Collegue's thoughts on my inquiry questions:

 Following the initial research I have done into my inquiry topic I thought now would be a good time to start to discuss some of these points with my colleagues.  I have spoken to the art director at the school that I am working at and my old art teacher (I am hoping to use their department as a comparative school in my inquiry).  They both seemed on board with the broader ideas of the inquiry but raised some logistical issues I might encounter, some of which I had already considered other I had not factored in at all and so am very glad I had these discussions with them. They also suggested possible ways around these problems which again I found very useful because they know much more about their schools policies and protocol then I do.

The first issue that was raised was if I want a student to participate in a case study whereby I track their progression from GCSE to A-level I will have to be very careful when selecting said student. I particularly noticed in the school that I work in it is hard enough to get the students to do their set work let alone optional extras where the benefit for them is not immediately obvious. To make the situation even more difficult we do not teach A-level in our school thus I will have to choose a student who is reliable and enthusiastic enough to get the work done with very little physical contact from me.  I will be relying almost entirely on web 2.0 technologies, but what are the ethical implications of this? I have previously blogged about INSET days where we have discussed child safeguarding and the school’s policies on contact with students outside of school. It is very clear; you are to have no contact with an existing or previous student until they have been out of the school for two years. The art director says that this doesn’t really apply to me because it would be for the purpose of research and not social interaction, but it is still something I will have to take into consideration.There is one yr 11 student who we think might fit these criteria from my current school, another option is to only get feedback from these students on the GCSE course and rely on students from the other school (who teach up to A-level) for the full case study. The only issue with this idea is I know the students at my current school and their work much better then I will know the students from the other schools and I wanted to see them reflecting in action and even more vitally get their reflections after they have finished. I would like to see how their opinions change after they have been faced with a harder challenge. I think at this stage they will be in a much stronger position to suggest what changes could be made to the teaching of the GCSE course.

One of the biggest issues when collecting data from individuals is the reliability of the information that they provide you with. What do I do if none of the feedback I get is useful? Or I have implied that some student find the transition from GCSE to A-level difficult, what if I find that this is not the case with any of the student if have chosen to use in my case study? Do I then rethink this part of the inquiry? If none of them struggle then they have been properly prepared for the next stage so what improvements could be made?  The art director at my current school has mentioned that the opposite is often the case with student from our school who go on to study art in local colleges. If anything they find themselves not stimulated. He explained that the reason for this is we have a very good art department and he pushes the students to work at a very high level particularly when it comes to commenting analytically on their work and the works of other artist. Other schools in the area don’t do this he suggests that they ‘spoon feed’ them through the course thus as a result the colleges have had to adapt their teaching style to cater for the majority. This means that our students who have come from an environment   where they are pushed and challenged to one where they are limited in the way that you work and thus quickly become unmotivated.  Another very important factor in this is, as an artist when working in an environment you are surrounded by people of an equal or higher level then you will constantly strive to improve, if not your work can very quickly become static.  So there is a strong possibility that the feedback that I get from my current year 11 students will be the opposite of what I initially thought, hence why I am contemplating looking at a third contrasting, a school that has the budget and facilities to be as good as the other two school but at present is not performing as well. The aim is that throughout the course of this inquiry I will identify possible reasons for why it is not as successful. It has also been suggested to me that I speak to the head of the art department at the local college where most of our student move onto.  Perhaps my investigation should also look at how the As-level/ A-level course tries to cater for this range of abilities and how successful they are. 

At this stage of my initial research I think it’s a good idea to possibly use a third school to investigate as it will give me more A-level students to engage with, which I think will help to answerer my art director’s question of why investigate the teaching of A-level when the school that I work in only teaches up to GCSE? The answer to this question is, because when I become a qualified as a teacher I want to teach A-level. The third comparative school will also help because I want to look into departmental budgets and how much effect the size of the budget has on the work produced by the student. My current school has a very small budget but gets very good results, The school that I attended has a large budget and very good results were as the third comparative school has a large budget but is not producing as high a standard of work as the other two. Does money make a difference? It would appear not but what effect would it have on the teachers and the work produced if the budgets were swapped? 

The question of whether or not a disproportionate amount of emphasis is put on academic subjects over creative arts was a question which he seemed very interested in and a topic that he has looked into himself. His suggestion was to look at the new British Baccalaureate system. Apparently in this the creative arts are no longer a mandatory part of the syllabus! In light of this I think my question has already been answered but I would like to find out why this is the case.

Now that I have put down and started to process all of my initial thoughts and questions about my chosen topic I am now going to try and group them into a number of broader questions, no more then 8 questions and try to explain how I think each smaller question fits into the broader one. By doing this I hope to give myself a better understanding of what I want to achieve from this research project and start to generate some ideas for a possible title and focal point.

How have I used such techniques as experimenting with materials and processes to improve my work?

How have I done this?

How does this further my understanding of the practice?

Explain and give examples of how I have experimented with techniques and materials and what do I think I have gained from this?

If I were to create a brief for a project based around the main areas of this research project what would it be?

Would it be beneficial to the project for me to complete this brief?

Where do I feel I sit within my professional practice at the out start of the project, do I think this might change if so how and why?

Are there any limits to this experimentation? Are there certain subjects or objects that are considered off limits, where the materiality of them cannot be altered? If so who brought about these parameters necessity or society?

How have other practitioners tried to approach this issue?

Artists who were considered to be part of the surrealist movement experimented a lot with using materials in an unconventional way. What did they hope achieve from this? Were they the pioneers of this concept? This area will be explored by looking at the works of specific artists?

How has this method of working influenced the way in which artists work now? To answer this question I will be looking at both artists and designers.

Can I see any of these influences in my work? If so where?

How does the work that I make inform my teaching of the subject?

What is the relationship between art and education and how does one feel about the other?

Raelin, 2008 suggests that ‘organic competencies constitute those that apply to particular jobs, and are specific to the context and language of the organisation.’ What are the possible organic competencies of teaching art and how do they differ from the practice of art?

I have often been advised to try and not become too comfortable within your own discipline, of course it will always be your preferred way of working but it is important to try and not let it encompass the way in which you teach and push the students into a direction that you want them to go rather than allowing them to arrive at a solution themselves. Do I think that this is true? If so what measures can be taken to try and avoid this from happening?

Eraut suggests that creating a map of professional knowledge will help to ‘illuminate the debate about theory- practice links and the role of experimental learning.’ This is one of the main areas that I want to explore in my investigation. How will I map my knowledge and define my knowledge base? Also could this technique be introduced to the students? Would it be beneficial for them? Last term i looked at learning cycles, could these ideas be incorporated to help to successfully map your knowledge?

I have previously mentioned in my blog that reflection has helped me work through difficult situations. I do I predict that I will use reflection to continue to improve my understanding and teaching of the subject. Does reflecting on the work that I make inform my teaching?  At the beginning of the year I decided to embark on the same project that the yr8 and 10’s were doing I hoped that this would give me a better understanding of what they were doing and thus put me in a better position to advise them, do I still feel that this has informed my teaching?

I have noticed that a lot of students struggle to make the transition between GCSE and A-level, what can we do as artist and art educators to try and bridge the gap and make the transition smoother?

What are the main issues the students are facing?

How do they feel teachers better prepare them for the more demanding A-level syllabus? I propose to use questionnaires and case studies of students to investigate these issues.

Does the school make that big a difference? I.e. state versus private, inner city versus rural. Obviously each school has a different budget of the art department, how much of an impact does this have on the teaching of the subject and consequently the work that the students produce? 

Special Intrest Group (SIG)

I have just set up a new Face book page to use for my SIG the name I have used is Stephie Montgomery BAPP please find me and add me as a friend.

Inquiry questions continued:

• ‘Knowledge of central importance to providing services to clients is accorded low priority in higher education or omitted altogether.’ (Eraut 1994) This quote suggests that knowledge and talent alone will not make you a successful practitioner; you have to have a firm understanding of your professional practice. How has this course clarified my place within the practice and improved my understanding of it? At A-level should students be introduced to the concept of a professional practice? By doing this could it mean that the students became pigeon holed and their work stinted something that this inquiry is trying to prevent? The teaching of art at this stage is very different then the practice of art. I know that this is because the teachers have to follow a curriculum and the students have a set of assessment criteria that they have to meet making it hard to mimic the practice but it might help to give the students direction to know where the currently  stand within the practice.
• Eraut suggests that creating a map of professional knowledge will help to ‘illuminate the debate about theory- practice links and the role of experimental learning.’ This is one of the main areas that I want to explore in my investigation. How will I map my knowledge and define my knowledge base? Also could this technique be introduced to the students? Would it be beneficial for them? Last term i looked at learning cycles, could these ideas be incorporated to help to successfully map your knowledge?
• What am I hoping to achieve form this investigation? As previously mentioned one of my main focuses of the investigation will look at how using materials in an unconventional way and experimenting with techniques within my practice, the practice of other practitioners and to improve the teaching of the subject. Is this investigation valid? Is this investigation going to improve my work both as a practitioner and an art educator? Do my work colleagues and peers agree with this?

Initial thoughts on module 3835:

Initial thoughts on module 3835:

I have been reading through the handbook and first reader for this module and have come up with lots of ideas but am currently struggling to get link them all together into one line of inquiry. At the moment I am thinking that I would like the main focus of my research to be on the experimentation and use of unconventional materials and techniques in my work and that of other practitioners. I would also like to investigate the transition of students from the study of GCSE to A-level. From speaking to a number of art teachers and students it would appear that a lot of students struggle with this transition and I would like to look into why this happened and how teachers could better prepare the students.  This is the point in my career when I started to experiment with techniques and materials an process which I think really helped me to be successful at A-level and subsequently gain a place in one of the best Art schools in the country.  Could this help other students make a smooth transition?

          Task 4a advises us to come up with a series of question relevant to our practice. Whilst reading the reader I have come up with quite a few, some of which might seem a bit random but I am going to post all of them on my blog and then at the end hopefully after getting some comments on them I will be able to pull them all together into a few broader questions.

Inquiry Questions:

• Is it the schooling system and the manner in which subjects are taught or the students who create subject boundaries and as a result do not automatically take their knowledge learnt in one subject and apply it to another?  For example last term I blogged about a number of yr 10 student who struggled to make the connection between what they had learnt in History about America at the end of World War 2 and the emersion of the Pop art movement.  Is this a common occurrence or something that is more prevalent in the school that I work in? How can we try and encourage the students to make these connections, not only in art but in all subjects?

• How does my work as a practitioner does inform my teaching of the subject and vise versa? Through my initial research into the teaching of art I have discovered that sticking to the styles and techniques that you feel comfortable with can prove to be detrimental to your students and your career advancements. For example as a sculptor if I stuck mainly to the teaching of sculpting techniques and as a result neglected some other disciplines, disciplines that I as a practitioner might not feel as comfortable with I would be depriving the students of a well rounded understanding of the subject. How can I ensure that I don’t fall into the pattern? What causes other teachers to do this? I.e. as a sculputor my area of expertise lies here but i cannot favour this way of working over others.

• In my own work I incorporate a lot of cross pathway disciplines, what initially inspired me to do this? Will encouraging students to do this improve the quality of their work and is so how? Also how can I utilise the evpertise of the other students on the BAPP course to further inform my work and inspire new collaborations?

• What is the relationship between art and education and how does one feel about the other? Sir Ken Robinson has suggested that an unequal amount of focus is put on the academic subjects and the creative arts are considered less important. Is there any further information to back up this theory?

• Raelin, 2008 suggests that ‘organic competencies constitute those that apply to particular jobs, and are specific to the context and language of the organisation.’ What are the possible organic competencies of teaching art and how do they differ from the practice of art?

• How do I perceive that this investigation will further my career and how will it improve my understanding of the teaching of the subject and teaching processes in general? Since starting working in a secondary school last year I have realised that there is more to successfully teaching a subject then broad subject knowledge. By investigating  this w I hope to be able to identify what makes a good teacher? Is it a skill that can be taught?
• I have proposed that a major part of my investigation will look into how experimentation with materials and processes improve your understanding of the subject, but is this actually the case? I can see how it has been successful for other practitioners but has it been successful for my or has this cross discipline work confused where I lie within the practice?

• Experimenting with materials and using them in an unconventional way was a common theme during the surrealist movement. How are this concept and my research relevant to work that is being created now?

• Will the increase in tuition fees increase the number of students choosing to do work based learning courses? Will this have an impact on the credibility of the courses?   In the case of our course all students have already had at least two years of higher education within their practice.  We have already been in an environment where by we were surrounded like minded individuals that we have been able to be inspired by and learn from which is a very different environment form that of the work place. If work based studies courses were to increase in number, popularity and were to encompass the whole of the BA course would they be as successful and would the quality of the graduates be as high, particularly in practical subjects like the creative arts?

• Eraut (1994) says ‘first, getting a degree-entry route established validates the professional’s claim to a specialist knowledge base, and hence to professional status. Second, recruitment through the higher education system is critical for sustaining, let alone improving the relative quality of a professional intake.’ Is this still the case or now are some many people getting Bachelor degrees that they are losing their importance to an extent? This is similar to a question that Ken Robinson posed during his TED conference, the contence of which i will be looking into during this inquiry.