Task 6c

My inquiry will focus on whether art is more effective as an extra-curricular activity or as a core curriculum subject in Emotional Behaviour Difficulties (EBD) schools and in particular my work place. Art is offered both as a curriculum subject and as an extra-curricular activity, but there has been very little interest from students on choosing art related subject for further education after finishing year 11 in my secondary school. I am very interested to find out how different art programmes in mainstream and other EBD institutes compare to my school. In this task I will review the writing of American art educator and writer Elliot Eisner, the report document from UNNESCO on the World Conference on Arts Education: Road Map for Arts Education and the Guardian article: Arts education defended by star-studded campaign, by Vanessa Thorpe.

From early in Eisner career he found that “most schools were failing to properly appreciate the significance of art, were offering an unnecessarily and seriously unbalanced approach to education”. He recognised the current forms of learning and teaching was inadequate because they lacked artistic modes of thinking (Uhrmacher 2001: 247). Eisner concept is that art is not only driven by emotion (“creative force”), but rather an approach that is developed towards cognitive art and that art has a “unique contribution to make to growing children” (Uhrmacher 2001: 248).  

“He was later to argue that approaches which simply gave children arts materials in the hope that their creativity might flow resulted in programmes 'with little or no structure, limited artistic content, and few meaningful aims' (Eisner 1988)”.

He questioned the strength of art programmes offered to students and whether art was presented to students for art sake and as light subject with no real purpose. He argued that the skills learnt in art by students are very much transferable to other subjects and student’s social and cultural life will also benefit from schools providing a well structured art programme (“cognitive art”).   

In his Artistry theory he writes about educators needing to be more creative rather than ‘one moulded clocklike character of the assembly line’ and he believed that the field of education has much to learn from the arts about the practice of education.

“Viewing education work as an expression of artistry allows us to look beyond the technical and to develop more creative and appropriate responses to the situations that educators and learners encounter”. 

Smith, M. K. (2005) 'Elliot W. Eisner, connoisseurship, criticism and the art of education', the encyclopaedia of informal education, www.infed.org/thinkers/eisner.htm.

In 2006 UNESCO held a World Conference on Arts Education, titled “Road Map for Arts Education”. The resulting document states that the conference, “aims to explore the role of Arts Education in meeting the need for creativity and cultural awareness in the 21st Century, and places emphasis on the strategies required to introduce or promote Arts Education in the learning environment”.

UNESCO recognised the importance that art education has in all aspect of education. Their document seeks to promote a common understanding to all stakeholders of the essential role that art education plays in improving the overall quality of education. The document is meant to act as a reference point that outlines concrete changes and steps required to produce or promote art education in both formal and informal settings and to establish a solid framework for future decisions and actions.

The “Road Map” aim is to bring together delegations from different countries to establish a “vision and develop a consensus” on how important art education is to building on the following: “creative and culturally aware society; encourage collaboration reflection and action; and garner the necessary financial and human resources to ensure the more complete integration of Arts Education into education systems and schools”.

The conference objective was to address questions that remain to be central issues that affect the approach of arts practitioners, teachers, students and policy makers. The Road Map seeks to attempt a comprehensive response to the following questions and to emphasises that creative and cultural development should be a basic function of education;

“Is Arts Education taught for appreciation alone or should it be seen as a means to enhance learning in other subjects?”

“Should art be taught as a discipline for its own sake or for the body of knowledge, skills and values to be derived from it (or both)?”

“Is Arts Education for a gifted few in selected disciplines or is Arts Education for all?”  

http://www.unesco.org/pv_obj_cache/pv_obj_id_3B467F3E109115E1931A1403AEB5E2F6C6630300/filename/Arts_Edu_RoadMap_en.pdf

The Guardian article ‘Arts education defended by star-studded campaign’, documents the actions of various famous people including artists, teachers, parents, theatre directors, writers and performers. Together they formed an alliance against government plans “to concentrate the British schools' curriculum on a core of "traditional" subjects”. They signed a document, put together by the Cultural Learning Alliance, to show the government that the participation of a broad mix of cultural experience from a young age improves attainment of students. The report claims that: “taking part in arts activities, can demonstrably increase children's cognitive skills”. Professor Mick Waters, a curriculum expert and member of the alliance, claims that providing children with the opportunity to visit galleries and museums is invaluable.

The National Association of Schoolmasters and the Union of Woman Teachers outlined their concerns in a survey, which suggest that, “one in eight schools is planning to reduce the provision of arts, drama and music. The poll of 2,500 teachers revealed that 13% had already cut those subjects”.

This curriculum move is blamed on the impact of the government’s English Baccalaureate (Ebacc), that requires students to gain good GCSEs in two sciences, a language, English, maths and in either history or geography. These requirements will push schools away from arts subject and pay more attention on reaching the target set by the Ebacc.

The alliance provides evidence that students who take part in art subjects have a high employability. Students from low-income families are three times likely to obtain a degree if they have previously taken art subjects.  Partaking in art subjects increase students’ transferable skills by about 10% to 17% and based on previous research show the student’s cognitive skills could be increased by 16% and 19%.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/nov/05/arts-education-defended-by-campaign