Output details
34 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
Glasgow School of Art
The Student Experience in Art and Design Higher Education: Drivers for Change
The book, which Drew edited and to which she contributed a joint-authored chapter, is an edited collection from an ‘Open Space Technology’ Conference held at Cambridge University in 2007 by the Group for Learning in Art and Design (GLAD). The event formed part of a debate in Art and Design Education in Higher Education, which explored the student experience. This event and subsequent publication (2008) was supplemented with papers from the GLAD Conference 2008, held at Nottingham Trent University, which used the GLAD book from the Cambridge Conference ‘The Student Experience in Art and Design Higher Education: Drivers for Change’ as a stimulus.
The contribution to theory-building of this work is significant in recording a series of transitions that art and design students must negotiate as they move between the compulsory and post-compulsory education sector and between higher education and employment. The authors discuss those expectations and propose some ways forward for the 'wicked problems' of the often ambiguous and open-ended nature of learning tasks in art and design.
The co-authored chapter looks specifically at research and creativity in art and design as the points of contact between enquiry, the search for new knowledge, innovation and the recognition of new understandings within the student experience. This research utilises two assumptions: that creativity is a core concept in art and design; and research is a core practice in universities and art and design schools. The authors’ original position clarifies the understanding of creativity and research within art and design higher education, in order to articulate its potential impact upon future student experience. The authors then suggest the use of more recent theoretical models to support the field’s conception of creativity, and speculate that such a re- orientation can re-align disciplinary values with a coherent framing of research within the academic context.
