Sir Ken Robinson presents a deeply intelligent and comprehensive view of the purposes, context and future of education which goes so much further than the e-Bac and Oxbridge. It is presented as part of the Learning Without Frontiers programme which is wonderfully inspirational – I do hope headteachers see it as they appear to be the only ones who can effect change now. (Its a 25 minute talk but worth it)
I do think Estelle Morris makes some telling points here when she describes the limitations of Michael Gove’s vision for education – ‘It worked for me so everyone must have the same.’
For years it has been a recuring rant that we cant seem to find a way to use the new technologies – taken for granted by students – in classrooms to support their learning. The blocking and locking strategies used to keep Web 2 away from schools and classrooms has meant that many (most?) teachers no longer try: worn down by years of poor connections, banned hardware and blocked websites.
BUT IT DOESNT HAVE TO BE LIKE THAT and I have just seen the report published by Stephen Heppell this month. It is the result of a research project by practicing teachers developing and sharing live classroom practice which embraces new technology and social media rather than banning it. Mobile phones can be used by students to capture and celebrate excellent teaching, facebook draws a community together, embracing parents rather than excluding them.
This is a breath of fresh air and demonstrates that it can be done effectively, safely and cheaply because teachers and students in different schools have already done it. This report should give teachers a guide which has credibility and traction. I do strongly recommend it. It is by teachers, for teachers and has real credibility because of it.
I think the methodology of the research is also worthy of note and gives an example of how social media can be used professionally by subject communities to make a difference.
Find it all at www.cloudlearn.net
I dropped into BETT earlier today (I was in London and the free bus pass for old people meant an easy bus ride to Olympia from Kensington). It was interesting to be immersed in teachers once again, but not necessarily uplifting. It was good to see and hear Stephen Heppell working with some children who were developing programming skills and making digital games with some free software called ‘scratch’. It was, apparently just what Michael Gove was talking about at the BETT opening. But although the teachers and students were pleased with themselves the games were rather unimaginative, full of poor clip art, derivative ideas and very predictable: hardly a creative breakthrough. I guess it should be a reminder that it will not do to just change the software that is used in IT. There is a need to change the teachers and the context. Programming plus creative arts teachers could be fun (and I always include teachers of English in the group of creative arts teachers). These programming exercises needed illuminating with concepts of narrative, imagination and mystery.
I was reminded of an occasion years ago when an old woodwork teacher was trying to tell me about the BAUHAUS. It was clear he had no idea what he was talking about and the book ends made by the students were awful.
On another stand www.edintheclouds was talking about the small junior school, of which he is a governor, which uses Google docs exclusively and has abandoned corporate servers and LA VLE’s. They all work in the cloud and recognise that life is messy. He also talked of teachers naturally wanting to engage professionals, from all over the world, in their students learning. Good to hear but not exactly a new conversation. The technology is more accessable now but, to be frank, it has been there for some years – but mainly locked out of schools and classrooms by firewalls, and IT experts.
So not so much of a change – but perhaps Gove will stimulate debate about what IT can and should be in schools. We do have some good models of creative IT practice in art and design (which I have writtten about before – search in right hand column). Perhaps it would be sensible to marshall some arguments and exemplars. Its always best work with the grain of the prevailing political ego.
PS I didn’t know Stephen Heppell was born in Chalfonts see http://www.heppell.net/
PPS You can get Scratch here http://scratch.mit.edu/
PPPS Thanks to Pain Quotidean for the coffee and free wifi – love my iPad.
I saw two exhibitions today (New Years Eve) both about painting and the relationship with source imagery mediated through photography. It was good to see the ‘stuff’ of paint being used and celebrated (see last post about Hockney). The exhibitions were the Gerhardt Richter at the Tate Modern and then to the Whitechapel for the Wilhelm Sasnal. Both northern European and powered by political narrative. I hadn’t expected to, but also really enjoyed the Tacita Dean piece at the Tate.
The Rothko and the hot salt beef on rye in Brick Lane were good too.
Listening to the radio and David Hockney talking about his forthcoming exhibition at the RA. Interesting to hear him talk about his ipad drawings as simply a different medium – uniquely good for some things, but not a panacea. He also talked of the essential role of the hand, of the craft and technique of making pictures: work that is ‘made by’ the artist themselves rather than commissioned (in a Damian Hirst sense).
I am looking forward to the exhibition immensely. But the conversation reminded me of a comment I once heard in the National Gallery. It was thirty years ago, on a rainy Sunday afternoon in February, while looking at the Hobbema (still a favourite painting). An old, rather bedraggled, woman, burdened with shopping bags, wandered vaguely through the empty gallery, pausing to look at a painting here and there. On leaving she muttered confidingly to the attendant “Aren’t they wonderful: of course, they’re all handmade you know”. I loved the way it seemingly made a simple (naive) link between Rembrandt and the WI and have always remembered it fondly. Hockney was making exactly the same point.
http://www.nsead.org/Downloads/FINAL_Expert_Panel_Report.pdf Well the expert panel has published a report. Art remains a foundation subject until KS3. Deja, Deja vu
Looking forward to a new national curriculum
Maurice Barrett was the first Art Adviser I ever met. Recently I attended a celebration of his work as an educator and was reminded of how important his influence had been. Even before I had met him he had played a key role in shaping my professional thinking. This was through the publication of his book about Curriculum Design in 1979. (I was going to write about Maurice and his work but I find that this is as much about me, or rather ‘us’ art advisers as it is about Maurice.)
Maurice is 84 now and he STILL works for two days a week as an artist in residence in Beal School. Maurice is pictured right, in school with education colleagues. Still working as an artist in a school is typical of Maurice. He was Art Adviser in Redbridge for twenty six years, and throughout that time he insisted on working one day a week as an art teacher in a school. His work and ideas were, therefore, always grounded in his consistent first hand experience of classrooms, children and teachers. This gave his work as an adviser a credibility, realism and authority which was, and still is, hugely impressive.
Listening to Maurice and his colleagues I was reminded of the philosophy of that generation of advisers, who worked alongside teachers, influencing and shaping practice by example, debate and encouragement. Clive Wright (Art Adviser. Bucks) always said that ‘good advisers left no footprints’. Later the National Curriculum and inspection changed the role of adviser.
In the avalanche of advice, guidance and statute that has directed, informed and occasionally illuminated art education in recent years it is salutory to remember that in 1979 there really wasn’t anything published which made sense of what art teachers did apart from the ‘O’ level syllabus and Elliot Eisner’s ‘Educating Artistic Vision’ (which was American). For me, as a young art teacher, Maurice’s book was a revelation. It suddenly made sense of what I was doing in the classroom and established key principles of art education which informed the rest of my career.
In 1979 I was Chief Moderator of CSE art examinations and begining to realise that our assessment practice was little more than professional intuition loosely underpinned by a common vocabulary. It occured to me that we really ought to have something better – criteria perhaps. So I arranged a training day for moderators and invited Maurice to come and speak. I think it must have been the first training day I ever organised. We did develop some criteria, or at least we developed a common conceptual framework which defined the range of outcomes that were to be assessed and how these might be recognised. As a result of this work I was invited to join a national working party to develop ‘Grade Related Criteria’ this work was subsequently to be taken up by the National Curriculum and in one form or another has survived through all the manifestations since. So there is a direct causal link between Maurice’s book and the ideas developed through his discussions with teachers in Redbridge and much that has happened since. To be frank I had forgotten how much of my core thinking was shaped by this book. Maurice had written about curriculum design, I was searching for a way of rationalising assessment practice. It made sense to align curriculum input with assessment outcome. Now this is self evident, and the Expert Panel for the National Curriculum Review makes much of this: it wasn’t always so.
There are many aspects of Maurice’s book which are important, but one is particularly significant for me. This is the principle that in art education there can be different models of practice, or emphasis, each equally valid, and it is for the teacher to make a choice according to his own experience and the needs of pupils. This complicates assessment as it requires flexibility in weighting different components. Of course, as spreadsheets and numbers became all pervading in assessment it has been harder to resist the evolution of a single ideal profile of desired skills, knowledge and understanding in a fixed proportion to each other – which invariably fits only a limited percentage of real students.
I have worked with QCA on the national curriculum, levels, GCE and GCSE exams for fifteen years. The important thing for me was never really in getting the definitions and wording exactly right, but in shaping and presenting a broad conceptual framework within which teachers and pupils could make their own choices. At the end QCDA was working hard to move away from the rigid patterns of inane assessment that had been developed by many schools. However, it is a shame that in all the wordsmithing and publishing we lost sight of the wood for the trees. But perhaps, with the review of the national curriculum, we are returning to this and art teachers will again be able to come together to share and develop their own curriculum patterns-which is what Maurice and the teachers of Redbridge (and elsewhere) were doing in the 1970′s. But it is less clear how these interschool networks might be developed and supported and whether assessment will ever allow for diversity.
Maurice is an artist in residence at the age of 84. He brings to that role a conception of an artist in residence which was developed years ago and then virtually lost in the funding frenzy of Creative Partnerships. It is not about skills workshops and artists as surrogate teachers, or ‘art workers’. It presents an artist, who is not a teacher, but someone who makes work and allows students and teachers to peep over their shoulder while they do so, asking questions and observing the creative process as work evolves and develops. This provides insight into the messy, untidy, risky business of making art which enriches and empowers students in their own making. In my experience the most important thing an artist has ever given is permission to play, to take risks, through the example of their own personal professional practice. In the risk averse, heavily policed, accountable environment teachers inhabit today this is even more important.
I heard the other day that children should write blogs because it helps them reflect on their experience. Writing this has had a similar function. Meeting Maurice again reminded me of what has been important to me and how ideas are not developed in isolation but by communities which talk and share. It is also good to pay tribute to Maurice, his practice and his book which has informed my thinking (and of other advisers) – and which has also fed into much that is still done in most art lessons everyday.
For years I have been bleating, to anyone who would listen, about how we could use drama studios (large, empty rooms with blackout) and digital projectors for making really creative installation pieces in schools. We did use the wine cellars at Waddesdon Manor for a couple of interesting video installations at one time.
So it was really interesting to see the Pipilotti Rist exhibition at the Hayward Gallery. This is a wonderfully immersive installation using video projections and sound. Videos are layered through large sheets of fabric (including pants) and also appear in unexpected places and scales scattered through the exhibition. Really inspirational and now quite do-able in schools we do have the technology and probably the spaces – we just need to hire a smoke machine.
