A Potted History of Art Pedagogy

‘Pedagogy, most commonly understood as the approach to teaching, is the theory and practice of learning, and how this process influences, and is influenced by, the social, political and psychological development of learners. Pedagogy, taken as an academic discipline, is the study of how knowledge and skills are imparted’.

Education has been something of a battleground over the last decade, with two opposing approaches to teaching arguing over which is most beneficial. In the Trads v Prog war I sit firmly on the fence. I am a Trog. As I hope to show in this blog, both approaches have existed side by side in art for over a hundred years. Both are equally valid, in different ways at different times.

Why do I need to think about art Pedagogy?

Up until recently, most teachers could do their job without getting overly involved in Pedagogy. You just turned up and did your job, working from text books or teaching prescribed content handed down from subject leaders. But things have changed considerably and Ofsted and the DfE are the ones forcing us to think harder about how we teach. This distinction is important because, as far as Ofsted are concerned, curriculum is what we teach and Pedagogy is how we teach. Now, I think these distinctions are simplistic but I’ll play along for arguments sake.

Where do traditional approaches to teaching art come from?

The traditional, explicit, direct instruction approach has a long history in art and is a highly effective way of teaching certain knowledge and skills. The Mastery model of novice, journeyman and master was how Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo learned, among others. This model was then superseded by the Academies, who thought of art as being somewhat above the ‘lowly’ crafts guilds of the seventeenth century. In this model, artists learned their craft through practice, repetition, guided instruction and gradual relinquishing of control and autonomy over subject matter. This model prevailed, and even teaching in the Bauhaus was predominantly rooted in the mastery model. You put your time in, learned your craft, and once you were able, you could express yourself skilfully.

How are traditional, direct instruction based teaching approaches used in art?

Traditional teaching approaches involve learning hard, substantive, theoretical knowledge and procedural skills, in a sequential manner. This is a really good thing in my opinion. I’ve read the so-called neuroscience behind it, and putting aside the fact that most neuroscience outlining creative networks in the brain is being ignored, it makes common sense.

At least it does when learning factual knowledge anyway. I learn my times tables, then I can do more complex mathematics more easily. I learn basic algebra, then I can do equations etc. There will always be an element of this logic based, sequential progression across educational key stages. In key stage one art, I need exercises to develop my fine motor skills if I’m to be able to access the more complex learning in key stage two. In key stage three, I need to understand how to independently respond to lengthier externally set assignment questions in key stage four.

In each of these phases, there will be elementary substantive knowledge I’ll need to learn and master. When I’m learning facts and information about art and artists through history, colour mixing, brush control, pencil shading, knowing and applying the formal elements all stand out as being areas where direct instruction is the most efficient way to learn it.

The difficulty with making skills more explicit is that there are so many disciplines in art and design, and so many different approaches to making it. The most common approach is to aim for photo-realistic precision; accuracy of medium and skilful tonal rendering, but this is pigeon-holing art into one artistic style. Not all pupils can, or want to work in this way. Some pupils might be weak at photo-realism in drawing and painting, but great at clay, or textiles. Skills therefore, are subject to limitations of cognitive and physical growth, coupled with personal interest and natural ability.

Constructivism

Mastery learning fell out of favour in art schools after the Second World War, as more liberal, progressive approaches to learning (constructivism) were seen as being more in keeping with post-war optimism. Constructivism originated around the start of the twentieth century via John Dewey’s and Piaget’s theories of education, which argued that knowledge wasn’t a static, fixed body of information to be taught by rote. He insisted students should be active in their learning, and that motivation played a crucial role in how they learn.

At the same time, Maria Montessori began developing her own type of education based around similar ideals. Her approaches had an emphasis on involving the child’s natural interests, hands-on learning, real-world skills, forest learning, freedom within limits, and independence. Montessori believed that children who are free to choose and act freely within an environment prepared according to her model would act spontaneously for optimal development.

After the Second World War, the art college model took off in Europe. Although progressive art colleges had existed prior to the war, such as Josef and Anni Albers’ Black Mountain Art College of North Carolina, it wasn’t until after the second world war that they took hold. Tutor’s of the college were drawn from the recently closed Bauhaus and included Josef and Anni Albers, Walter Gropius, and Willem de Kooning. Luminaries included Robert Rauschenberg, Ruth Asawa, John Cage and Cy Twombly. The curriculum was less hierarchical and more freeform, and placed the student, rather than the curriculum, at the centre of the education.

In the 1940’s, Herbert Read’s book Education in Art argued that conventional education destroyed children’s natural creative abilities. In his book Education through Art he said that everyone is an artist of some kind whose special abilities, even if almost insignificant, must be encouraged to contribute to the richness of collective life.

In England, in the 1950s, Victor Pasmore and Harry Thubron’s Basic Course in Leeds and Newcastle put its emphasis was on process and ideas, rather than technique and end result. Pasmore felt art schools were out of date and that life drawing and perspective had no relevance to the needs of modern art, which was grounded in the formal elements of abstraction. Education was not a recipe, but a beginning. They wanted a structured, analytical approach whilst still preserving freedom, spontaneity, intuition and vitality. There was no common pedagogy; teaching was left to the individual teacher. Teaching formal, instructional techniques was shunned in favour of the development of each person’s creativity.

These approaches developed even further through art colleges such as CalArts in Los Angeles in the 1960s and Jospeh Beuys’ Düsseldorf school that taught Gerhard Richter.

What is constructivist art teaching?

Constructivist teaching techniques attempt to preserve the early ability to create art without fear or hesitation. They try to overcome logical cognitive growth in children’s brains that occur around the age of seven, by steering pupils away from focussing too much on quality of outcome, on judging themselves and being overly self-critical.

Logic circuits tell us things are right and wrong, they make us anxious and make us afraid of getting this wrong. Constructivist teachers try to avoid defining creative outcomes or making expectations clear and explicit. They create learning opportunities that are starting points for the pupils’ own exploration. There is little in the way of explicit instruction; modelling is restricted and leans towards encouraging pupils to find out for themselves what happens.

Well designed constructivist art projects are ones that facilitate self-discovery and personal growth, as well as fostering and engendering stimulation. In short, you feel good after you’ve done a progressive project, because you’ve created something and it doesn’t matter how technically proficient it is. That may, or may not, come in time. What matters is that you value the process. These approaches have been heavily criticised by teachers of other subject areas, but I would argue, they can and do work very well in creative subjects.

Constructivist pedagogies are at the heart of art

Art teachers understand that there are few moments in an artists practice where they are completely satisfied with what they produce, so there are no end points of accomplishment. Secondly, there is no ‘best’ or ‘worst’ art; only the art we produce, and thirdly that motivation – the desire to want to keep making art, is crucial.

When we focus on too much on technique and mastery, when we value quality of outcome over the impulse to create, we place some students at the top, but the majority underneath. This works in competitive sport, where winning is an ultimate ambition, but not in school-based art, where we would very much like everyone to participate.

Surely, progressives would argue, school is a place to foster children’s creativity, to nurture their aspirations? Just as PE teachers now try to promote health for all by getting pupils to focus on their own general fitness, progressive teachers teach pupils that art is a subject of personal growth, not a competition.

A word about Curriculum Narrowing

You can raise pupils’ level of technical skill by selecting a narrower range of experiences in which pupils can specialise and so attain a higher level of competence. I’ve seen it done and it works. Some of the levels of technical skill in drawing and painting that pupils achieve are quite incredible. But as I’ve said, while skill is an important aspect of making good art, it’s just quite difficult to define what we mean when we say something is skilful and in any case, which skills are important?

In an ideal world, we would have the time to build priority skills to a high level and also have time for other art areas, but this isn’t possible. From age five to fourteen in the UK, pupils are lucky to get one hour art and design teaching time per week. Many don’t. Most pupils therefore, don’t achieve levels of accomplishment in art purely because they aren’t given sufficient time. It seems to make sense therefore, to do less to a higher standard.

Through curriculum narrowing you can make superficial learning gains. Pupils appear to be much more highly able and the argument is that, once a pupil has higher levels of technical skill, then they will be able to be more creative, because they have the knowledge and skills to express themselves.

Creativity

As a creative expert, I disagree with that notion. We don’t automatically become creative as more knowledge is added. Knowledge is essential of course, but the teaching of creative processes – how to utilise that knowledge, is also essential. The most knowledgeable people aren’t always the most creative. Often it is the novice that has that all important idea, which should teach us something.

Creativity, as I’ve said in many occasions, is knowledge in action. It’s doing stuff with the things we know. It’s playing with knowledge, inventing things with it, building on it, prodding, testing and poking it to see ‘what happens if…’

There aren’t many subjects in the school where pupils can be given the freedom to decide on their own learning, but art and design is one of them. Art is a subject geared predominantly to Project Based Learning; each term or half term is a lengthy project with a complex series of learning experiences built into them. The projects you design for your curriculum must motivate pupils, and so many of them don’t. That’s because, in too many instances, the outcome of the project can be predicted before it has even begun. Cubist portraits, Banksy Street Art, Still Life Flowers, Frida Khalo, Hokusai wave paintings, I could go on. Now there’s some great learning going on here. Nearly always, it’s knowledge and skills that are being taught. I’m learning about an artist and developing my making skills. But if it’s creativity you’re looking for, if it’s independent, motivated learners who make truly exciting art, then you’re missing some vital ingredients. What your projects are missing is pupil autonomy, personal choice, challenge and freedom.

It’s not either or. It’s both

Direct instruction sounds easiest, so why do we need any other teaching approach? We use two quite opposing methods of teaching art and design at different times and for different reasons;

1. Traditional: teacher-led, direct instruction approaches are used most often to transmit knowledge and skills from teacher to pupil.

2. Progressive: teacher as facilitator approaches develop the pupils’ unique creative voice. Creativity is nurtured from experiences the teacher designs.

Each of these approaches has strengths and weaknesses in the art room. Progressive teaching approaches nurture the creative predisposition we are born with. Traditional approaches foster the development of skill and knowledge more effectively.

Some art disciplines are still quite rooted in the mastery model. Ones that lean towards crafts such as ceramics, photography, printmaking or textiles, are still largely learned by absorbing a large amount of foundation knowledge and by following an expert tutor, before going off and doing your own thing. But Fine Art, and more general creativity, are areas of art where mastery of skills has less of a role.

Summary

I think I’ve illustrated that the pedagogy of art and design has a long history and is quite complex. Traditional, direct instruction methods were the standard way of teaching art for centuries until constructivism originated around the 19th century. It dominated art education for most of the 20th century, but in recent years, traditional forms of teaching have resurfaced.

As Ofsted say, there is no single correct way to teach the subject and teaching art is not easy. However, I think if you try to remember that when you’re imparting artist knowledge or a particular skill or technique, you’d more likely use a direct instruction, follow-me approach. When you want pupils to be creative and to employ that knowledge, then opt for a constructivist, all inclusive approach. That way I think you’ll do well.