Dennis Atkinson

Theorising how student teachers form their identities in initial teacher education

This article investigates the forming of student teacher identities in initial teacher education. By analysing student narratives of school experiences the article argues that although reflective, reflexive and critical discourses are helpful interrogatory tools, they presuppose a prior subjectivity which fails to acknowledge the idea that it is through such discursive practices that subjectivity emerges. Such discourses also suggest an emancipatory project grounded in rationality. The article demonstrates that these reflective discourses fail to take into account non-symbolizable and non-rational aspects of experiencing that have powerful ontological effects on subjectivity and identity. Such aspects are structured in student narratives through fantasy, which allows students to understand their experiences as consistent and meaningful.

Assessment in Educational Practice: Forming Pedagogised Identities in the Art Curriculum

This paper draws on the work of Jacques Lacan and Jacques Derrida in order to present a discussion of how students and teachers in the field of art and design education achieve their pedagogised identities. My purpose is to offer some thoughts on assessment by advocating a project of difference which attempts to embrace childrens and students ontological orientations of practice. Assessment discourses which assume universal and essentialist ideas of ability are criticised and shown to presuppose objective or naturalist fantasies. A valuing of difference and the singularity of practice is proposed by describing five drawings produced by Year 7 students in a London secondary school, and then by referring to the Lacanian Real in order to extricate the art object from normative assessment discourses.

A Critical Reading of the National Curriculum for Art in the Light of Contemporary Theories of Subjectivity

In this paper I show how pupils become visible as pedagogic subjects in the art curriculum. With reference to the work of Foucault and Lacan I theorise how pupils’ subjectivities, or identities, are formed within discursive practices which constitute the art curriculum. A critical reading of practice is presented as it is conceived in the English National Curriculum for Art orders and the School Curriculum and Assessment Authority’s document, Exemplification of Standards, in order to show how pupils’ abilities are constructed and regulated. I argue that these documents are underpinned by an inadequate understanding of practice and assessment, which fails to acknowledge the difference and legitimacy of pupils’ semiotic/representational strategies. I proceed to offer some thoughts for reconceptualising the art curriculum by employing the term ‘difference’. My purpose is to highlight the need to develop a curriculum which offers a more inclusive space for practice, a space which is not driven by normative assessment frameworks, but which celebrates difference in practice and vigorous enquiry.

What is Art in Education? New Narratives of Learning

In this paper I address some questions pertinent to the development of school art education. I begin by considering how we relate to art and how we might understand the notion of this relation in terms of human subjectivity and the art object. To do this I describe particular art practices that have broadened social conceptions of art, which in turn, become part of art itself and shape performances of understanding, learning and practice. Implicit to this discussion is a change in how artists, art practice and engagement with art are conceived. I then consider some art events in school art education and analyse how human subjects, art practices and objects are understood in this context. This leads to further remarks about how learners and practice in school art education might be discerned in the light of the preceding discussion.

The Force of Art and Learning: Building a Life

This short chapter is a poetic piece on the finitude and infinitude of learning and teaching, and the pedagogic requirement to create learning spaces for the different rhythms of children’s learning practices. It advocates a requirement to respond effectively to the different ethologies and ecologies of learning.

Art, Pedagogies and Becoming: The Force of Art and the Individuation of New Worlds

This chapter will refer to recent art practices in order to explore the idea of a subject-yet-to-come in the domains of pedagogy and learning. It will argue for an immanence of pedagogy in art practice where the event of art and its affect, forces thought to think and to individuate new worlds. One aim is to try to think beyond conceptions of learning in which a clear differentiation is made between learner, teacher and knowledge and which tend to presuppose a metaphysics of representation and identity. In contrast, this chapter will consider learning as an amalgam of encounters or individuations whose virtuality or transcendent space always exceeds those forms that are actualized. Further consideration will given to an ethics and politics of learning.

Becoming in the Middle

This chapter presents and discusses some important concepts from the work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, which are then applied to processes of learning and teaching and the adventure of pedagogic work.

Ethics and Politics in Pedagogic Work

This chapter discusses the notions of event, encounter, relevance and obligation in relation to the practice of pedagogic work. It draws upon the ideas of Alfred North Whitehead discussed in Chap. 5 and the notions of relevance and obligation as discussed by Martin Savransky in order to consider the complex ethical territories of pedagogical work. Further considerations of ethics and politics in relation to pedagogic work are developed drawing upon the writings of Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Ranciere. The notions of transcendence and immanence are explored.

Restoring Pedagogic Work to the Incipience and Immanence of Learning: Disobedient Pedagogies

This chapter deals with two modes of pedagogical practice. The first, described as prescriptive, is driven by a desire for specific preordained pedagogised subjects that meet the needs of economic competition held in place by controlled curriculums, assessment and inspection programmes. Such practice follows planned routes determining educational success or failure. A second practice advocates a more uncertain pedagogical adventure characterised by novel modes of engagement that emphasise a subject-yet-to-come, where the notion of the not-known is immanent to such adventures. The tension between these two modes of practice is illustrated with reference to an art project entitled Rogue Game, in which subjective spaces collide and reform. The chapter tries to think beyond dominant conceptions of pedagogy as illustrated by the first mode, where clear ontological differentiations are made between learner, teacher and knowledge, and to consider pedagogic work as an ongoing process of material entanglements through which teachers and learners emerge.

Spinoza and the Challenge of Building a Life

This chapter considers the philosophical writings of Spinoza. It explores some of Spinoza’s key ideas from the Ethics relating to how we might comprehend the process of becoming. This is done by engaging with Spinoza’s work on affect and potential in order to consider how these notions can be employed to reflect upon the nature of pedagogic work as a practice that engages with learning processes that are not already prescribed but which often concern responding to the not-known. It is a matter of learning about how what we encounter affects us, how it empowers or dilutes our capacity to act effectively and experimenting with assemblages of practices that arise.