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232 Editorial

JADE 23.3 ©NSEAD 2004

Welcome to the final part of Volume 23, whichcontains a wide-ranging collection of articles. Thefirst, by Mary Fawcett and Penny Hay, describes aresearch project involving collaboration betweenearly years’ children, artists and cultural centres.The project was inspired by the approach to teach-ing and creativity in arts education at Reggio Emiliain Northern Italy. The article illustrates how theresearch project explores issues of creativity andinnovation and how these can be fostered withinearly years’ educational sites. As such the articleprovides helpful insights and material for profes-sional development in this educational sector.

Teachers’ in-service education forms the focusfor Andri Savva, Eli Trimis and Aravella Zachariouas they provide a description and analysis of an in-service course for teachers on the island ofCyprus. The focus of the course is to considerhow art practice can be employed to explore thelocal environment and deal with issues arisingfrom such exploration. Teachers were asked toselect particular aspects of the environment andto use these as a stimulus for art practice. The artwork was made from materials found in the envi-ronment which included natural and made materialsas well as the stories and narratives told by inhabi-tants of the local village. The study provides a clearillustration of how art practice is able to explore envi-ronmental issues and thereby lead to profoundprocesses of reflection and making.

From Spain, Imanol Aguirre considers currentdebates surrounding the development of visualculture as a new paradigm for education in visualpractices. Here art and design education wouldbe subsumed within a broader educationalproject concerned with the visual that includesnot only art and design practices but the worldsof film, advertising, video, television and other

forms of popular culture in which visual practicesfunction. For some this field of study constitutes avast undertaking, which is impossible to operategiven the amount of time allocated to visualeducation in schools. For others the key focus isupon the social and critical dimension that suchstudy implies so as to provide learners with anopportunity to acquire a social and critical under-standing of visual practices and their respectivediscourses as they function within social contexts.

Mervyn Romans tackles the field of historiesof art education; his article acknowledges a well-established version of historical writing but healso questions this discourse in order to loosenits hegemonic grip. He does this by challengingthe traditional explanation, offered by cited keytexts, of the introduction of public art and designeducation in the 1830s. This article therefore re-visits established explanations and in doing so itsheds new light on understanding how art anddesign education emerged as an institutionalprocess during the nineteenth century in the UK.

Dan Davies, Alan Howe and Susan Haywoodprovide a second article dealing with the issue ofcreativity in educational contexts. They report ona research project funded by the NationalEndowment for Science, Technology and the Arts(NESTA). Selected groups of 11-year-old childrenworked with design-related professionals in twolocations and then in their school contexts. Thecase studies in the article indicate important impli-cations for learning and practice in relation todeveloping children’s creative potential.

Bick Har Lam and David Kember provide aninsight into teachers’ conceptions of teaching artand design in Hong Kong. Their research projectreveals teachers’ deep-seated beliefs about thevalues and purposes of teaching and learning in

JADE 23.3 ©NSEAD 2004

233Editorial

art education. The study attempts to tease outwhat teachers feel to be the key rationales for artand design education and how these beliefs thenimpact upon and structure their pupils’ learningpractices. The study points towards a crucialissue in teaching and learning, though it is notdeveloped in the article, that is to say, how wemight develop a system in which a more reflexiveor interrogatory approach to teaching is requiredand developed. In England, for example, this hasbeen made more difficult in recent years where acentralised curriculum operates and in whichteachers have to be more compliant in their deliv-ery of it. It is also more difficult when assessmentprocesses consist of a one-size-fits-all model. Inexploring teachers’ beliefs and rationales for prac-tice the article indirectly hints at possibilities for afuture in which teachers come together asprofessionals to discuss and negotiate possibili-ties for the art and design curriculum. Indirectly itraises much larger questions about how we mightbegin to conceive an art and design curriculum thatis not simply handed down from above but whichis negotiated and developed by professionals asthey interrogate, refine and evolve their teachingpractices and understanding of such practice.

The issue of portfolio assessment is discussedby Fiona Blaikie, Diederik Schönau and John Steersin their article. They are specifically concernedwith students’ views on assessment proceduresand the preparation of students’ portfolios for theirfinal assessment in secondary school. The studyprovides an international perspective in that itincludes data from students in Canada, Englandand The Netherlands. The research revealsstudents’ attitudes towards assessment, forexample that many regard discussion of their port-folio work in peer-groups with their teachers asimportant, and it raises, but does not have spaceto tackle, the much larger question of the politicsof assessment discourses and the power of suchdiscourses to produce pedagogised subjects.What I find interesting about the study is thatalthough this was not its intention it prompts meto think about spaces in which what students say

about their work and their interpretations of it aregiven legitimacy in any assessment process. Ofcourse there would need to be a political will toembrace this process. Here the student’s experi-ences of being a student and learning might beacknowledged and this may have beneficialeffects in that such discourses may allow teach-ers to reflect upon or interrogate the idealisedassessment categories with which learners areassailed. Such discourses may help to modifyand refine current crude assessment discoursesin which practice becomes constructed as prac-tice through their rather limited parameters.

Mike Jarvis returns us to what he believes to bea crucial practice and mode of learning in educa-tion, the importance of painting. His article stressesthe importance of painting as a critical practice. Heargues persuasively that in early years’ educationthe physical use and manipulation of materials,such as paint, is crucial for children to be able toimagine and construct or to conceive realities. Inother words it is the very engagement with thematerial practice of painting that precipitates imag-inary and other cognitive processes.

In the final article Karin De Coster and GerritLoots from Belgium advance a particular argumentfor how blind or partially sighted people can behelped to experience works of art. They acknowl-edge the position taken by some researchers in thefield that the provision of more tactile experienceswith art works should be provided by galleries andmuseums but they also argue that ways ofcommunicating the visual aspects of art worksshould be developed. The key agency for doingthis, they maintain, is the teacher or the galleryeducator. The article indicates that there are manydifficult and unresolved issues, relating to episte-mological and ontological processes, whenattempting to structure such provision but never-theless it does provide a particular intervention inorder to consider such issues and thus adds to animportant pedagogical debate.

Dennis Atkinson