GLAD: Controversy and Conformity - 25 years of transforming the academy

Bernard Lisewski, Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching, Manchester Metropolitan University

5thJanuary 2015

Proposed papertitle

Problematizing the role of tutor-practitioners in making‘practice-based knowledge’available to students withinUniversityFashion School environments.
Aimof the paper

The purpose of this paperis to critically examine how “practice-based knowledge” can be imparted to students by part-time tutor-practitioners teaching in University Fashion School environments. It willexplore different conceptionsof “practice-based knowledge” and their associated pedagogic practices within this Higher Educationsetting.Amongst anexisting system of institutional power relations,the paper will adopt the perspective that knowledge and learning can be “viewed as forms of social expertise, that is, as knowledge in action situated in the historical, social and cultural contexts in which it arises and embodied in a variety of forms and media” (Nicolini, Gherardi and Yanow, 2003: 3).

The literature context out of which the paper emerged

WithinHigher Education visual artsteachingsuch as Fashion Design and Fashion Styling, creative industry practitioners are often employed on a part-time basis to bring theirprofessional knowledge to bear on the tutor-student learning relationship (Shreeve, Wareing and Drew, 2009; Budge, 2014). This relationship has been characterized as a “dialogic” one or “a kind of exchange” which reflects the “uncertainty and open-ended nature of creative production” (Shreeve, Sims and Trowler, 2010: 125).Such processes are likely to be manifested in experiential learning (Kolb,1984) methods with an emphasis on “doing and making, by enacting what it means to become an artist, designer or performer” (Shreeve, Sims and Trowler (op cit: 128).

Using a phenomenographic approach (Marton and Saljo, 1976), Shreeve (2008, 2009, 2010) examined how University tutor-practitioners in art and designexperienced the relationship between their creative professional practice and teaching. Five clearly distinguishable categories of variation in experiencing this relationship were highlighted: from passing on knowledge from practice to the student (Dropping In) to situations where practice and teaching became “one and the same thing (Integrating)” (Shreeve, 2010: 694). If the benefits of employing creative practitioners to teach within Higher Education art and design environments were to be maximized, Shreeve (2009: 158) concluded that there was a need to “explore how their practice-based knowledge [could] be made available to students”.This invitationalchallenge within a “relatively under-researched disciplinary area” (Shreeve, 2008: 169) raises a number of significant issues revolving around the:

  1. Different conceptions of “practice”and “knowledge” identified within the “practice-based approach” literature (Nicolini, Gherardi and Yanow, op cit; Nicolini, 2012; Blackler, 1995).
  1. Complexities of “practice” and “knowledge” transfer from one working context to another. As Lave (1993: 8) states, “Acquisition of knowledge is not a simple matter of taking in knowledge; rather, things assumed to be natural categories, such as ‘bodies of knowledge,’ ‘learners’ and ‘cultural transmission’ requirere-conceptualization as cultural, and social products”.
  1. System of institutional power relations under which the availability of “practice-based knowledge” from tutor-practitioners to students is either enabled or constrained by the “social boundaries (such as laws, rules, norms, institutional arrangements, and social identities)” (Hayward, 2000: 12) of the University Fashion School.

The paper will critically examine these issues and draw some implications around the role of the tutor-practitioner in such academic environments.

Bibliography

Blackler, F. (1995) ‘Knowledge, knowledge work and organizations: an overview and interpretation’, Organization Studies, 16(6) 1021-1046.

Budge, K. (2014) ‘Context and Performativity in Identity Choices: artists, designers and the academy’, Educate, 14(2) 32-43.

Kolb, D., (1984) Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and
Development, United States: Prentice Hall.

Lave, J. (1993) ‘The practice of learning’, Chaiklin, S. and Lave, J. (eds) Understanding Practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Marton, F. and Saljo, R. (1976) ‘On Qualitative Differences in Learning: I-Outcome and Process, British Journal of Educational Psychology, 46(1) 4-11 (a).

Nicolini, P. (2012) Practice Theory, Work, and Organization: An Introduction, United States: Oxford University Press, USA.

Nicolini, D., Gherardi, S. and Yanow, D. (2003) Knowing in Organizations: a practice basedapproach, New York: M.E. Sharpe.

Shreeve, A. (2008) ‘Transitions: variation in tutors’ experience of practice and teaching
relations in art and design’ Phd Department of Educational Research, Lancaster
University. Unpublished.
Shreeve, A., (2009) ‘I’d rather be seen as a practitioner, come in to teach my subject’:
Identity Work in Part-Time Art and Design Tutors, International Journal of Art and Design
Education, 28(2) 151-159.
Shreeve, A. (2010) ‘A phenomenographic study of the relationship between professional
practice and teaching your practice to others’, Studies in Higher Education, 35(6) 691-
703.
Shreeve, A., Sims, E. and Trowler, P., (2010). ‘A kind of exchange’: learning from art and
design teaching, Higher Education Research and Development, 29(2) 125-138.

Shreeve, A., Wareing, S. and Drew, L. (2009) ‘Key Aspects of Teaching in the Visual Arts’, Fry, H., Ketteridge, S., and Marshall, S. (eds) A Handbook for Teaching and Learning in higher Education, 345-362.

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