editorial

Editorial

The first three papers of JADE 14.3 directly or indirectly concern primary children’s art work although they present distinctive perspectives.

Since Brandon Taylor in Critical Studies in Art & Design Education led. Thistlewood, Longman/NSEAD 19921 argued that some modern art was conceptually beyond the understanding of young children, and since Clement’s survey of art primary teachers in England (summarised in JADE 13.1) showed that most lacked confidence in their ability to teach the ‘Knowledge and Understanding’ aspect of the Attainment Targets, the question of whether Critical Studies could be taught meaningfully in relation to contemporary art with primary school children has generated considerable debate. Gilbert’s paper, partly generated by an art-specialist primary teacher’s doubts, attempts to demonstrate that children aged five to eleven can deal with ‘some of the concepts that inform modern art’. She offers part of a larger study which involves two schools, three different age groups, and three early modern artists - Cez- anne, Matisse and Picasso, and concentrates on the youngest and oldest groups, and specifically on their response to early fauvist work by Mat- isse. She describes and illustrates a series of les- sons designed to heighten awareness and knowledge of three different ‘realist’ approaches, before concentrating on Matisse’s use of ‘pure’ colour. Unfortunately, the black and white plates cannot accurately reflect the degree to which her intentions are met, but they do show some ability to use colour in planes that resemble those of Matisse. Gilbert’s cri- terion for successful rendition is that the ‘child has understood the concept, and has developed the skills to express that understanding’ and she deduces whether or not this has happened through discussion with the children and evidence of their work. She claims fairly that the children’s cognitive development has been

affected by the study in linguistic and visual terms, but it is open to question how far this answers the fundamental objections of Brandon Taylor. The work selected for study is early modernist, figurative, and of ‘comfortable’ subject-matter. Whether a similar assimilation would happen with either non-figurative paint- ing, or highly politicised issues-based work, or work from another culture with different aes- thetic rationales remains problematic, and reinstates the question of whether, when and how such material should be introduced.

Her action research with its basis in a special- ised understanding of art movements stands in contrast to the ideas proposed in Holt’s paper that argues for the benefits of generalist art teaching. Holt wishes to redress the negative image that the concept of the generalist teacher tends to evoke where primary art teaching is concerned, and to offer some more positive ideas.

Has the national curriculum helped or hin- dered the concept of the generalist teacher? There appears to be a clash of intentions. Whereas primary teachers often teach themati- cally across subject areas using their generalist skills, the ATs per subject anticipate speckdlised outcomes. Plans for initial teacher training show no movement towards training primary specialists, in fact they show the converse, a wider spread of equivalent time across a larger num- ber of subjects. Thus the primary teacher’s training will equip her/him to function as a generalist, whilst s/he will eventually teach a curriculum predicated on specialist outcomes.

Holt argues that there are three ways in which the generalist has an advantage over the specialist, and these are essentially based on the amount of regular contact time, leading to a more intimate knowledge of the pupil as a ‘whole person’. He suggests that close knowledge of individual learners in all their manifes-

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tations advantages the generalist in identifying lack of confidence, fear, or withdrawal in relation to art (and any other area), and in tak- ing steps to remedy these concerns. Secondly, he argues that the national curriculum has shifted the experience of art in the classroom to understanding its nature and purpose, and linking art production to interests and enthusi- asms. Here, he argues, the generalist again has an advantage in knowing the ‘whole child’; in being aware of individual differences, and areas of curiosity, and enthusiasm. Thirdly, Holt suggests the complexity of art learning now explicitly demanded by the national curriculum could be better managed by a flexible use of teaching time which the generalist teacher has within his or her power, e.g., extended, inter- mittent periods of study by relinquishing the shorter, once a week, session. He believes the changes in teacher training will advantage the generalist by ensuring that all teachers have more contact with art as a teachable subject. It will be interesting to see whether teachers and schools come to the same conclusion when the newly trained teachers begin to enter the primary classroom, o r whether the demand for subject specialists will remain.

Atkinson develops a position that could be adopted by either a specialist or generalist in the way that the concepts of ‘child’ and ‘drawing’ are constructed. Using theoretical studies concerning the ‘productive’ or material nature of discourse, Atkinson shows how what we often think of as ‘given’ is in reality constructed by ourselves - and this includes the pupil, and his or her ‘abilities’ as read from, or rather into or onto, each drawing. He demonstrates through argument and illustration that drawings do not reveal an absolute ability awaiting dis- covery, but the ideologies, predilections and understanding of the commentator (teacher). These are used to construct the concept of ‘ability’, and thereby the ‘pupil’. It follows from this that as we both interpret and construct the work, and then continue to assess and evaluate it, that we are caught within a circular, recipro- cating system, which while capable of sym- biotic interaction, also reveals the potential danger of closure - in that we define what we

evaluate in order to evaluate what we define. The importance of the paper is in demonstrat- ing what we may do to break our tendency to assert the nature of the maker’s ‘ability’ as though it is readable from an artefact (and it does feel like that), by understanding our reac- tions within our own values, and thereby ques- tioning our priorities, purpose and reading.

The next two papers directly or indirectly concern curriculum: the first by Ross focuses on the English curriculum Orders for Art and Music, the second by Karpiti, examines how art education’s historical problems in Hungary are affecting attempts to assess art education, and the effects of this on what is taught, and how it is taught, in secoridaiy schools.

Ross continues some o f the issues raised by Swift, Steers and Boughton in JADE 14.2 (although he could not have read these at the time of writing) concerning the qualitative and political purpose of the national curriculum. He finds most of the underlying concepts informing the Orders for Art and Music useless unless o n e already knows a great deal about each subject, thereby making the amount of detail unnecess- ary for the knowledgeable and incomprehen- sible to the less knowledgeable. He argues that they are based on false premises of continuity and progression which are subtly indoctrinated through the text and its layout, as though procedure follows procedure in an ineluctable fashion. He identifies a reductiveness common to both the art and music Orders of a ‘technical/rational’ nature, and suggests that if this is the real agenda, then the combination o f all the arts subjects could have been made easily.

Ross is known for his advocacy of a coni- bined arts education, a view which NSEAI) pol- icy does not share, but the reasons of the latter are not to do with endorsing a technical/ rational art education: it shares many o f R o concerns over the reductiveness of what is now offered. But it would not follow that a richer rationale would offer evidence of sufficient similarity of subjects to combine them. (These arguments have been well rehearsed in JADE over the years, and the editor has no wish t o resurrect them). It is undoubtedly true that in

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many schools drama and dance have become almost moribund due to their exclusion from the national curriculum. This may or may not be eased as the effect of Dearing takes hold, but it was not subject experts who planned their exclusion - the fault lies clearly in the political concept of what constitutes necessary learning in schools, as does the technical/rational emphasis.

K5rpBti’s paper takes the reader through a variety of art educational rationales that have been used in Hungary over the last two hun- dred and eighteen years, and how these interact with the current mismatch between what sec- ondary schools teach and what entrance examinations to universities or colleges demand. The paper describes the three traditional techniques used - the ‘task sequence’, where from a natu- ralistic drawing a series of designs and ideas are developed; the portfolio collection of samples of work over a prescribed period; and art tests or examinations. The latter are described in some detail and reveal a highly historicist expectation which denies the educational reality of the pupils. In an attempt to break down the type and nature of these examinations, various experiments are described, the most recent being a small pilot test of the Dutch final examination, which the Hungarian stu- dents greeted with enthusiasm. She hopes that the results will be useful in improving the ‘sixth and final National Core Curriculum’ (five versions since 1978), the earlier versions of which have tended to try and retain the traditional, while advocating the more experimental and contemporary. The NCC has expanded the areas of art study towards ‘new’ aspects such as visual communication, environmental issues, and multimedia application, but its teachers have not been trained in these areas, and the provision for in-service art education is limited. The success of such a curriculum will obviously depend upon the confidence, ability and skills of its teachers. Kgrpati argues that the future of art education depends on ‘those who may mot- ivate, lead and finance change’. It would be helpful if teachers were seen as potentially fulfilling the first two criteria, and that their ability to convert this potential to actuality was

enabled by financial investment in their retrain- ing.

The final three papers have distinct purposes and a few areas of overlap. Danvers’ paper was originally given at the 1994 NSEAD Annual Con- ference and addressed the main theme of the relationship between art and science. He does this by drawing a wider theoretical map of mind within which art functions as an ‘integrative system of knowledge’, and that in this sense, all disciplines that seek to know, are constituted by similar concerns and practices. He identifies three main strands which he also places within modern and post-modern thinking. The first element is that we share our physical and sen- tient participation in the world as ‘knowing bodies’, the second being that our knowing of the world is essentially perspectival - a form of interpretation (or as Atkinson suggests earlier, a construction). The third element is the need for achieving coherence and integration (through art for artists), and a reciprocal response to seek coherence and integration (in art). The latter is located within post-modern discourse where it could be argued that the ‘cer- tainties’ of earlier artistic and scientific models, have given way to a more relativist paradigm which brings with it new concepts of cultural life and expectations.

One aspect of our broader ‘cultural life’ is the smaller cultural life of specific institutions such as art schools. Holder’s paper examines a topic of constant informal opinion, but not the subject of academic research - how the culture of art schools has changed over the last five years. Holder is at pains to dismiss any claims for gen- eral conclusions to be drawn from this small, and ‘unrepresentative’ sample. The research method is particularly interesting: in five ‘art schools’, two groups of academic staff per school, one with more than, and the other less than five years experience, were asked t o respond to a series of metaphorical images of ‘the art school’ and rate them on a five point scale. In addition they were asked to indicate the meanings they gave to the metaphors, in order to provide more authority to the metaphorical perception. As Holder states, the results may not be a surprise, and may conform

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to what many have felt and feel, but the dis- tinguishing factor is that the results are rigor- ously determined and tested. There is evidence of a perceived reduction in order, harmony, co- operation, autonomy, growth, and reward (not financial but personal satisfaction), and a perceived increase in competition and conserva- tism. Interestingly, there is also evidence of unchanged perceptions of a ‘sense of community’, the art school’s basic function, peoples’ roles within the art school, and ‘productivity with humane relationships’.

Like much research, the findings leave more questions, not the least being whether the findings will be confirmed with a larger more wide- spread population, or whether regional or other organisational factors are influential. At present the research can only conjecture over which of the changes are most important, and given that they are confirmed, their cause. Given the sample size, it was not possible for Holder to reliably demonstrate differences between institutions, the more and less experienced staff, or the typicality of their respective responses, but the research has recently continued with a larger study in the hope of providing fuller answers.

As Holder suggests in one of his ‘remaining questions’, he does not yet know how far perceptions merely perpetuate themselves. I found myself wondering over this very point when I looked at the ‘unchanged perceptions’ - specu- lating what exactly the respondents meant by ‘community’, ‘basic function’, ‘role’ and ‘productivity’. That these remained unchanged seems to be inconsistent with some of the areas of reduction and increase, unless this is further evidence of the fact that all human beings are inconsistent. Another reason may be some sort of nostalgia which Holder attempts to avoid by the research plan, but the unchanged perceptions might well lend themselves to those ‘corr-

dor conversations’, where although change is all around, we claim to keep the old (and by implication, the real) values alive - attempting to retain continuity in the midst of alteration.

Reading Holder’s paper I was struck by the lack of anything like it, and how interesting such a piece of research would be, for example, of art schools 1968-1973 when the student revolts took place, or within my particular inter- est in art educational history, during any period. As yet the research does not offer causal reasons for its findings, but its importance is the evidence it does offer. If this can be shown to be reliable across a larger population, one can seek the causes that occasion the effects.

It would have been fascinating to have such a view concerning the attitude of staff in relationship to the final paper by Moody. The daughter of the subject of this short study, Vic- tor Hume Moody, and herself an artist, she offers an interesting view of how a more traditional form of art teaching offered her father greater freedom to experiment and understand. Victor Hume Moody became the headmaster of Malvern School of Art, and his charismatic and idiosyncratic teaching methods and values identified the small School at Malvern as distinctive from those of its larger neighbours. I won- der what metaphors the teaching staff would have used to define their experiences?

Moody’s paper is also an example of a new type of short paper that examines an aspect of a significant teacher/artist/designer. The Journal welcomes similar small, and preferdbly well- illustrated studies, which need not be of those who are no longer with us, but could include interviews with living examples of outstanding, unusual, influential or charismatic art and design educationalists, or those whose example has influenced art and design education.

John Swift

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