Visual art as a vehicle for educational research

International Journal of Art and Design Education

Volumn 26, Issue 3, 2007, Pages 314-324

  Hickman, Richard ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 34848821206     PISSN: 14768062     EISSN: 14768070     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1476-8070.2007.00542.x     Document Type: Article

References (22)

1. I refer in particular to the work of Elliot Eisner, for example: Eisner, E. W. (1995) What Artistically Crafted Research Can Help Us to Understand about School, Educational Theory, Winter, pp. 1-6. Available from URL: http://ed.uiuc.edu/EPS/Educational-Theory/Contents/ 45_1_Eisner.asp (Accessed 10th August 2006).
2. Barone, T. & Eisner, E.W. (1997) Arts-Based Educational Research, in Jaeger, R. M. [Ed.] Complementary Methods for Research in Education (2nd edn). Washington, DC: AERA, pp. 73-8. and
3. Eisner, E. W. (1993) Forms of Understanding and the Future of Educational Research, Educational Researcher, Vol. 22, No. 7, p. 9. In addition, the following publications have been useful: Dadds, M. & Hart, S. [Eds] (2001) Doing Practitioner Research Differently. London: RoutledgeFalmer.
4. Diamond, C. T. P. & Mullen, C. A. (1999) The PostModern Educator: Arts-Based Inquiries and Teacher Development. New York: Peter Lang. and Bagley, C. & Cancienne, M. B. [Eds] (2002) Dancing the Data. New York: Peter Lang.
5. See, for example, Studies in Art Education, Vol. 48, No. 1 (2006) which focused entirely upon arts-based research.
6. I am thinking in particular of Reid, Louis Arnaud (1986) Ways of Understanding and Education. London: University of London Institute of Education.
7. Hirst, P. H. (1973) Literature and the Fine Arts as a Unique Form of Knowledge, Cambridge Journal of Education, Vol. 3, No. 3, pp. 118-42.
8. George Dickie's institutional theory of art stated in Art and the Aesthetic: An Institutional Analysis (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1974) that a work of art (in the classificatory as opposed to evaluatory) sense 'is an original artefact a set of the aspects of which has had conferred upon it the status of candidate for appreciation by some person or persons acting on behalf of a certain social institution (the artworld)' (p. 464). This basic definition was revised in his 1997 book, Art Circle: A Theory of Art (Chicago: Spectrum Press) to clarify certain definitions: • A work of art is an artifact of a kind created to be presented to an artworld public. • An artist is a person who participates with understanding in the making of a work of art. • A public is a set of persons the members of which are prepared in some degree to understand an object which is presented to them. • The artworld is the totality of all artworld systems. • An artworld system is a framework for the presentation of a work of art by an artist to an artworld public.
9. Scrimshaw, P. (1973) Statements, Language and Art: Some Comments on Professor Hirst's Paper, Cambridge Journal of Education, Vol. 3, No. 3, pp. 133-42.
10. Reid, Louis Arnaud (1974) The Arts as a Unique Form of Knowledge, Cambridge Journal of Education, Vol. 4, No. 3, pp. 153-65.
11. Sullivan, G. (2005) Art Practice as Research. London: Sage.
12. Eisner, E. W. (1976) Educational Connoisseurship and Criticism: Their Form and Functions in Educational Evaluations, Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 10, No. 3, pp. 135-50. Connoisseurship in educational research is derived from Art Criticism and brought into the educational area by Eisner.
13. Eisner, E. W. (1995), op. cit.
14. Potter, Jacqui (2001) Visualisation in Research and Data Analysis, in
15. Dadds, M. & Hart, S. op. cit.
16. Haney, W., Russell, M. & Bebell, D. (2004) Drawing on Education: Using Drawings to Document Schooling and Support Change, Harvard Educational Review, Fall, pp. 241-72.
17. PGCE stands for Post Graduate Certificate of Education and is the principal route by which graduates gain recommendation for Qualified Teacher status in England and Wales. The particular one-year course at Cambridge, where the research took place, is deemed to be equivalent to 50 per cent of a Masters degree.
18. The phenomenon of dyslexia amongst art students is well-known and is an area which requires further empirical research. See Wolff, U. & Lundberg, I. (2002) The Prevalence of Dyslexia among Art Students, Dyslexia, Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 34-42.
19. External examiners' report for PGCE, August 2006.
20. Amanda and Lucy devised the game 'Pedagopoly' as a 'collaborative visual report to examine and communicate one's experiences next to another's, comparing and contrasting the PGCE journey can be humorous, poignant and emotional'. They wrote notes to accompany it, including the following: the game uses graphics, illustration, sculpture, performance, and mixed media for its complex final outcome, with valued contributions from a year 9 student who produced the caricatures for the game. This suggests the multitude of fluent technical proficiency required in art departments. The counters including a sheep's skull and cheese plant represent art department orthodoxies to signify the learning environment and all the words and phrases are collaborative expressions, which we felt captured the essence of how it feels to be in the dual position of training teacher and university student.
21. Lincoln, Y. S. (2001) Engaging Sympathies: Relationships between Action Research and Social Constructivism, in
22. Reason, P. & Bradbury, A. [Eds] (2001) Handbook of Action Research. London: Sage, pp. 124-33.