Art Education in Initial Teacher Education: A Negotiated Education

In this article we aim to highlight the issues we have encountered in teaching art curriculum courses on the primary BAEd degree programme. The main issues addressed are student self-confidence and the conditions which form barriers to active engagement in art activities. These we have addressed in the context of the wide changes taking place since the Education Reform Act of 1988. Our concern is that students develop the confidence to implement change in accord with their own convictions. We describe how we support them in their developing autonomy through the various strategies we have developed including the recognition and transfer of prior knowledge and reflection on the process of their own learning.     

Pedagogical Pleasures: Augustine in the Feminist Classroom

Many feminist philosophers of education have argued that the teacher's pleasure plays an important role in the classroom. However, accessing such pleasure is often easier said than done. Given our current academic climate, how might teachers develop pedagogical practices that cultivate these delights? This article investigates the (rather surprising) response to this question offered in Augustine's De catechizandis rudibus. Despite his reputation as a pleasure‐hater, Augustine spends the majority of his text defending the delights of teaching. In particular, Augustine argues that if teachers wish to find pleasure in teaching, they would do well to study the pleasures of mothers. To this end, I analyse the nature of Augustine's maternal appeal. What insight does Augustine find in the experiences of mothers? In what way does he hope his colleagues will allow these experiences to shape their pedagogies? I conclude by exploring the benefits and the risks of Augustine's claim for those who teach in the contemporary feminist classroom. Augustine's defence of pedagogical pleasure suggests that he shares a common interest with feminist philosophers. But, the social/political limits of his account highlight the value of submitting such pleasures to the terms of feminist critique.     

'A Demented Form of the Familiar': Postmodernism and Educational Research

What can postmodernism do for, or to, educational research? The article discusses its potential for resisting closure and simplification. Developing a ‘preposterous’, anachronistic postmodern method that is caught up with surrealism and the baroque, the article plays with trompel'oeil paintings and outmoded popular entertainments such as magic lanterns, peep shows and clockwork automata as figures for critique and analysis. It argues for defamiliarisation, fascination, recalcitrance and frivolity as methodic practices for research in the compromised conditions of postmodernity, and as forms of ethical resistance to the risk‐averse literalism that pervades contemporary education policy.