Comparing art & design curricula across compulsory and higher education

Abstract

Defined within UAL’s Creative attributes framework as– the enthusiasm to seek out new perspectives, to create and build on existing knowledge, curiosity is not currently named within art & design assessment criteria from GCSE to UAL undergraduate levels although it maintains an implicit presence throughout, particularly within areas such as research and idea development. However it’s absence prompts questions about the possibility of assessing curiosity within HE and compulsory education contexts.

This paper draws upon research carried out during the Negotiated Studies unit of the Academic Practice MA that mapped and analysed assessment criteria within Art & Design qualifications from GCSE to undergraduate levels. The project was supervised by Nick Addison.

The research sought to better understand a student’s journey to creative higher education within the English compulsory education system. Following a coding and mapping phase that organised the assessment criteria into five categories, (research, developing ideas, presentation, evaluation, meta-cognition and self management), the alignment (or potential disjuncture) of curriculum requirements was explored through the theory of Threshold Concepts by Land, Cousin, Meyer, Davies, (2003).

Findings that some UAL undergraduate marking criteria represent a significant departure from the assessment requirements of previous phases are well articulated by (Meyer and Land 2003)s conceptual gateway concepts of ‘transformative (occasioning a significant shift in the perception of a subject), and integrative (exposing the previously hidden inter-relatedness of something)

The Camberwell, Chelsea and Wimbledon outreach team is currently building upon this research through a redesigned programme of study that foregrounds approaches to research.