Art teachers urged to take risks with new technology
- Diarmuid McAuliffe, subject leader for art and design at the University of the West of Scotland
0 commentsPublished on 4 Mar 2010
Art teachers should overcome their fear of risk-taking and schools should embrace mobile phones and other technology, according to the academic behind a new degree in the subject.
Diarmuid McAuliffe, subject leader for art and design at the University of the West of Scotland (UWS) school of education, says schools have tended to ban mobile phones, ignoring their potential for creativity. Meanwhile art teaching has been too hidebound and slow to take up the potential of a range of new media and electronic tools.
Mr McAuliffe, right, is co-ordinating a conference on Saturday week which will explore what the curriculum for excellence will mean for art teachers, and introduce a new qualification, the MEd Artist Teacher CPD course, to be run at the university from September.
The course, the only one of its kind in Scotland, will be delivered in partnership with Glasgow Museums and the National Society for Education in Art and Design (NSEAD). The event is designed as a taster for the new course.
Mr McAuliffe said that the examining and teaching of art was too dependent on templates, and under the new curriculum would have to do more to demonstrate that it could be challenging and relevant.
“Art education has been almost entirely risk averse, and this is about breaking that model,” he said. “With art and design in particular it is the case that students are much more au fait with the means with which we can express ourselves than teachers often are. It is an area where the teacher is no longer the expert.”
He added that Scotland had been the last country in the UK to embrace film-based education but that the potential for art to enhance topics under a curriculum for excellence was huge. “It is the cross-curricular vehicle par excellence,” he said. Asked for examples of areas in which art teaching tended to be risk-averse, Mr McAuliffe highlighted use of mobile phones, and pupils’ common use of technologies such as Photoshop and YouTube. “Students have hand-held devices capable of making films, but they haven’t been embraced by the teaching profession, which has gone down the banning route. But children have not been educated to use them. If they were given the creative lead, I believe we would have less happy slapping and abuses.
“Photography is a subject which was difficult to teach 12 years ago, but now nearly every pupil has a mini camera stuffed in their school bag. Art teachers are well capable of making meaningful use of them.”
The new course at UWS explores some of these issues, allowing teachers to develop their art practice in fields such as fine art and design, public art, performance and film-based media and digital art. It will also emphasise the importance of contemporary art, Mr McAuliffe said. “Contemporary art raises contemporary issues, and we need to be dealing with relevant issues, particularly under the new curriculum.”
“This new postgraduate degree is the first of its kind in Scotland and will enable teachers to critically examine and evaluate models of art educational practice in historical and contemporary contexts ... and encourage participants to question and challenge the beliefs that dominate our schools today.”
The link-up with Glasgow Museums will give course participants enhanced access to 13 museums and will ensure that museums benefit from research carried out at the university.
The event at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum next week is the first of a planned annual series. Speakers will include Dr Paul Dash of Goldsmiths University of London; Dr Richard Yeomans, a leading scholar in artist teacher education; Scott Donaldson of Scottish Screen; and Terry Parker of Liverpool John Moores University.
It is aimed at anyone teaching art in primary or secondary schools, as well as anyone teaching art in other settings such as healthcare.
The Herald
