Mind the gap : expectations, ambiguity and pedagogy within art and design higher education
Abstract :
This chapter explores the nature and impact of student and tutor expectations and identifies a number of gaps between these expectations that offer particular pedagogic challenges. Commonly these gaps are attributed to student failure to adapt or understand the challenges presented to them within the art and design higher education environment. However, we would argue that in not accepting the responsibility to provide a “safe” transitional framework, we may be failing some of our students.
This chapter describes a series of transitions that art and design students must negotiate as they move between the compulsory and post-compulsory education sector and between higher education and employment within the creative industries sector. These transitions are key points where gaps in expectations become evident and where we as educators need to undertake further work to support our students as they enter and exit further and higher education. The authors discuss those expectations, illustrated with a student vignette, and propose some ways forward for the ‘wicked problems’ of the often ambiguous and open-ended nature of learning tasks in art and design.
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How should we introduce students to the pedagogy of ambiguity ?
The teaching of visual language and communication through predominantly linguistic means leads to problems in dealing with processes and outputs which challenge this translation process.
There is a danger that the pedagogy itself becomes ambiguous and mysterious, in trying to accommodate the ambiguities of practice. What is needed is a clear pedagogic approach to the teaching of a subject where ambiguity lies at the heart of the practice. Analysis of the pedagogic models which are currently employed is needed, in order to move towards this goal.
We need to teach students about the ambiguous nature of knowledge and of artistic practice, and give them methodologies for asking questions rather than presenting answers. These methodologies themselves need to be clear to both teacher and student.
Students need to be taught about the shared and divergent nature of knowledge, and encouraged to regard the teacher as one source, but not the fount of all knowledge. Teaching staff have to explicitly acknowledge their own limitations, and recognise the subjectivity of many of their judgments, in order to demonstrate this. Teaching students the value of peer learning is an essential part of this process.
Teaching strategies and structures need to be designed both to teach essential skills, and also to encourage risk-taking; to support students in experimentation, and not to penalise ambition which results in failure. Second year undergraduate may be the right stage for the majority of this work.
Teachers also still need to be aware of the danger of teaching their own ideologies and practices as if in competition with others, leading to the traditional ‘heroic’ model of the art teacher and their ‘followers’, a method which encourages factions and can become closed to new ideas.
Quality systems and assessment structures form a powerful hidden curriculum, and currently negate many attempts to valorise ambiguity and risk-taking. The importance of grades in the eyes of many students is a particular problem. Assessment and quality systems need to be revised, in order to encourage teachers and students to recognise the diversity of discourses in art and design, and to encourage aspects of practice which cannot always be neatly defined, evaluated or assessed.
What induction strategies should we employ to support students’ successful transition to higher education ?
Induction activities have a tendency to revolve around prescriptive and intensive skills building, which can lead students to value technical skill over discourse and experimentation. A long thin set of induction activities, alongside studio practice, may ameliorate this problem.
The transition from school / FE to higher education currently requires a step change in students’ approach to knowledge. Top A grade students at A level sometimes do not yet have the skills to recognise the essential fluidity of meaning in visual language. Teachers in HE also need to understand the nature of the school curriculum better, in order to build on its strengths and counter its weaknesses.
The Foundation Diploma in Art & Design has supported this shift in approach between school and university, but it is now pursued by less of our students. More elements of the Foundation approach therefore may need to be embedded in the HE stage 1 learning experience. HE teachers need to go out into schools and colleges more often, in order to start this process with both teachers and pupils. There is good practice developing in this area at the moment, through widening participation work (eg NALN). This needs to be built on across the HE community.
Students from disadvantaged backgrounds often struggle more with ambiguity, as they attempt to understand the underlying but often unstated assumptions of their tutors, which can result in a mystification of the creative process. A pedagogy needs to be developed which clarifies these assumptions, and which encourages teachers to analyse and communicate them to their students.