discourse and practice in the art curriculum and the production of the pupil as a subject

Discourse and Practice in the Art Curriculum and the Production of the

Pupil as a Subject DENNIS ATKINSON

Abstract The development of enquiry into language this century has implications for

pedagogy. This development concerns the transition from viewing language as a transparent medium, identifying an external objective reality, to a view in which

language constitutes reality as we understand it. The paper begins by outlining some contemporary theoretical developments concerning the ‘productive’ or material

nature of discourse. The paper shows how particular curriculum practices in art can be viewed as discursive sites which perpetuate particular discourses in which the

pupil as art practitioner is produced. By focusing upon drawing practices the paper shows that the notion of ‘ability’ does not refer to some absolute skill possessed by

pupils, but to particular ideological interpretations through which ability is conferred. However, such interpretations do provide us with stable forms which

allow us to act as if they were absolute. Such interpretational states reveal the circular structure of interpretational practices such as evaluation and assessment. The paper shows how the reflexive nature of hermeneutic analysis can be helpful in providing a suitable space for reflection

when such interpretational states break down during the practice of teaching art. By analysing a series of pupil’s drawings the paper discusses how our interpretational discourses identify the pupil’s ability and constitute the pupil as a subject in the art curriculum. The paper forms part of a larger body of work in which the author is exploring how different practices in the art curriculum constitute discursive fields

within which pupils as subjects are produced.

Introduction spondence with things in the world, have been challenged by the idea that language, as a sign The evolution in our understanding of language system, produces the world as we understand (let me describe this, rather sketchily, by calling it. Coward and Ellis suggest for example that: it an evolution from transparency to productive

surface), has had significant implications for our Because all thepractices that make up a social understanding of the human subject. Recent totality take place in language, it becomes pos- theoretical developments [I] in the social sci- ible to consider language as the place in which enceS concerned how we comprehend the Social individual k constructed [2]. reality and the human subject seem to have In such recent theory therefore the relationship important implications for pedagogy. Such between the human subject and the world is developments show that earlier conceptions of problematised. Individuals are no longer language viewed as possessing a direct corre- viewed as unitary, independent subjects who

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260 DENNIS ATKINSON Discourse and Practice in the Art Curriculum

use a neutral medium of signs (language or image) to reveal truths about the world, but they are themselves produced by and are pro- ducers of signs. For example, Lacan [19361 pro- posed that an individual’s understanding is constituted in and through language, the individual views him/herself and other worldly phenomena through the terms and constructs of language. Thus the Lacanian subject is constituted through an act of misrecognition whereby the subject recognises herself in terms of something other (signs) than herself. Transferred into the context of intersubjective communication, this suggests the idea that our understanding of how other individuals understand or act is constituted by a similar act of ‘misrecognition’, in that we do not gain direct access to such phenomena but we construct such phenomena mainly through the symbolic order of language. Teach- ers often need to understand their pupil’s ways of acting and understanding. The implications for teaching of such investigations into the relationship between language and the world, suggests that a teacher’s understanding is a construction of language rather than a revelation through language.

Discourse and the subject In such recent theory the term ‘discourse’ is a central notion. It is a term which concerns the use of language by particular individuals, such as teachers and their pupils, acting within particular historical and social contexts, to serve particular purposes and create particular effects. The use of discourse is therefore informed by particular interests or assumptions and may invoke particular ideological or hegemonic forces. Foucault 119721 states that discourses do not simply refer to things in the world: discourses are, ‘practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak’ [41. Following Foucault, Ball r19901 quotes, ‘Discourses are not about objects; they do not identlfy objects, they constitute them and in the practice of doing so conceal their own invention’ [51. An example of such a ‘discursive object’ is the term ‘ability’ as used in schools when referring, for instance, to the notion. of drawing ability. Here a Foucauld-

ian interpretation of what constitutes ability, for a teacher or researcher, is not some natural state but the valuing of the production of particular drawing forms (e.g. perspectival projection) within a cultural tradition above other, less valued kinds of production. The use of the term ‘drawing ability’ tends to produce a closure whereby certain drawing forms occupy a kind of preference over others. Thus the notion of drawing ability is a production of a particular ideological discourse which, in relation to children’s drawing practice, places value on the reproduction of a particular set of drawing skills and techniques. Though drawing is a non- linguistic practice 161, teaching and evaluating drawings are discursive practices and in such discourses particular attitudes, for example towards representation, will be promoted. Drawings will be recognised through discourses which construct them in the terms of the discourse. Barthes El9691 and Harrison [19911, encourage a consideration of the connection between a drawing and the language we must inevitably use to ‘read’ it, (or perhaps ‘write’ it), as teachers must when evaluating and assessing drawings produced by their pupils. In the discourses which are often used to discuss drawings, words such as, ‘proportion’, ‘structure’, ‘balance’ and ‘expression’, are used and suggest that certain qualities exist in the drawing. But Harrison asks us to consider:

what if these values were rather the selj$etpetu- ating obsessions of the regarding eye than the immanent properties of the objects (drawings) under consideration? [71.

If discourses produce our understanding of phenomena they must also constrain our understanding. For example, Walkerdine [19841 describes how, in the discourse of developmental psychology, ‘the child’ is produced as a subject [81. Here the discourse produces a particular reading of child development and the key signifiers of the discourse, for example ‘stages of development’, create the parameters, the mind- set, within which we come to understand the developing child. According to Walkerdine such terms do not reveal truths about child development, even though we think they do,

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but provide particular readings of this phenom- enon which, in this case emerge from the historical context of Piaget’s specific interest, following the enlightenment tradition, in the development of reason (stages toward scientific rationality) as the desired goal for mankind [91.

Such enquiry into discourse suggests that the discourse creates the objects of which it speaks. Key signifiers (words and concepts) form our understanding which is constructed through the specific terms of the discourse. In relation to some discourses concerning child development, key signifiers such as ‘the child’ or ‘stages of development’ can involve the use of abstracted descriptions which in turn promote both a totalising and a normalising interpretation of children’s behaviour. The essential idea here is that once a particular discourse becomes naturalised, its use establishes a normalising vision, in the above case, of child development.

Contemporary hermeneutic theory [lo1 has attempted to consider the historical, social and cultural conditions which constitute the limits within which the human subject (teacher or pupil) constructs an interpretation. Thus interpretation is not viewed as an objective process in which the truth about phenomena, such as a pupil’s drawing ability, is revealed through the neutral and transparent medium of language, but as a circular process whereby the terms and conditions which constitute the subject’s (teacher’s) horizon of interpretation produce and constrain the interpretation. This horizon in hermeneutic enquiry is often called the hermeneutic circle.

New perspectives created by contemporary theoretical investigations into language upon the way human subjects are comprehended has important implications for reflecting upon the nature of teaching and its constituent practices. Such perspectives can help us to deconstruct or question that which is often assumed to be ‘natural’, such as ‘ability’, and thereby allow us to expose productive historical and social factors. My interest in this paper is to consider the implications of such theoretical developments for the practice of teaching art in schools, parti- cularly the practice of drawing. Teaching art includes initiating children into particular art

practices and assessing the processes and outcomes of such practice. My concern is to consider such activities as discursive sites within which the child as a subject is produced. Such discourses promote particular readings of pupil’s art practices and these readings are inscribed by particular understandings of, for example, representation and skill. Thus within such discursive sites a child’s drawing ability can be viewed as the ideological product of a particular discourse which places value upon particular practices and forms of representation and their respective techniques. The term ‘drawing ability’ does not relate to some natural state which the teacher identifies, though it can feel as though it does!

Research as a discursive practice Interpretations from research into the development of children’s drawing practices illustrate how contrasting research discourses constitute a different understanding of the developing child and the idea of ability. The interpretation of young children’s early drawing forms through the use of the term ‘scribble’ has tra- ditionally suggested that these drawings possess no representational significance for the child; that they are random and disordered. In the discourse of developmental psychology [lll children’s drawing practices are described as mani- festing developing levels of cognitive and perceptual awareness driven by innate capacities which evolve as the child’s experience grows. The outcome of drawing practice is viewed as a direct expression of developing innate capacities.

Does the term ‘scribble’ reflect actual properties of the drawing form and hence the state of the child’s ability to draw, or does it reflect the interpreter’s state of understanding, i.e., in this case, is the term ‘scribble’ a shortening for ‘that which we do not understand?’ Do we as interpreters find it difficult to find anything of representational significance in such drawings, and thus rather than identifying some capacity of the child, the term ‘scribble’ reflects the circularity of the interpreter’s horizons of understanding.

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I remember being shown a typical scribble drawing consisting of a large and complex circular form produced by a repeated rotational drawing action. It looked rather like a ball of wool! It had been produced by a child aged three years in a nursery class. I found difficulty in making sense of the drawing form apart from reading it as a configuration resulting from a vigorous circular action. Then I was told that the drawing was the child’s direct response to his playmates who were riding around the room on their toys. The drawing was accompanied by the exclamation, ‘they’re going round and round. This illustration highlights the difference between the teacher’s interpretational stance towards children’s drawing practices and the interpretational context of the child’s drawing practice.

A more helpful interpretation of young children’s drawing practices, one which has significance for the teaching context in particular, is to recognise that in their early drawing practices children are able to produce and work with a range of marks, which have been described as horizontal arcs, vertical arcs, rotations, spirals and radials 1121. In drawing practices children orchestrate such marks so that these become what might be viewed as a drawing syntax, forming configurations which, for the child, can possess representational significance. The drawing practice could be said to consist of what the child is attempting to explore or encode and how her use of marks enable this to happen. The practice of mark- making itself, of responding to what is unfolding on the drawing surface, of working with the marks the child can produce, presents the child, with possibilities for representational strategies. In other words, the child’s drawing practice will be made possible but also constrained, not only by the child’s local interest within the context of practice, but also by her mark-making vocabulary. The drawing practice is constituted through its own symbolic order which possesses a logic and coherence for the child. If I find these last sentences difficult, it is because in claiming that drawing practice is constrained as well as made possible by these ‘interest’, ‘contextual’ and ‘graphic’ factors, I am

trying to avoid notions of ability or capability which introduce hierarchical notions of skill, or hierarchical attitudes towards representation in the practice of drawing.

Such interpretations of children’s drawing practices, even though they incorporate very contrasting interpretations of development or, indeed, of representation, tend to promote a belief in me that they are discovering, or mov- ing nearer to discovering essential truths. How- ever, if research into the constitutive properties of language and discourse is taken on board, then the idea that the research text is revealing the truth about phenomena that lie beyond it, is challenged. The research text is not viewed as discovering origins, essential meanings, or an accurate identification of that which it describes, but, as Usher and Edwards [19941 suggest when discussing Derrida’s work on the relation between research texts and reality: ‘The “truth” of research is an outcome of textual strategies rather than the extent to which the text faithfully represents reality’ 1131. Thus understanding, even that which emerges from empiri- cal observations, is a textual construction, and inevitably implies an immersion in, for instance an epistemological tradition; (a theory about knowledge, a text, and its relationship to the world). This means that the ways in which we understand the world are already inscribed by a pretext of presuppositions and assumptions. As Usher and Edwards argue, it is in the research text, as a representational practice, that the separation of the one who researches from that which is researched is constructed, leading to what is called ‘objective’ research. Thus the text appears to depict reality as it is. The text implies a correspondence between itself and the reality beyond it, to which it refers. We can check the truth of the text by consulting the reality which it is about. But in doing this we would not end up with a more accurate or truthful representation of reality, but as Derrida [141 argues, with another text.

Usher and Edwards [151 proceed to argue that the notion of the ‘reflexivity’ of research practice is important to consider. Reflexivity here means that the researcher can only come to know about that into which he or she enquires

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through the researcher’s assimilated ways of understanding - such understandings influence what is known. By attempting a disciplined interpretation of our textual construction of what we research, we can become aware of assumptions and presuppositions which inform our forms of understanding and their relationship to the world. Such activity is not in pursuit of essential truths, it recognises the productive nature of research which in turn can offer more productive ways of acting. Here the use of the notion ‘reflexivity’ illustrates the hermeneutic structure of research or enquiry and recognises the inevitable circularity of states of action and interpretation. In the teaching context where teachers need to initiate curriculum practices and interpret children’s activities and processes of understanding, a key difficulty concerns how to be alert to those disturbances which can pre- cipitate such reflexive states which allow us to foreground and expose, for instance, our assumptions (text) about representation. Such assumptions may ‘exclude’ or find strange some pupil’s drawings whilst accepting others, thus our informing ‘text’ of representation conceals a hidden process of power.

Cu rri cu I u m practices My belief that curriculum practices in the teaching of art constitute a network of discursive sites in which the child as art practitioner is produced, raises ideological issues concerning what practices are deemed to be important by the teacher, how they are initiated and how the child’s art practice and product is interpreted (evaluated and assessed) by the teacher. It also raises important considerations about the child’s agenda as she enters into such art practices. There are different interpretational (hermeneutic) structures operating here, for the teacher and for the child, each within their respective temporalities. The teacher will be interpreting the pupil’s art practice through a particular discourse so that she is ‘writing’ the child’s practice and outcome; the pupil’s work is a text which is interpreted through the teacher’s established discursive frameworks. The child, on the other hand, will be confirming his

or her art practice through the emerging structures and their related meanings which are particular and local to the developing art practice.

In the context of teaching art the difficulty is that the teacher’s interpretational discourse can exert a hegemonic effect over the pupil’s art practice, so that the child’s work is ‘written’ and produced within the interpretational horizons of the teacher’s discursive practice, leaving unexplored the interpretational power and legitimacy of the pupil’s art practice. The art practices which teachers initiate are based upon particular belief and value systems (ideologies of practice) which aim to produce particular effects, understandings and outcomes, in pupil’s art practice. My interest lies in attempting to expose how such ideologies, which inform a teacher’s practice (methodology) and also the teacher’s evaluation of pupil’s art practice, produce the pupil as an art-practitioner. For example, a pupil working in a context where great emphasis is placed upon observational drawing, or where there is emphasis upon developing traditional skills or techniques, will be produced differently as a subject than a pupil working in a context where there is more emphasis upon an ‘issues-based curriculum [161 in which the pupil is encouraged to develop hidher idiosyncratic exploration of particular issues through art media.

In these contrasting contexts of art practice, their respective assessment and evaluation practices will involve contrasting values regarding, for instance, representation and skill, in relation to the pupil’s art practice. Within contrasting curriculum practices there exist different ways of reading the art object, as sign, produced by pupils. Such readings will be based upon different interpretational horizons which inform understandings of skill, ability and representation. The production and identification of the pupil-as-art-practitioner, seen as the effect of interpretations made from particular ideological positions within particular curriculum practices and not as a purely natural state, reveals the circular structure of the interpretation of ability in art practices. This circular

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structure refers to the hermeneutic process of interpretation.

After theorising the production of the child as a subject within art practices viewed as discursive sites, I will now attempt to apply such theorising to two drawing activities in order to consider the implicit circularity of the evaluation of drawing practice. Such application aims to forge an understanding that evaluation as a discursive practice does not reveal the truth about a pupil’s drawing ability, but through specific ideologies of practice, it does operate as a productive force in which the pupil’s ability as an art practitioner is constituted. Such discourses are thus able to identify ‘those who are able to draw’ from those who are less able.

Practices in school Drawing from observation In many secondary schools in England the practice of drawing from observation is well established on the art curriculum and it is advocated by the national curriculum for art, where drawing is viewed as an anchor discipline [171. Many teachers would support Clement’s [19931 view in relation to observational drawing that, ‘The most objective function of drawing is to describe or record the appearance and quality of things in the environment’ [181. The difficulty that arises for me when thinking about how we evaluate such drawings is, do we compare a drawing with the ‘actual’ appearance of things depicted, or do we compare it with a conven- tionalised form of representation, a particular symbolic order, which we believe depicts things accurately? I suspect the latter to be the case.

Drawing from observing, looking and inspecting things carefully, seems to imply the possibility of rendering in graphic form the optical truth of a particular view of an object. A common practice in secondary schools is drawing from a group of objects, or still-life. This normally involves sitting in a particular position in relation to the objects and producing a drawing from that particular viewpoint. The practice appears to be premised upon a belief in universal vision, that is: the teacher will be

able to evaluate the representational efficacy of a child’s drawing because she will be able to see, or even imagine, the same view as the child when taking up, or imagining, the child’s position. In such practices the child-as-drawer is produced. What I mean by this is that the child’s ability to draw is evaluated according to con- ventionalised forms of representation and that the discourse expounding such forms establishes the boundary conditions within which the child can be identified and known as a drawer.

My concern relates to how we respond to those drawings produced by pupils which appear to lie outside or in conflict with the boundary conditions we employ in our evalu- ations and the subsequent pathologising of those pupils’ drawing abilities.

Consider the drawing in Figure 1. This drawing is the outcome of a homework assignment given to a year 7 pupil. The class were asked to ‘set up a place setting for a meal’, they were to include a plate with food, knife and fork, cup and saucer, placemat, teapot, salt and pepper. They were asked to plan the composition carefully and to try to use tone to make the objects look three-dimensional. The teacher’s comment upon this drawing was very encouraging regarding the use of tone but continued, ‘the angles of view and proportions are incorrect. Please try a similar drawing again after our discussion’.

If this drawing is evaluated from the criterion of a fixed viewpoint which implied the use of perspectival projection, the teacher’s comments can be understood. However, the exclusive use of this criterion ignores other qualities of the drawing which appear to employ a complex graphic logic. The angles of view and proportion are only incorrect if a fixed viewpoint criterion is assumed. If the drawing is interpreted using other criteria, rather than being viewed as a confused incorrect representation, it can be seen as an inventive representational orchestration. Certain objects, such as the table, plate, saucers, knife and fork, are depicted in terms of their enduring or canonical shapes irrespective of viewpoint: others, such as the cups and chairs, are depicted as though seen from a particular viewing position. The relative

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FlGlJRE I

sizes o f the objects on the table, although not 'true to life', produce a compositional symmetry within the circle of the table and may relate to ;I symbolising hierarchy. It is as though in the process of drawing the pupil has attempted t o encode different representational interests. The outcome is an elaborate ineciley of graphic forms which constitute an intricate configuration which possesses a sound semiotic order [19 . It is important t o note that the homework instructions did not insist upon producing a drawing f r o m a fixed viewpoint, however, this seems to be implied in the teacher's assessment remarks.

The point I wish to re-cmphasise here is the way our interpretative strategies actually construct pupils as drawers, confirm them as able drawers o r pathologise them as deficient in drawing ability. It could very easily be the case

that between the teacher's evaluation and subsequent assessment o f the drawing in Figure 1 o n the one hand, and the pupil's drawing practice, on the other, an intracultural 'mismatch' o r incompatibility is taking place. Whilst it may be easier to detect incompatibilities between drawing practices emanating from different cultural contexts, the task o f such detection within ;I

particular cultural setting seems to 1-x more difficult [20]. Within Western culture, drawings by children tend to be viewed not as incompatible with those of their elders. but frequently as deficient stages along the route t o adult projec- tive systems. Thus the drawing in Figure 1 might be viewed as deficient because o f 'incorrect angles o f view and proportion'. In other words, although the drawing is viewed as an incorrect depiction, in time the pupil will be able, ( o r not), t o correct this Fault as his percep-


tual awareness develops in tandem with his drawing skills. (Such a notion of development has parallels with a common view of the development of science, where phenomena are assumed to lie waiting to be revealed, and this happens when the techniques and knowledge of science have evolved).

On one level of discourse, the idea of the drawing being incorrect signifies the difference or incompatibility between the interpretational discourse of the teacher and the drawing (interpretational) practice of the pupil. How- ever, on another level it is also the use of this word, ‘incorrect’ in the discourse which makes the pupil’s drawing compatible with the teacher’s discourse. This key term forces the drawing to be positioned or categorised inside the teacher’s boundary conditions within which pupils as subjects can be interpreted and where their ability or pathology can be constructed.

The significance of these remarks is not to condemn particular interpretations out of hand, but to show how, through particular inter- pretive practices, the child’s drawing ability is produced and confirmed, pathologised and redirected in the teaching context.

The next series of drawings of trees were produced by a small group of children aged six years. The teacher took the children into the playground to look at trees, their discussion concentrated upon the notion of structure. The children, led by the teacher, talked about the trunk supporting the branches and, in turn, the branches supporting the leaves. After their discussion the children were invited to make a drawing of one of the trees. Their main task was to try and describe the structure of their tree in their drawing.

Consider the drawings in Figures 2, 3, 4 and 5 : although each drawing exhibits idiosyncratic features they all seem to fit into a prototypical structure format to which I respond. I feel able to relate to them as tree drawings perhaps because, for me, they describe an essential ‘ges- talt’, an assimilated structural form. This might suggest that there exists a metonymic link between my own symbolic coding of tree rep- resentations and the formal properties of these drawings.

FIGURE 2

When I was confronted with the drawing in Figure 6, its graphic form disturbed me, it was quite different from the other drawings. I struggled to fit this drawing into my symbolic horizons. I found it difficult to read. It appeared mysterious. When I talked to the boy who produced the drawing he was very shy and did not want to say anything. I am still unsure about how he was investing the configurational layout of his drawing with representational significance, Reflecting further on this drawing I thought that perhaps the boy had not been ‘looking carefully’ at the tree. These thoughts brought back memories of similar reactions to pupils engaged in observational drawing when I was teaching in secondary schools. Then my evaluation criteria were probably grounded within a view-specific paradigm of representation. From such a paradigm Figure 6 seemed deficient and, consequently, such an evaluation would produce a disparaging view of the boy’s drawing ability.

However, if the components of Figure 6 were

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DENNIS ATKINSON Discourse and Practice in the Art Curriculum 267

FIGURE 3

t o be viewed as graphic metaphors, through which the boy was encoding an asserted simi- larity between them and the structure o f the tree, then the drawing schema could be seen as representationally significant for the boy. This would be a different kind of representation to the other drawings but it ~ . o u l d still be a representation o f structure. If the drawing is read as a metaphor for tree structure. then the suggestion that the tioy was not looking carefully whilst he was drawing a~ould not be rel- evant to his representational practice. As a metaphor, the two lines which appear t o be depicting branches, are similar to arms which hold and support the lines of leaves within their supportive embrace. The large leaf form, hover- ing emblematically above, seems to be an attempt t o describe the structure of the leaves helow.

This drawing can be viewed as representing the structure o f a tree in a way that is quite different from the other drawings, and yet it is still a drawing which has emerged from the boy’s

FIGURE 4

experience of talking ahout and observing a tree. Does the significant difference in graphic schema between Figure 6 and the other drawings relate t o the children positioning themselves differently within the teacher’s cliscourse on tree stnicture? It could he argued that from such positioning the children’s respective drawing practices developed. A prolAematic aspect o f evaluation and assessment discourses is that they are frequently unconscious o f the way their ideological positions (in this case concerning representation) invoke sublime objects (particular drawing forms) through which subjects are interpreted in terms o f their ability. However, if drawing is a process o f personal enquiry then there has t o be a respect fo r and an attempt t o comprehend the legitimacy o f forms which are produced as a consequence of the child’s local investigations. I f we allow particular drawing systems, vruisemhlunce o r pre-


’ . ’ I

I !

FIGURE 5

scriptions concerning the ‘picture’, to form a hegemonising pretext to our responses to assessment of such local enquiry processes, we may be guilty of subverting the legitimacy of the child’s drawing practice. The real difficulty is that for most of the time we are unconscious of the ideas, assumptions and presuppositions which inform our interpretation of pupil’s art practices, and which thus constitute, in our eyes, a pupil’s ability.

Con c I u d I n g remarks In both of these descriptions of children’s drawing practices the emphasis has been upon attempting to consider the interpretational processes of both pupil and teacher. I have attempted to describe the relative circularity of interpretative states; to show, for instance, that the teacher’s interpretational discourse does not identify truths about a pupil’s ability existing beyond discourse, but that the key terms and assumptions of the discourse actually produce such ‘truths’, which are perhaps better viewed as particular readings. Perhaps my descriptions

FIGURE 6

have created a lack of emphasis upon the more subtle ‘hidden interpreting’ [211 of stable discourses which are always present. It is the stah- ility of such interpretative forms which gives rise to the certainty of a teacher’s practice and rationale for practice. In the teaching context teachers employ stable discourses, in relation for instance, to recognising skill or ability. Such discourses allow them to act as if they refer to something absolute: in other words our actions as teachers are based upon a feeling of convic- tion that we are sure about that which we recognise. Yet it is important to appreciate that such stable functioning possesses a circular, hermeneutic structure, of which, for most of the time we are not conscious. The virtue of the power of the theoretical developments I have referred to such as discourse theory and hermeneutic analysis, is that when such ‘certainties’ in practice begin to break down, they can help to expose the reflexive nature of our recog-

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nition of skill or ability. We can begin to recognise that which structures our recognition. We can attempt to examine the ‘textual’ ground upon which we are standing in order to recognise ability. Of course the use of such analysis will only arise when the circularity of our acting-interpreting states is disturbed, and then such analysis can provide a helpful space for reflection.

When, for instance we are disturbed by the strangeness of a pupil’s drawing form we might begin to think about why we view the drawing as strange and try to consider the frameworks of understanding through which we are interpreting the pupil’s work and through which we find the work strange. This establishes a process whereby we begin to evaluate, reflexively, the conceptual ground on which we are standing to interpret the drawing. Of course, on the other hand, our interpretational framework might be so stable that we are unable to take such a reflexive stance, and so a state of incommen- surability between our interpretations and the pupil’s drawing may continue. We tend to believe that our interpretations possess a ‘cor- rectness’, that the drawing is strange - we are not aware of the limits of our interpretational frameworks. The interesting issue then concerns a consideration of those moments which affect the stability of our interpretational states, (our stable texts) so that we begin to engage

reflexively with our interpretations and realise that they are interpretations and not identifying certainties. Such moments can be valuable, they can lead to a productive critique of curriculum content and practice, as well as promote more effective ways of responding to pupil’s art work.

The curriculum focus of this paper has been pupil’s drawing practices and the construction of drawing ability. Ability has been described, not as a ‘natural’ property of the pupil but as a production, arising through an engagement in particular drawing practices viewed as discursive sites in which particular assumptions about, and understandings of, for instance, representation are promoted. Such assumptions and understandings can operate ‘including’ and ‘excluding’ forces which constitute pupils as able or less able. For me, a major implication of my argument is to apply it on a wider front to other curriculum practices within the context of teaching art and design in order to consider how pupils are produced as subjects in such practices. In other words a central question concerns how the pupil as a subject is created and regulated by the practical/discursive sites of the art curriculum, and what discursive forces or ideologies constitute and structure the peda- gogic gaze and, in turn, the pupil as a subject in the art curriculum.

Dennis Atkinson

References

1

2 Zbzd. p. 1

3

See Coward, R. & Ellis, J. (1977) Language and Materialism. Routlege & Kegan Paul

Lacan, J. (1977) ‘The Mirror Stage as Formative of the function of the 1’, Ecrits. A Selection. Trans. Alan Sheridan. Tavistock Publications/ Norton. See also Bowie, M. (1991) Lacan, Fontana

4 Foucault, M. (1974) B e Archneology of Knowledge. Tavistock. p. 49

5 Ball, S.J. (1990) Foucault and Education. Routledge p. 2

6 However, language can be an important aspect

of young children’s drawing practices. See Atkinson. D. ‘Representation and Experience in Children’s Drawing’, Journal of Art 6 Design Education. Vol. 12, no. 1, p. 101

7 Barthes, R. (1985) ‘Is Painting a Language?’ in me Responsibility of F o m . Trans. Howard, R. University of California Press. p. 150 and Harrison, C. (1991) Art and Languuge. Blackwell p. 5

8 Walkerdine, V. (1984) ‘Developmental Psychology and the Child-Centred Pedagogy’, in Changing The Subject. Henriques, J. Holloway, W. Urwin, C. Venn, C. and Walkerdine, V. Methuen. pp. 153-202

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9 10

11

12

13

14 15

Ibid. p. 176 For an introduction to hermeneutics see: Bleicher, J. (1980) Contemporary Hermeneutics; Ricoeur, P. (1981) Hermeneutics and the Social Sciences. Trans. Thompson. J. B; and Gallagher, S. (1992) Hermeneutics and Education. University of New York Press See for example, Lowenfeld, V. Oi Brittain, W. L. (1970) Creative and Mental Growth. Macmillan See Matthews, J. (1994) Helping Young Children to Draw and Paint. Hodder & Stoughton Usher, R. Oi Edwards, R. (1994) Postmodernism and Education. Routledge Ibid. p. 150 Ihid. pp. 147-153

16 For reference to Issues-Based approaches to art practices in school see Binch, N. and Robertson, L. (1994) Contextual Studies in Art & Design Education. National Society for Education in Art and Design HMSO (1992) Art in the National Curriculum Clement, R. (1993) ‘The Classroom Reality of Drawing’, in Thistlewood, D. (Ed.) Drawing: Research and Development. NSEAD/Longman

Op. cit. Atkinson, D. (1993) pp. 85-104 See Moore, A. (1994) ‘Defining The Situation. The Relevance of Cultural Mismatch Theory in Educational Settings’. Cbreods, Vol. 7, pp. 22- 29 The notion of ‘subtler hidden interpretings’ was suggested in a personal letter to the author by W. M. Brookes

17 18

pp. 121-129 19 20

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discourse and practice in the art curriculum and the production of the pupil as a subject

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