the problematic relationship between “knowing how” and “knowing that” in secondary art...

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The Problematic Relationship between “Knowing How” and “Knowing That” in

Secondary Art Education in England, and Finding a

“Bridge” to Connect the Two

presentationpresentationforfor

77thth INSEA Regional Research INSEA Regional Research Conference, Istanbul Conference, Istanbul

Leslie CunliffeUniversity of Exeter

UKE-mail: [email protected]

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Research questionResearch question and and implicationsimplications

Why is there current conceptual confusion throughout secondary art education in the UK, including the national examination known as the General Certificate of Secondary Education taken by students at the age of 16, between procedural knowledge or “knowing how” and declarative knowledge or “knowing that”?

What are the implications for the future practice of art education of revealing this confusion and identifying a solution?

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Understanding the problemUnderstanding the problem The idea of thinking as an occurrence in the head,

in a completely enclosed space, makes thinking something occult. (Wittgenstein, 1970, # 606)

To understand the current confusion in England between the role and assessment of “know that” and “know how”, it is necessary to trace its roots to the art education version of what Ryle (1949) describes as “the official doctrine”

This is the legacy of representing someone as mind and body, so that the way knowledge is processed becomes dichotomized between the disembodied mind and the mindless body (that usually equates with the procedural knowledge of art)

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Dualisms that have distorted Dualisms that have distorted and adversely affected art and adversely affected art educationeducation In modernist art education this lead to a focus on

essentialist forms of expression of the body that bypass “mind”, with regressive or essentialist “know how” privileged over socio-cultural “know that”and “know how”

Modernity’s dualism between an individual mind and the distributed mind of culture and biology reinforced this dualism, privileging psychological rather than socio-cultural approaches to art education

The dualism between form and content caused the intrinsic form of works to be privileged over the extrinsic and non-present socio-cultural meaning of works of art

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Dualisms that have distorted Dualisms that have distorted and adversely affected art and adversely affected art educationeducation The more recent mind-in-brain hemisphere

dualism maintains this legacy, in which a false contest is played out between left brain rational, analytical thought and right brain intuitive and artistic thought and action

The art education version of this mind-in-brain dualism sees curriculum development in declarative knowledge as an unwanted attempt to give the subject academic status

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Dualisms that have distorted Dualisms that have distorted and adversely affected art and adversely affected art educationeducation

Piirto (1998, p. 55) describes this form of understanding of brain functioning as a “popular cultural myth”

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Finding a bridge to a Finding a bridge to a solutionsolution

Thinking, a widely ramified concept. A concept that comprises many manifestations of life. The phenomena of thinking are widely scattered.

…It is not to be expected of this word that it should have a unified employment; we should rather expect the opposite. (Wittgenstein, 1970, #110 &112)

After modernism, knowing in art requires a combination of “know that” and “know how”- “the phenomena of thinking are widely scattered”

Art is always made within historically specific communities and needs “knowing that” to access its meanings – “many manifestations of life”

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Understanding others’ art as embedded in socio-cultural matrices, as well as giving verbal feedback to one’s own performance, requires “knowing that” forms of knowledge – “Thinking, a widely ramified concept”

Anything less than this leaves art education impaled on older dualistic, regressive or essentialist modernist practices that misrepresent the situated and embodied thinking that human beings engage in when they deal with art, as we shall see shortly when we look at England’s GCSE exam

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Lakoff & Johnson (1999) describe philosophical thought that transcends these dualisms as locating thinking “in the flesh”, in which mind is distributed throughout an individual’s body that, in turn, is connected to past and present communities and the wider environment

Try thinking without oxygen!

Try thinking outside socio-cultural reality!

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Clarifying the argument: the Clarifying the argument: the nature of evidence for nature of evidence for ““kknowing that” as opposed nowing that” as opposed to “knowing how”to “knowing how” Evidence of “knowing how” could be shown in

the way a 15 year old student makes a self-portrait in a style derived from Rembrandt; the way s/he uses chairoscuro and impasto paint , for example

However, such evidence can not stand as evidence for “knowing that” about Rembrandt's artistic practice in a seventeenth-century Protestant, Dutch cultural context, as someone could be ignorant of such a specific cultural practice but still produce a competent self-portrait using chiaroscuro and impasto paint

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TThe difference between he difference between “knowing that” and “knowing that” and “knowing how” in art “knowing how” in art educationeducation

The GCSE exam in England confuses this issue, as evidence for “knowing how” is shown, in contrast to evidence for “knowing that” which requires written or spoken explanations or interpretations

This is a distinction between propositional and non-propositional forms of knowledge

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Case study: the confusion Case study: the confusion between “know how” & between “know how” & “know that” as embedded in “know that” as embedded in England’s GCSE examEngland’s GCSE exam The General Certificate of Secondary

Examination is controlled by an executive body known as QCA (Qualifications & Curriculum Authority)

The GCSE exam for art is optional and taken by approximately 55% of students from age 14, culminating in a final exam at the age of 16 years that combines coursework with a set test

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Analysing the forms of Analysing the forms of knowledge that each GCSE knowledge that each GCSE assessment objective assessment objective requiresrequires The four assessment objectives for the

GCSE exam are on the left side with the an analysis of the forms of knowledge required to show evidence of meeting each assessment objective provided on the right side

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Assessment objective 1Assessment objective 1

AO1 record observations, experiences and ideas in forms that are appropriate to intentions

required evidence base - mainly procedural knowledge but could also be met through declarative knowledge

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AO2 analyse and evaluate images, objects and artefacts showing understanding of context

required evidence base - a combination of procedural and declarative knowledge, with the latter being used to evaluate images and show understanding of context

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AO3 develop and explore ideas using media, processes and resources, reviewing, modifying and refining work as it progresses

required evidence base - mainly procedural knowledge with declarative knowledge being used as part of the process of giving verbal feedback to own work

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AO4 present a personal response, realising intentions and making informed connections with the work of others

required evidence base – a combination of procedural and declarative knowledge with the latter being used to make informed connections with the work of others

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Interpretative reasoning for Interpretative reasoning for the knowing required for the knowing required for assessment objective 1assessment objective 1 AO1 is generally understood in England as

requiring evidence based in procedural knowledge

This need not be the case as to “record observations, experiences and ideas in forms that are appropriate to intentions” could be met through the use of the verbal reporting of declarative knowledge

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Interpretative reasoning for Interpretative reasoning for the knowing required for the knowing required for assessment objective 2assessment objective 2

AO2 a mixture of procedural and declarative knowledge, or be exclusively met by the latter as the knowing is of the “know that” variety

An analysis of a work of art can be carried out

in visual or verbal form, but an evaluation of the same work of art cannot be achieved with an exclusively “know how” approach, as the evaluative process requires judgments that are reported through the use of first or third person forms of verbal reasoning

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Interpretative reasoning for Interpretative reasoning for the knowing required for the knowing required for assessment objective 2assessment objective 2 The first half of AO2 must be understood in

relationship to the wider requirement that the analysis and evaluation be linked to an understanding of the context of the art in question, which in turn requires third person forms of explanations

Summer (1998: 134) argues that:… the meanings we simply see in works of art, although not without their own value, are not historical, and therefore not explanatory. In order to gain such understanding we must actually do history

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Further interpretative Further interpretative reasoning for the knowing reasoning for the knowing required for required for assessment assessment objective 2objective 2

AA visual survey of a book of reproductions of visual survey of a book of reproductions of Rembrandt’s work provides the insight that he Rembrandt’s work provides the insight that he made many paintings of biblical subjects, but it made many paintings of biblical subjects, but it would require more understanding of the cultural would require more understanding of the cultural context to know why none were made for a churchcontext to know why none were made for a church

To showTo show that the thinking is wrong on this point, that the thinking is wrong on this point, all all that is neededthat is needed is is to to represent threpresent this is propositional propositional form of knowledge: form of knowledge: “Rembrandt never made a “Rembrandt never made a painting for a church because he lived and worked painting for a church because he lived and worked in a Calvinist country where works of art were not in a Calvinist country where works of art were not commissioned for churches”commissioned for churches”,, in a non- in a non-propositional propositional wayway so that it conveys the same so that it conveys the same meaningmeaning

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FurtherFurther interpretative interpretative reasoning for the knowing reasoning for the knowing required for required for assessment assessment objective 2objective 2

The aims of the GCSE specification should be used to interpret the assessment objectives, as they have executive control status

Aim iii – understanding of codes and conventions of art, craft and design and awareness of contexts in which they operate

Aim iv – knowledge and understanding of art, craft and design in contemporary societies and in other times and cultures

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AO3 deals with evidence that is shown through procedural knowledge, with further, explicit evidence of the reviewing process being given by the use of first person forms of declarative knowledge

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AO4 requires evidence of candidates “making informed connections with the work of others”, something that combines procedural and declarative knowledge

The word informed qualifies the nature of the evidence base, making it more like the understanding of explicit interpretative reasoning (Best, 1992) as opposed to the implicit presence of appropriated visual schemata (dots for Aboriginal Australian art, for example) and the inclusion of postcards and the like that are currently stuck into sketchbooks as a way of attempting to meet this assessment objective

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Overall judgment about the Overall judgment about the GCSE specificationGCSE specification

This analysis makes it transparent that the specification's subsequent statement that

There is no requirement in the Scheme of Assessment for Art and Design for candidates to produce written work as part of the Coursework or the Controlled Test

is at odds with the earlier remark that The Assessment Objectives represent those qualities which can be demonstrated in candidates' work and which can be measured for the purposes of assessment

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Overall judgment about the Overall judgment about the GCSE specificationGCSE specification Therefore, on purely logical grounds the

specification does not make sense, as assessment objectives AO2, AO3, and AO4 require written or spoken explanations and interpretations as the knowing is of the declarative kind

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Overall judgment about the Overall judgment about the GCSE specificationGCSE specification This indicates that the GCSE exam,

although seemingly informed by a post-modern paradigm of art education, remains modernist in the way it expects knowledge of art to be processed and evidenced because it affirms the importance of the socio-cultural understanding of art, while at the same time denying the significance of declarative knowledge for representing such contextual knowledge

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Caught between an old and Caught between an old and new new paradigm for art paradigm for art educationeducation

What does the presence of such conceptual confusion in a flagship public examination indicate about the current state of thinking in art education in England?

It suggests that art education is caught between two paradigms of art education

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The last thirty years have witnessed a number of publications that, despite differences in detail, agree that the previous modernist art curriculum’s exclusive focus on “knowing how” to make art did a disservice to the wider purpose of enabling students to become competent in the full range of thinking skills that the subject requires, to include “knowing that” about different practices of art

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Abbs (1996) describes the change advocated by this literature on art curricula as a shift in paradigm

Abbs’ choice of the word paradigm is significant because it was first used by Kuhn (1970) to describe “revolutionary” changes in scientific knowledge that required fundamental reconceptions of scientific practice rather than minor adjustments to existing or “normal” scientific enquiry

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Caught between an old and Caught between an old and new new paradigm for art paradigm for art educationeducation The minor accommodations that have taken

place in art education in England maintain the confusions and shortcomings embedded in older, “normal” modernist art education, while at the same time giving the impression of being “revolutionary”

In doing so, art educators in England perpetuate a dualistic conception of knowledge and the person, a state of affairs that threatens the integrity and future direction of art education in England

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Caught between an old and Caught between an old and new new paradigm for art paradigm for art educationeducation Addison (2000, p. 232) gives a summary

description of the current orthodoxy of this practice, which relies heavily on copying the surface reproductions of works of art and other tactics that deal with a debased form of “knowing how” than anything related to “knowing that”, and which always “decontextualise the artist’s work so that its original meanings and modes of production are ignored”

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Harland et al’s (2000, p. 566) empirical research findings identify the main gap in the general provision of secondary arts education, including visual art education, as:

The development of critical discrimination and aesthetic judgement-making, especially the capacity to locate these in their social, artistic and cultural contexts; the furthering of thinking skills, or more accurately, a meta-awareness of the intellectual dimensions to artistic processes

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The way Harland et al’s analysis is expressed is unfortunate in that it perpetuates the dichotomy of the “official doctrine” between the “intellectual” aspects of knowing as in the mind, or in the more contemporary version of knowing as in the left hand side of the mind-in-brain, with the non-cognitive making of art controlled by the right hand side of the brain

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Establishing the new Establishing the new paradigm on more solid paradigm on more solid groundground Despite the degrees of abstraction required for

some disciplines of thought, all thinking emerges from a concrete, embodied, social condition (Smith, 1988)

Toulmin (1999), drawing on Wittgenstein’s and Vygotsky’s work, describes this perspective as “knowledge as shared procedures”

In doing so he correctly interprets Wittgenstein’s value for thinking as a practical and humanitarian enterprise

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Establishing the new Establishing the new paradigm on more solid paradigm on more solid groundground Wittgenstein’s comment: Wittgenstein’s comment: ‘Thinking’‘Thinking’, , a a

widely ramified concept. A concept that widely ramified concept. A concept that comprises many manifestations of life. The comprises many manifestations of life. The phenomena of thinking are widely scatteredphenomena of thinking are widely scattered,, cited at the beginning of this cited at the beginning of this presentationpresentation, , provides a more accurate insight into the provides a more accurate insight into the distributeddistributed, , differentiateddifferentiated and and practice-practice-basedbased nature of cognition that, if adopted, nature of cognition that, if adopted, would resolve the current confusion in the would resolve the current confusion in the relative treatment of procedural and relative treatment of procedural and declarative knowledge in art education in declarative knowledge in art education in England, and dare I say it, more widely as it England, and dare I say it, more widely as it is manifested around the world!is manifested around the world!

the problematic relationship between “knowing how” and “knowing that” in secondary art...

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