Art Now: Local Issues, National Concerns and International Significance

In its more than 40 years, the International Journal of Art & Design Education has included insights into the contemporary issues and challenges facing art education and those who continue to advocate for its value. It has provided a venue for research that continues to examine the distinct role that art, craft and design plays in education. In July 2023 Art Now: an inquiry into the state of art and design teaching in early years, foundation stage, primary and secondary education (Thomson et al. 2023) was published. The report represented an evidence-based inquiry into the current state of art education in the United Kingdom. Whilst the inquiry, and subsequent report, offered insights into the current state of play across the four nations of the UK, it focused more specifically on survey data from England, as well as drawing on a Rapid Evidence Review (RER), work that underpins a paper published in this current issue by Liam Molloy and Pat Thomson. For readers of iJADE, and for those who have advocated for art education across sectors, the report offers an important summary of current concerns. In particular, it highlights the deficit in subject knowledge of art, craft and design in current models of teacher education, particularly for children and young people. The authors make a number of recommendations, including the introduction of measures to address the deficit in art and design training at primary level (5-11 years); investment in subject-specific continued professional development for teachers of art and design; the development of a means of addressing crises in teacher well-being and workload; the need to resolve the issues of recruitment, retention and representation in art and design and the need for a fuller investigation into disadvantages in access to the arts caused both by the pandemic and the current cost-of-living crises. The concern that there is too little emphasis on art education within the curriculum is a theme that resonates at an international level, although there are particular concerns that the United Kingdom has been hit by social, political and cultural issues that are having a particularly detrimental impact on the place that art occupies, not only within the curriculum but within the broader cultural landscape. However, the social inequality and insecurity underpinning these concerns are felt at local, national and international levels. Whilst evidence points to the social, cultural and educational benefits of art, craft and design, there are historical precedents for an ongoing need to defend their position in nurseries, schools, colleges and the university. Importantly, there has been support for the inquiry and its report at the highest levels via the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for art education. This scholarly approach to evidence gathering and reporting highlights the vital importance of our support for impactful research in art education. Work referenced in this recent report into art education provides a starting point for Liam Molloy and Pat Thomson who discuss the results of a Rapid Evidence Review (RER) into the benefits of art education. In particular, the authors reflect on the presence of student voice within research in this area where the emphasis on voice and participation in critical social practices in art education contrast with the comparatively limited participation of students as researchers. The paper advocates for greater inclusivity in this respect in order to more fully appreciate the situated experiences of children and young people, particularly those whose experiences have traditionally been less well represented. Whilst activism and advocacy for art education must be central, we must also reflect on the ways our subject is researched, the topics that need to be addressed and the methodologies that can be most useful to our local, national and international contexts. This general issue offers insights from established and emerging scholars in the field of art and design education. This is not untypical of iJADE, a journal which hopes to foster developmental opportunities for new as well as more established contributors. Whilst a range of themes are included in this issue, a number of papers highlight contemporary issues in design education, including the emergence of new technologies. In a seemingly apocalyptic paper (Destroy all Humans…) Mark Roxborough, Ben Matthews and Barrie Shannon offer a timely review of literature on Automation, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) in visual communication and, more specifically, graphic design. The work acknowledges the limited availability of literature on this topic and cautions on the need for emerging designers to be more fully prepared for the implications of these new and incipient technologies. Ilaria Marinari and Mariana Ciancia present their findings from a study, carried out over a six-year period into the uses of Interactive Digital Narratives (IDNs) as a means of furthering educational and social change. They explore the pedagogic possibilities of including IDNs for designers-in-training as a tool for understanding and promoting social change. The themes of this paper resonate with work by Fiona Chatteur and Mieke Leppens who examine the visual representation of infographics used to report on incidences of COVID-19 in Sydney, Australia in the recent pandemic. The paper engages with data visualisation and the aesthetic appeal of the regular updates communicated at this time and reflects on the implications for communication design students, particularly in the light of the need for teamwork across disciplinary divides. Virginie Tessier and Mathilde Loiselle Carbonneau also address an aspect of design education, examining approaches to teamwork that will encourage new designers to appreciate the social nature of design. Employing a theoretical framework that takes account of the zone of proximal development (ZPD) and assessment for learning (AfL), the paper draws on a constructive framework in order to propose a teamwork skills model as a holistic approach that takes account of personal, project, organisational, learning and social domains. The authors conclude by advocating for a formal structuring of teamwork as a means of promoting more effective interdisciplinary work. Brenda Saris, Stephanie Doyle and Judith Loveridge critique the emphasis on individual expression in relation to creative learning. The work employs Cultural Historic Activity Theory (CHAT) to examine the influence of western design traditions on students studying visual communication in a university in China. Finally, two papers in this issue consider access and interpretative processes in museum and gallery engagement with children. Sylvia Ya Hsuan and Stephanie Sanders-Smith offer a discourse analysis of meaning-making during school visits to the art museum. Their study analyses responses by children, teachers and museum educators in order to offer an in-depth exploration of the ways that the young people negotiate meaning within the gallery context. In related work, Tam Cheung On and Claire Ka Yan Hui report on a recent project to explore teachers as digital curators of online exhibitions during the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper offers examples of the ways that online exhibitions could be curated to enhance curriculum topics but recognises the significant challenges this presented for educators in terms of preparation time and the need for more specific training. Concluding this general issue, Avril Buttle and Mary Mullaney consider the particularity of art-based learning and its application across subject areas in schools in the Republic of Ireland. Drawing on inspection reports and interviews with a range of school-based practitioners, a summary of subject qualities in Junior Cycle (JC) Visual Art (VA) is identified and discussed. Claire Penketh is Head of Disability Studies and Core member of the Centre for Culture and Disability Studies at Liverpool Hope University. She is Principal Editor of the International Journal of Art and Design Education and author of A History of Disability & Art Education and A Clumsy Encounter: Dyspraxia and Drawing. She is also co-editor of Disability, Avoidance and the Academy along with her colleague Professor David Bolt. Claire has published a number of special issues on the topic of disability studies and art education including Drawingability for Drawing Research Theory and Practice with Doris Rohr, The Biopolitics of Art Education for the Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies with Jeff Adams and a thematic Issue on Disability Justice: Decentering Colonial Knowledge, Centering Decolonial Epistemologies for Research in Arts and Education with Alexandra Allen and Alice Wexler. She is a member of the National Society for Education in Art and Design Education (NSEAD) and chair of their special interest group on Anti-ableist Pedagogy. Contact address: Liverpool Hope University, Liverpool, UK. Email: [email protected]

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