what girls can and can't do. This suggests that real equality is far from being reached.     

‘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.     

Inclusion and Art Education: ‘Welcome to the Big Room,Everything's Alright’

This article offers an exploration of the art room as part of a broader project to consider the ways in which normative practices in art and design education can include and exclude students. The art classroom is explored here as a ‘disrupted space’ and one that can promote movement between the structures and boundaries that affect our ways of being in, and experiencing, the world. The art room offers a space for colonising otherness, as well as an ‘alternative’ or risky physical space, a refuge, or one with the potential to disrupt the dominant educational landscape.     

Being ‘fun’ at work: emotional labour,class, gender and childcare

This paper reports on data drawn from an Economic and Social Research Council‐funded project investigating the experiences of UK‐based students training on level‐2 and level‐3 childcare courses. We focus on the concept of emotional labour in relation to learning to care for and educate young children and the ways in which the students’ experiences of emotional labour and the expectations placed upon their behaviour and attitudes are shaped by class and gender. We consider the ways in which students are encouraged to manage their own and the children's emotions and we identify a number of ‘feeling rules’ that demarcate the vocational habitus of care work with young children. We conclude by emphasising the importance of specific contexts of employment in order to understand workers’ emotional labour and argue for more recognition of the intense demands of emotional labour in early childhood education and care work.     

AS Level Art: Farewell to the ‘Wow’ Factor?

The new AS level modular examinations for year 12 students in England were introduced as part of the government's Curriculum 2000 reforms designed to bring greater breadth to year 12 and 13 experience. A uniform structure of two modules followed by a synoptic timed test has been imposed on all subjects by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority [QCA]. In AS Level Art the expressive study module requires evidence of a broad engagement with different generic art forms and visual language skills. The Thematic Study requires convergence towards specific outcomes in at least two media and the Timed Test of eight hours duration requires work towards a single theme with a preparatory period of six weeks. The paper arrives in January so the two coursework modules need to be completed in a little more than a term. The four assessment objectives are as follows: 1 To record observations, experiences, ideas, information and insights in visual and other forms, appropriate to intentions. 2 To analyse and evaluate critically sources such as images, objects, artifacts and texts, showing understanding of purposes, meanings and contexts. 3 To develop ideas through sustained investigations and exploration, selecting and using materials, processes and resources, identifying and interpreting relationships and analysing methods and outcomes. 4 To present a personal coherent and informed response, realising intentions and articulating and explaining connnections with the work of others. All four objectives need to be met in each module. Although some subjects have welcomed the change, it seems that fears raised by those concerned with the teaching of art during the consultation process have been born out by the experience of the last year. Previously art teachers were free to address skills and concepts in their own way and with regard to the different aptitudes, interests and learning styles of their students. The final submission, including the exam project, was marked as a whole relying on the professional experience of the teacher and moderators to balance the requirements of the syllabus with the transcendent, the ‘wow factor’. This paper questions the value of a tiered course that is at once superficial in its expectations, draconian in content, unrealistic in its timescale and discourages work of substance.     

The ‘Dream Scene’: Exploring Participatory Socially Engaged Art Practices through Arts‐Based Educational Research

In this article, I explore ‘the dream scene’, a mode of installation art described by art critic and art historian Claire Bishop to demonstrate how artistic practice can provoke participation and social engagement. I will focus on a concept entitled ‘the crypt’ that emerged in my doctoral research, and one that I continued to explore in a novel way in a collaborative event at Tate Exchange, in Liverpool, UK in March 2018. It is my intention that ‘the crypt’ can provide an example of what ‘a dream scene’ can look like and, more importantly, what a dream scene can do. Finally, I will attend to some of the implications that this type of engagement has for arts‐based educational research.     

‘Before I realised they were all women… I expected it to be more about materials’: Art,Gender and Tacit Subjectivity

This article discusses a critical discourse analysis research activity undertaken with a group of undergraduate primary trainees with an art specialism. The research activity involved the use of two contrasting texts discussing the work of Karla Black, Becky Beasley and Claire Barclay. The article explores how the positioning of the two texts affected the student teachers’ ability to engage effectively with ‘women's art’ on a personal and critical level, revealing some highly subjective views and raising questions around intertextuality; particularly how an individual's understanding of contexts, meanings and histories can inform collective interpretation and highlight existing subjectivity. The article subsequently identifies that although students were keen to talk about careful selection of texts, the benefits of using multiple sources and the risks of intertextual and ‘subliminal’ contamination, they were unable to reflect critically upon their own gendered reading of the texts. It concludes that this may well be a signifier of the problem – that the student teachers did not really see a problem at all.     

Women,Academia and Identity: Constructions of Equal Opportunities in the ‘New Managerialism’– A Case of ‘Lipstick on the Gorilla’?

This paper has two distinct foci. The first is an introductory focus on the current position and problems of academic women working in UK universities (despite the valorization of Equal Opportunities (EO), and within the context and constraints of the 'New Managerialism'). The second and main focus is on the personal impact of university work on the lives of academic women, towards exploring and uncovering how higher education's institutional structures and processes impact upon academic women's identity structures and processes. Idiographic analyses of a small number of case studies suggest that despite considerable recent gains, some academic women's identities are compromised, challenged and made 'vulnerable' through feelings of being undervalued, overburdened and often the subjects of unequal treatment – more than 30 years after the Equal Pay Act and almost 30 years after the Sex Discrimination Act. The paper's conclusions therefore warn that continued valorization of EO policy without its assimilation into the underlying core institutional culture will sanction the valediction of any tangible or effective progress in HE's ability to produce more robust academic identities and more satisfying daily working lives for academic women. Insofar as such assimilation is not achieved, the policy, practice and rhetoric of equal opportunities and equal treatment in UK higher education will remain little more than 'lipstick on the gorilla'.     

‘That’s just the way I am’: metacognition,personal intelligence and reading

Metacognition is thinking about thinking and there is fairly robust evidence that an awareness of one’s own understanding, especially in reading, is strongly linked with success. Readers who are alert to the problems in their understanding of what they read and can adopt a range of strategies to ‘fix’ these problems tend to be better readers. Kathy Hall and Julia Myers here explore how such awareness works in one child’s view of herself as a reader and suggest that such insights need to form part of a useful assessment of the child’s reading.     

‘I'd rather be seen as a practitioner,come in to teach my subject’: Identity Work in Part‐Time Art and Design Tutors

This article explores issues of identity as part‐time tutors engage in teaching in further and higher education. It is based on a phenomenographic research approach that examines variation in experience. Based on interviews with 16 creative practitioners who also teach, it draws on the narratives of identity resulting from the interview process. The five possible ways that the relationship between practice and teaching can be experienced can also be associated with five different experiences of identity. The research also draws on case studies more aligned with one category of experience than another, enabling aspects of identity work to be related to the worlds of practice and teaching and to individual histories of participation in these worlds. Factors that help to contribute to particular forms of identity are therefore discussed, as well as the impact that tutor identity can have on the students' learning experience.     

‘I just find it boring’: Findings from an affective adolescent reading intervention

Research suggests that reading engagement and motivation are strong predictors of reading performance. Reading motivation may decline as students approach adolescence, resulting in less time spent with text. To date, there has been no research on how practitioners might directly support students to address affective factors in reading. In this exploratory case study, three disengaged, Year 8 readers received five sessions of an affective intervention aimed at helping them explore and challenge their own ambivalence towards reading. Quantitative and qualitative data from pre‐, post‐ and three‐month follow‐up indicated a range of benefits in relation to reading engagement and motivation, including improved self‐efficacy, increased participation and the usefulness of talking about affective factors in reading. Findings are further examined and implications for practitioners are discussed.     

Colluding in the ‘Torture’ of Poetry: Shared Beliefs and Assessment

Assessment is most often held responsible for teachers' and students' mechanical approach to poetry in class. This article shows how examination pressure leads a group of poetry teachers and A Level English students at a post‐16 college in Malta to perpetuate an approach to poetry that is characterised by an emphasis on finding hidden meaning. However, it is also argued that to blame only assessment for this approach is to run the risk of ignoring the shared beliefs that teachers and students have about poetry.     

‘Am I safe here and do you like me?’ Understanding complex trauma and attachment disruption in the classroom

Elementary and special education teachers and school counsellors currently provide support to children presenting learning disabilities and behavioural problems symptomatic of the more hidden diagnosis of complex trauma resulting from abuse or severe attachment disruption. Specific disorders such as attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD) may be diagnosed in such children, but not the aetiology of complex trauma, resulting in missing information in the development of remedial and behavioural interventions. The evolving field of trauma counselling provides important information to special education teachers and school counsellors who work with children who have experienced trauma. In this review article authors Linda O'Neill of the University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC), Francis Guenette who is a doctoral student at the University of Victoria and Andrew Kitchenham of the University of Northern British Columbia summarise attachment, neurobiological, and complex trauma research that can be used in school settings to understand better the needs of these children. They conclude by suggesting that teachers and school counsellors would benefit from training on the consequences of childhood trauma and attachment disruption to develop interventions that will be effective and to identify what types of behaviours children can control and those they cannot.