Understanding Art: The Play of Work and the Spectator
Monica Vilhauer
UNDERSTANDING AS PLAY
‘A shared understanding is in this way an interpretive event that takes place in a play of presenting and recognising meaning.’
Page 32
An idea of understanding being joyful feels powerful and accurate.
Reminds me of W.B Yeats quote from the poem Tom O’Roughley:
‘And wisdom is a butterfly
And not a gloomy bird of prey.’
Reminds me of a colleague who used to talk about ‘serious play’ being what we needed to get students to do.
Reminds me of the way children use pretend play to ‘learn about themselves and the world’, ‘develop important complex social and higher order thinking skills’, ‘cultivate social and emotional intelligence’, ‘synthesize knowledge and skills’ (Dr Scott Kaufman, Psychology Today, 2012)
Reminds me of Bell Hooks talking about excitement in the classroom (page 7, Teaching to Transgress)
‘The first paradigm that shaped my pedagogy was the idea that the classroom should be an exciting place never boring. And if boredom should prevail, then pedagogical strategies were needed that would intervene, alter, even disrupt the atmosphere.’
And another of Hooks’ statements seems to link to Gadamer’s sense of the dynamism and movement of play:
‘Excitement could not be generated without the full recognition of the fact that there could never be an absolute set agenda governing teaching practices. Agendas had to be flexible, had to allow for spontaneous shifts in direction.’
________________________________________________________________________
THIS PLAY IS DYNAMIC, SPONTANEOUS AND NEEDS SPACE FOR VARIABILITY
‘Crucial to Gadamer’s notion of play as an event is that it is a process whose character is fundamentally dynamic.’
‘Spontaneous back and forth movement (Bewegung) that continually renews itself.’
(Page 32)
‘It cannot be fully determined or mechanical but involves the possibility of spontaneity and variety for the movement of play to occur, then, there must be room reserved for the freedom of variability‘
(Page 33)
This reminds me of the need for space when planning any learning activity or any part of the curriculum at all. Space for spontaneity and to respond to learners and what the movement or direction of learning needs itself.
The benefits of the Theory Y leaning environment as put forward by Douglas McGregor also seem related:
‘Teachers operating on Theory Y assume that students do their best work when given freedom and space to use their own judgement, that while bureaucratisation of the classroom and of the institution may be necessary to run a tight ship, too much will be counterproductive for good learning.’
(Page 41, Teaching for Quality Learning at University, Biggs and Tang)
And the importance of guarding against an ‘obsession with coverage: too many topics, each taught with equal emphasis’
‘if you’re determined to cover a lot of things, you are guaranteeing that most kids will not understand, because they haven’t had time enough to go into things in depth, to figure out what the requisite understanding is, and be able to perform that understanding in different situations. ‘
(Gardner 1993:24)
On page 43, Teaching for Quality Learning at University, Biggs and Tang)
Also, ideas of space – ‘intellectual, practical and space-for-being’ (page 145) as an ontological necessity for real learning as highlighted by Ronald Barnett in a ‘A Will to Learn. Barnett also highlights the responsibility and need for practitioners to fight for space – ‘Space is not there. It needs to worked at and worked for’. He talks about the fact that resistance can come from institutions. They might talk of this space limitation:
Being ‘in the student’s interests: we are controlling their experience so that potential risk is minimized and their success is all the more assured and even more efficiently achieved.’
Or to avoid students today who are ‘litigious’
Or because ‘The limitation of space allows those in positions of power to retain their curricula and pedagogical hegemony. It lets them off the hook. They retained their unassailed position, unchallenged in the presence of docile students, a disability that their ‘teachers’ will have brought about.
And students who ‘may be reluctant to accept the challenges of space, preferring a uni-directional situation, in which they look to assimilate what is put before them.’
________________________________________________________________________
THIS DYNAMISM RELIES ON DIFFERENCE
‘It is a process that is fundamentally dynamic, interactive, and variable in a way that relies on the engagement between things or players that are different from each other.’
(Page 33)
This seems to me to speak to the value of diversity to all student learning. This links back to the need to have a diverse student body, curriculum and institution and to help all students see this an opportunity. Diversity is essential for high quality understanding and learning and to deprive students of that is to do them a disservice and not offer them the best. In a similar way to arguments put forward regarding the reintroduction of stories, practitioners and events that have been removed from art history – It is not a question of giving the history of certain groups special treatment but merely of a presenting a complete and more accurate picture.
________________________________________________________________________
IT HAPPENS TOGETHER
‘Play … An activity that always goes on in between the players and reaches beyond the behaviour or consciousness of any individual player.’
‘Gadamer teaches us to recognise how understanding itself only takes place in a dynamic, interactive, interpretive process of working through meaning with others.’
Page 32
This seems important too as it something that students can be resistant to. They sometimes want to seek out the tutor voice. This underlines the fact that it is part of teacher’s role to help students value each other as a learning resource.
This resonates with Ronald Barnett again when he talks of a student’s relationship to their peers:
‘The voice to be encouraged in higher education is not a solo voice, but neither is it one in unison with all others. It is more like the improvisation of the jazz player in an ensemble. The student finds new possibilities in her own self, these possibilities being realised in situ, in company with others the student takes account of the rhythms and styles of the work at hand, and of the tones and offerings of those around her, and yet is able to come forth with her own offering, fresh and vital, adding to the totality of voices and sounds.’
(Page 56)
Barnett also broaden out our idea of who the student might be playing the game of understanding with, when in a section on authenticity he raises the ideas of Heidegger:
‘Coming at things in one’s own way is not to be achieved in isolation from other voices, but, on the contrary, in their company. It lies not in personal detachment, but in a modification of these voices. Again, do we not have here two other ideas that are central to Western higher education, namely those, on the one hand, of students immersing themselves in the major voices, texts and conversations relevant to their studies, and on the other hand, of being in critical dialogue with these voices? The students educational being becomes itself, wins itself, partly through that critical dialogue.
(Page 43)
So ‘play’ and ‘game’ is happening with people in the room, people in the world and in all art and design history.
________________________________________________________________________
The Teaching Excellence Framework: Short Guide
I completed the quiz. The question that synthesised some of my thoughts was this:
The results of the 2019 TEF show that “high levels of excellence can be found in all types of higher education provider.” Assuming you can read this without pedantically wondering what a LOW level of excellence would look like, what does the statement mean to you?
For me, this statement helps me understand that the government sees excellence in education in specific terms and that those terms do not necessarily correlate with my own or those of other educators.
The measures focus on employment and further study. However, higher education has a value beyond these areas, in terms of meaningful experience and lasting changes to thinking and being. There may be challenges in measuring these more complex qualities, but they still exist and are not even acknowledged.
The 6 month time frame, means that the value of learning in the longer term or over a lifetime is not considered. Students at this stage of their lives and careers are unable to give you a sense of the future value that their education will have.
Even in the shorter term and looking from the TEF’s narrower point of view in terms of value, this time limit could give rise to inaccuracy for professional areas where graduates are employed later such as the visual and performing arts.
The strongest theme in the measures is on student satisfaction. This raises issues around the fact that meaningful learning is often challenging and active. ‘Satisfaction’ is not always synonymous with excellent learning and is reminiscent of a consumer passively receiving a service. The statement makes it clear that it is not surprising that student feedback shows us they expect to be ‘taught’ rather than to ‘learn’ (as highlighted by James Wisdom in one of the first lectures) when they are being delivered an idea of their role as passive from the highest authority in the land.
The statement therefore also gives me an idea of the attitudes that need to be challenged on courses and in classrooms. It makes me consider how this could be done. Perhaps, in learning sessions directly engaging students in activities and discussion around their own learning role or through opening up discussion around the language educators use when gathering feedback and why a word like ‘satisfaction’ is problematic.
See blog post Learning Roles and Feedback for more.