Without Criteria: Art and Learning and the Adventure of Pedagogy

Abstract

A key aim of this article is to present a discursus on learning and teaching in the context of art education that softens transcendent historical and ideological framings of art education and its purpose. In contrast it places emphasis upon the immanence and necessary transcendence of local events of learning that occur in whatever framing and which have the potential to extend our comprehension of what art and learning can become. It recommends a ‘pedagogical reversal’ whereby external transcendent lenses and their respective knowledge and criteria for practice are relaxed and proposes a pedagogy ‘without criteria’. A key pedagogical issue revolves around ‘how something matters’ for a learner in his or her experience of a learning encounter and trying to comprehend this ‘mattering’ constitutes a pedagogical adventure for a teacher. The notion of mattering in the context of art practice and learning cannot be divorced from the force of art which is the motive force that precipitates a potential for learning and can expand our understanding of what art and learning can become. The article is therefore premised on the idea that it is not a case of coming to understand art through established knowledge and practice but the force of art challenging us to think. The force of art, or art's event, can be conceived therefore as a process with a potential for the individuation of new worlds or to see that other worlds might be possible.

Ethos of Ambiguity: Artist Teachers and the Transparency Exclusion Paradox

“…Kruks (2012) notes that Beauvoir's philosophical welcome of the unknown as 'ambiguity' corresponds with post-human critiques that decentre the importance of the rationalist subject. Such inversions of value, from the known to the unknown, relate also to Dennis Atkinson's view of emergent arts practice as being iJADE 38.4 (2019) 'without criteria' (Atkinson 2017(Atkinson , 2018. Atkinson encourages a realignment towards the experience of learning as an immanent inquiry, removing the emphasis on external criteria for assessment and exam results.…”

“…Recent research has found that the creative industries that survive through interpersonal connections have small social circles, mainly among the affluent white population (Warwick Commission ; Brook et al ). Perhaps a movement towards practice ‘without criteria’ (Atkinson ) to enable the ‘becoming’ of practitioner and student, could encourage a return to a depoliticised ‘art for art’s sake’ (Pater & Wilde ). I argue that when artist teachers connect through events of practice and social engagement, as alternative systems of knowledge, their actions can enable expansions of creative equality in formal and non‐formal education.…”

“…It would be reasonable to say that discussions of the meaning of art have historically informed the context of art education, so perhaps we could position the tactics of teachers who seek to counter power through transparency in their reconnection with creative pedagogies as a continuation of this subversive creative force (Atkinson , 141). This strategy of connection, rather than isolation, welcomes the existence of ‘interiority’, as truth to own reflections as an artist teacher, and ‘relationality’ in building immersive learning experiences (Housley ).…”

Agency and Social Construction: Practice of the Self in Art and Design

“…In an existential positioning of the subject, the consciousness emerges through being‐for‐itself as ‘presence‐to‐being’ (Sartre , 144). This immanent subjectivity can be related to contemporary discussions of the presence of the artist to the vitality of lived experience (Atkinson ).…”

“…Some 18 students listed ‘I can draw’: this was the most frequent single entry, as students saw drawing as a medium for self‐esteem and social recognition. As Atkinson (, 6) says, in art education ‘drawings are often viewed as fetishised objects that “contain” the ability of the learner’. The students’ drawing identities were at this point still tentative, and even sometimes perilous – as can be interpreted through Georgia's work (Figure ) in which the sharp pencil is poised at a delicate turned head.…”