Evaluating Practice-based Learning and Teaching in Art and Design

The University of the Arts London is host to the Creative Learning in Practice Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CLIP CETL), which has funded a number of small course-based evaluative and developmental projects. These projects have been designed by course tutors in conjunction with the CLIP CETL team, who are evaluating them to better understand and extend the pedagogies of practice-based teaching and learning. Practice-based learning is a way of conceptualising and organising student learning which can be used in many applied disciplinary contexts. Such pedagogies we argue are founded on the claim that learning to practice in the creative industries requires engagement with authentic activities in context (Lave and Wenger 1991, Wenger 2000). This short paper will describe some of the initial evaluation and research activities in two colleges; identify and define practice-based activities in the context of the courses where the research is being carried out; identify emerging pedagogic frameworks; and discuss implications for further development. Activities identified in the projects undertaken include: Opportunities to develop students‟ direct contact with industry Simulating work-based learning in the University Event-based learning Enhancing professional practice and PPD
The authors are seeking to elicit, analyse and evaluate what is often implicit in practitioner-teachers, and the experience of developing pedagogies for extending practice-based learning. We will be theorising from statements made by practitioners in semi-structured interviews and evidence provided in progress reporting from the project teams.

Alison Shreeve

Research Interests

My research interests include students' and tutors' experience of teaching and learning in the arts, with a social practice emphasis.

Current Research

I have a PhD in Educational Research from the University of Lancaster. My thesis explores the role of the practitioner who also teaches, looking specifically at the variation in the experience they have of the relationship between practice and teaching. I examine the contextual factors of past histories of development individuals bring to their two work environments and the interactions within and between these two environments that help to influence their experience. The variation in the relationship between practice and teaching can influence the kinds of learning experiences students have in art and design F/HE.

I use a phenomenographic approach to the research in order to explore variation in practice/ teaching relations and activity theory as a heuristic to consider the different work contexts and the relationship between them as experienced by practitioner tutors. This enables us to understand how practice/ teaching relations are experienced and also to examine possible contextual factors in relation to variation. I also consider the role of identity as an important and often overlooked aspect of research using these approaches and I include a discussion of identity as a particular way to understand individuals working within and across different activities.

• http://www.coventry.ac.uk/researchnet/d/...