Subjectivities and School Art Education

Abstract

This chapter begins with a brief summary of the findings of a recent research project that surveyed the content of the art curriculum in a selection of English secondary schools. The research by Downing and Watson (2004) found that a particular construction of pedagogised subjects and objects rooted in ideas of technical ability and skill, underpinned by a transmission model of teaching and learning, formed the dominant approach to art education in the secondary schools they researched. Drawing upon psychoanalytic and social theory, reasons for passionate attachments to such curriculum identities are proposed, when in the wider world of art practice such identities were abandoned long ago. Working with the notion of the subordination of teaching to learning and the difficulties of initiating curriculum practices within increasingly complex social contexts, the chapter argues for learning through art to be viewed as a productive practice of meaning-making within the life-worlds of students. The term, encounters of learning is employed to sketch a pedagogical quest in which an ethics of learning remains faithful to the truth of the learning event for the student. Downing and Watson’s research was followed in 2009 by the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted) report, Drawing Together: Art, Craft and Design in Schools 2005–08, which took a wider perspective to include primary and secondary schools in England as well as art galleries. It found that the state of art education in schools is generally positive in that half the schools visited (90 primary, 90 secondary) used art, craft and design effectively, but the quality of provision varied widely (2009, p. 4).