I am starting a new project along with Pat Thomson, Ken Jones and Chris Hall.
This piece of research has been commissioned by Creativity, Culture and Education (CCE) to explore the pedagogy at the heart of the Creative Partnerships programme, and to characterise the distinct ways of working that artists and other creative practitioners bring with them to their work in education.
The key aim of the research is to produce rich and nuanced descriptions of how such professionals work with young people in classroom in partnership with teachers. This will include:
- The introduction of the topic/outcome
- The ways in which new information is introduced, scaffolded and used
- The nature, scope, sequence, depth and pacing of activities
- The way in which ‘good work’ is conceptualised and communicated
- The conduct of classroom conversations, the language used, and the voices that are heard/not heard.
- The relationship between the ‘formal’ knowledge of the school and the knowledges/cultural experience of students
- The use of artefacts, spaces, texts, gestures, gaze and the significance of timing
- The opportunities for reflection, and the nature of formative and summative assessment
- The relationships at classroom level – between mandated policies, classroom management techniques and ‘creative’ practice, and between teacher, pupils and artist.
The project will run November 2010 – October 2011 and is based at the University of Nottingham and Goldsmith College, University of London The team will work in 12 classrooms and follow a number of artists and creative practitioners beginning, developing and reflecting on projects as well as looking at how they work alongside young people and teachers. It will show how creative classroom practices are inflected by the age of students, the creative practice on offer and the ways in which teachers work with creative practitioners/artists.
The team will film much of this observation and aim to produce practical outputs for teachers which will be disseminated at the end of the project.