Art and Design Pedagogy in Higher Education: Knowledge, values and ambiguity in the creative curriculum

Critical Analysis

Chapter 1: Introduction

The authors describe the focus of this book: it is an exploration into the knowledge, values, and ambiguity of the messy state of art and design education.

Students who are in an art and design program are forming a new identity. Their education is co-created; “art and design students do not follow a path; they leave a trail.” The curriculum has structures that are continuous in supporting that path. These include a flexibility to the curriculum, a focus on making things, a reliance on students working by themselves, and the use of adjunct practitioners to teach. Studio is a place where “students forge a way to becoming creative practitioners.”

The authors note that creativity is intertwined with the discussion of art and design education. They view creativity as a social activity, one that can be taught, and that underlies identity. Challenging, however, is the fact that creativity and art and design are taught in the “corporate heart of the university machine,” where traditionally, “learning outcomes were written, timetable software was used, modularity sliced the courses into credit chunks and regulations were applied.”

Chapter 2 – Knowledge and knowing in practice

In this chapter, the authors examine the way knowledge is produced in a studio environment. They describe how knowledge is often tacit for instructors, and students co-create knowledge through the process of making things.

Studio education appears informal and unstructured: “In the studio students and tutors appear to be chatting, formal lesson plans are probably brief and there are likely to be few required readings… students and tutors spend long periods in activities which may result in unfinished outcomes.” Some might view this as poor teaching, as it looks unstructured and messy. This form of learning follows the theory of social constructivism, with practice at the core. Knowledge is not transmitted from an instructor to a student; it emerges through a process of making things and responding to what is made.

A challenge in art and design education is that “art is only deemed to be art by the gatekeepers of social convention.” This means that subjectivity underlies a great deal of what students make. There is a distinction, then, between “knowing how” and “knowing that,” with “knowing how” as the primary form of knowledge: “it is this kind of procedural knowing, being able to do certain kinds of things, which underpins the creative practices of artists and designers.” Additionally, a lack of “how” knowledge is also valuable, as “the idea of making mistakes leading to creative readjustment is a commonly held tenet of art and design education.” Students are encouraged to make mistakes.

Instructors hold tacit knowledge, often related to the physical act of making things (such as holding a tool or feeling a material). The use of creative-specific language is also tacit, and students begin to learn the use of metaphors appropriately; when they are able to speak of design, “it is an indication that they have understood and are becoming part of the community of practice.” All of this can be considered embodied knowledge; this is highly situational. Learning becomes about identity development and gaining membership into a practice.

Challenging to all of this is that “there is no specific right answer, and at the beginning of a project students and tutors do not know the outcome or result.” Sometimes, the student actually is more expert than the instructor, and power shifts and “may disrupt the order of the studio.”

Chapter 3 – The construction and meaning of value(s)

In this chapter, the authors examine where values are created during art and design education.

The critique is one of the main places that personal values are formed; quoting Moran, the authors note that “the crit is a public revealing of a private activity.” Art and design school itself instills meaning and worth in students. The school holds certain values, as does industry, and all of these are negotiated.

The authors briefly address what they consider myths of art and design education; one is that students need to take risks: “The idea of risk taking as a valued student behavior has been prevent in Western art and design education for many years.” It is a “valorized practice that is so mainstream within art and design education” that it is rarely questioned. Equally celebrated and rarely challenged is the idea that failure is essential to learning.

Some students are valued, and deemed “first class.” Those students are able to argue for their work and decisions, and in one of Orr’s previous studies, “were in the studio a lot, thereby keeping in regular dialogue with tutors.” They are on their way towards becoming a designer, as “creative education is about identity formation.” This is an “ideal student… one who is relentlessly pursuing their practice and who is always in the studio until it closes.” The authors note that a student can’t be present if they are parents or need to work, and the “idea of the ever-present student is a masculinized idea of the student unencumbered with children, financial constraints or responsibility.”

Chapter 4 – Ambiguity and uncertainty in creative education

In this chapter, the authors try to show the role ambiguity plays in art and design education.

The curriculum in art and design education is ambiguous. Students “work individually and collaboratively on projects that are emergent, and as a result their learning needs may not be apparent at the start of a given unit or module. Compounding this is that the faculty may have no understanding of the subject, either. Students have different levels of comfort with this uncertainty, and to support them, the authors claim that the studio must be a “safe environment that supports risk taking.”

This chapter was not very helpful.

Chapter 5 – The sticky curriculum in art and design: identity and engagement

In this chapter, the authors describe the way identity development is intertwined in the experience of art and design education.

Instructors argue that a “commitment to hard work” is required to succeed in art and design education, and “’the work’ is the centre of the creative practice. The ‘work’ is also synonymous with the person of the student and is an integral part of their professional identity.” This implies that, at least in part, design education is intended to foster a sense of identity development while simultaneously fostering creation of “the work.” A great deal of this work is ambiguous; it is ambiguous in how it is assigned, and the language of assessment and “studio encounters” are equally as confusing. Both are emotional.

Students are “learning to think and act as professionals” where the ability to “articulate a critical view and to defend one’s own work” are indicators of success. This is in service of creation of a professional identity. The use of language is “crucial to an identity of becoming. Students begin to acquire the right kind of terminology and the metaphors which are used by professional practitioners.” This is a form of language currency, and is “also a visual language, material in form, and this too is central to student identity.” The instructor becomes a guide, helping students learn this spoken and visual language and formalize their own values, beliefs and goals.

Chapter 6 - Teaching practices for creative practitioners

In this chapter, the authors describe different pedagogical fundamentals, or signature pedagogies.

While the critique is a “signature pedagogy for the arts,” there are also other key constructs that distinguish art and design education from education in other disciplines. The studio itself is one signature pedagogy, which the authors note is a non-traditional way of thinking about pedagogy: “A space may not seem like pedagogy, but in its widest sense the studio helps structure what can and does take place when students learn, and it has been a central part of organized learning in visual arts for more than a century.” It can be argued that the instructor plays a small role in studio, while students “create a social learning environment” and artifacts hold a central role. The authors assert that “ideally the studio is an active, busy and social place where learning is visible and open to discussion through active participation.” As students are increasingly likely to have other commitments and will be “migrants across campus without their own dedicated studio space,” studio becomes a “state of mind” rather than a physical room.

Ambiguity is central to art and design education. Students “must learn to manage and work through ambiguity to succeed in creative practice” and this—becoming a professional—is “the pinnacle of learning.” Managing ambiguity comes through showing work in progress, and thoughts must be made visible through externalization of development work. This “provides a tract, connections, diversions and convolutions which are essential for creative thinking.”

Critical to design studio is the work itself, which is a dialogic tool for the exchange of views. It must be material, because “everything in our manufactured and commercialized world is designed and accessed through experience.” Making things material means that “learning is therefore embodied in an artifact, performance, or piece of writing which is ‘out there’” and available for critique.

Chapter 7 – Realising the curriculum in art and design: the role of the project

In this chapter, the authors describe the role of the project brief, and the project itself, in supporting student learning.

In studio, the dynamic between an instructor and a student appears confusing and ill-defined; “when you walk into an art and design studio while a class is happening, it is a lot less clear who the teacher is.” This can be confusing for students new to studio, as it may appear that there is no plan or rigor to the teaching. A project brief is one of the containers for this informality. It offers some constraints, such as a subject matter and key milestones, but it also emphasizes openness that “allows the students to respond in diverse and innovative ways.” A brief is intended to emphasize process over output, and “the grading scheme will support risk taking with a priority given to the process.” Increasingly, there is an expectation that instructors formalize and write down assessment criteria, so that it is made fair and overt.

A project brief is purposefully incomplete and ambiguous, and a part of the assignment is for students to “identify what the problem is” that they should focus on. Students “need to be comfortable with uncertainty” and should be ready to take a nonlinear and diverting approach to solving problems. Students must be active, as a majority of their process is to be self-directed: “students are forced to take a stance from the earliest stages in an art and design course.”

An instructor takes a role that is similar to a facilitator; they focus on “fostering an environment that supports creativity… [they] set up the right conditions for students.” A challenge is that each student is working at a different pace and has different needs, and so today’s “massified education” makes difficult the ability to work in close proximity to any given student. Instructors must actually care about what students are doing, and it is important that they listen, not simply speak.

The power dynamic in art and design studio is different than in a traditional classroom, and studio education is “in conflict… this idea is entwined with the idea of art education as transgressive and rule breaking. Students are actively encouraged to break the rules, and lecturers will sometimes tell students to ignore their advice.” Of course, even while gesturing to that freedom, instructors still have a final authority through grading, further emphasizing the unique power dynamic at play.

Chapter 8 – Art School evaluation: Process, product and person

In this chapter, the authors describe the nature of assessment: how a student’s work is interpreted and graded, and how that assessment bleeds into an assessment of the student themselves.

Educators view the nature of formalized “assessment requirements of higher education constraining and poorly matched to the needs of creative practice.” Creativity is not closely associated with learning outcomes that are predefined, as a large amount of design education is emergent and is tightly coupled with the experience each student has in the studio. Instructors want to see “evidence of the learning journey,” and often, showing process is more valued than showing a final product.

Students see themselves in their work and in their own process, and they are emotionally invested in their design education; “the student as maker and the work they make are entwined: the maker and the made.” Faculty judge the work subjectively, and students may view this less as an evaluation of their process and output and more of an evaluation of themselves. Critique is the primary mechanism of assessment, and “the Crit and the approaches adopted to grade work in the studio have not changed in many universities in spite of substantial increases in student numbers over the last decade,” and this means that educators cannot spend as much time with each student, individually. Subjective assessment, then, may be ineffective.

Chapter 9 – Drawing conclusions

The authors emphasize the nature of taking risks in the studio; “the commonly held tenet in art and design higher education is to celebrate risk.” Risk taking is poorly defined, but the authors note that “the kinds of risks really encouraged are travelling without knowing the end, embracing that which cannot be foreseen, welcoming the accidental, exploiting potential.” These are risky as compared to the educational process that a student has likely experienced in the past. Failure is “valorized by tutors who might celebrate making mistakes or learning through error,” but there is a right and wrong way of failing that is not articulated to students. They must navigate that themselves, and “the right type of failing is perhaps one of the hidden and socially constructed values” that a student needs to negotiate. Art school has historically “carried the flag of the unorthodox, the new, the anything goes freedom to create what you wanted.” This may not be the type of risk taking that is embraced, now, in design studio, yet the view of art and design being synonymous may signal to students an over-extended view of failure and risk-taking.

Design education is fundamentally ambiguous, and “if ambiguity were not present, we would not be developing creative practitioners capable of contributing new viewpoints, ideas, objects, forms and processes to the world of creative practice.” Students are likely not used to this lack of clarity, and “when students arrive from some educational cultures where ambiguity may be less tolerated, it requires work” from the instructor and the student to develop resilience.

Research Value

The value of this work in informing my own research is that it:

• Adds depth to the idea of entering a community of practice and developing a designerly identity
• Reinforces the view of studio education as a place of knowledge production, rather than knowledge articulation; studio is embodied and comes to life in real-time
• Describes that being in studio is idealized, and that having outside responsibilities are ignored
• Reinforces the idea that studio is about making things and identity development
• Positions the work—the activity, and the output—at the center of creative identity
• Describes language as a key “currency” of designerly identity, and extends that language to both verbal and visual
• Positions space as a pedagogy, nice just a “nice to have”
• Asserts that a studio should be active and social
• Emphasizes making things as fundamental
• Adds credibility to a claim of risk-taking and rule breaking