Art Education: Curriculum & Pedagogy, Secondary Level

Encountering Pedagogy through Relational Art Practices 

Encountering Pedagogy through Relational Art Practices by Rita L. Irwin and Dr. Donal O’Donaghue attempts to examine how learning can “create environments for meaningful exchanges” when two artists in residence and a class of art education students doing their practicum work together on an art project called the “Summerhill Residency”. They took an existing book titled “Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Child Rearing” and changed it into “”Summerhill: Revised: A Radical Approach to Teacher/Child Rearing”.

The teacher candidates drew imagery in the margins of the book to transpose their own ideas about pedagogy onto the pages. One practicum student was interested in the idea that they were the medium in this particular art project, because even though they did the art, it was the artists in residence who received the credit. Some of the art teacher candidates seemed unsure about the purpose of the art project and some of them struggled to find the connection to their art practice or their future teaching practice. Could this be due to the fact that the abstract concepts presented by their teachers were too general or vague?

The article itself is an interesting study of what happens when you throw artists and art teacher candidates together to see what happens. However the writing is at times rather abstract and difficult to relate to because it is full of art teacher jargon and it lacks specificity. Perhaps the teacher candidates felt the same way and found the concepts too vague to be able to latch onto any personal or relatable meaning in order to stimulate their imaginations.

While the article does raise some interesting questions about pedagogy it does little to answer them. How is reverse pedagogy used in this project and what can we learn from it? What is transpersonal pedagogy? What role did a/r/tography play in this particular scenario and how did it influence the artwork? While it can be fascinating to explore concepts like pedagogy, a/r/tography, and other ‘high art educator jargon’, is there a danger of alienating our students, alienating others, or even alienating ourselves by continuing to perpetrate material that is too vague or difficult for most people to relate to?

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Our class had the pleasure of having Dr. Donal O’Donaghue visit our art education class in September 2018. I asked him what his intention was in doing the Summerhill project and he replied that ‘non-intention’ was also one of the intentions. He described how several of the art pieces he has been involved with as artist, teacher and researcher have been explorations of observing what happens when you put people and situations together in an art and a/r/tography context. He is interested in having us ‘pay attention’ to what contemporary artists are doing, and to point artists and ideas out to our students so that they can make their own discoveries. He is an eloquent speaker and I loved his ideas. Thanks for visiting us Donal!