In the previous section, I noted how both Simon (1981) and Alexander (2004) cri- tique the English teaching tradition for failing to consider why education matters and how these values are shaped discursively. At the same time, I argued earlier that pedagogic discourse draws attention to values in ways that are critical to deepening and extending artists’ engagement with others based on my experience at New Urban Arts. Therefore, I wanted to interrogate more deeply the assump- tions I was making when approaching the relationship between action and values.
Doddington & Hilton (2007, p. xiii) argue that values must be the starting point for any consideration in education because teaching, broadly construed, expresses different visions for what constitutes “the good”. Values, in other words, describe what one believes matters. These beliefs inevitably manifest in teaching. Nod- dings (1991) argues that values are inescapable from teaching, as school teachers
teach and employ values either “thoughtfully and deliberately or mindlessly, by default” (p. 321). Noddings (1991) therefore suggests that teachers and students need opportunities to “analyse their own practices for the values underlying them” (p. 322). As a result, teachers will be in a better position to “make genuine com- mitments to deliberately chosen values” (Noddings, 1991, p. 322).
By suggesting the need for “genuine commitments”, Noddings appears to argue that this process of clarifying values is a way for teachers and students to direct how and why they teach and learn. In other words, teachers and students can determine whether their actions and values express what they believe is good, not what they have been “asked to follow” (Noddings, 1991, p. 321). The opportunity for artists to express their values was my interest because research had not es- tablished how artists’ values relate to the social and economic aspirations driving their engagement in the UK.
The relationship between pedagogic authorship and values is also a particular concern in the UK education context. Doddington & Hilton (2007, p. xiii) point out that the National Curriculum, which both Simon (1981) and Alexander (2004) consider an aspect of pedagogy, failed to mention any underlying values when it was first published in 1988. Yet the National Curriculum arguably began to cen- tralise values. The National Curriculum may have served to mark a moment when teachers’ consideration of values began to feel less necessary or possible, thus re- ducing teachers to value-less technicians (Hargreaves, 2000; Furlong et al., 2000; Hoyle, 1995). The curriculum may undermine classroom teachers’ sense of profes- sionalism by not asking them to consider why education matters and how their values manifest through their didactics.
The potential deprofessionalisation of teachers through the National Curriculum led me to consider the important relationship between pedagogic reflection and authorship. Pedagogic reflection was fundamental to the approach I encouraged at New Urban Arts. Noddings (1991, p. 322) describes values as underlying action and suggests that deliberative reflection can uncover values. Reflection becomes a process of peeling away, unmasking, or scratching at the surface of actions that manifest particular values. This perspective towards reflection intimates that val- ues are somewhat buried and mysterious. Nonetheless, Noddings (1991) argues that pedagogic reflection provides an opportunity for teachers to recalibrate their actions based on their evolving understanding of what constitutes the good in the specific situation they find themselves.
There are alternative perspectives. Henriksson (2007, p. 6) argues that pedagogies reside more deeply in bodies than minds and are therefore somewhat difficult to put into words. From this phenomenological perspective, Henriksson (2007) ar- gues that greater attention must be paid to describing action. At the same time, Bartolom´e (1994) critiques the focus on action as a “fetish”, particularly among inexperienced teachers. The fetish involves teachers seeking out didactics consid- ered universally effective. Indeed, teachers may feel a practical necessity to find didactics that work given the the disorientation and near impossibility that comes with how much must be managed in a classroom situation (McIntyre & Brown, 1993). Searching for why education matters to teachers and how these values man- ifests in didactics adds complexity and further uncertainty to what may already feel like an untenable situation. Pedagogic reflection, what McIntyre & Brown (1993) call practical theorisation, could create this dissonance; it might highlight the incompatibilities between the actions and values teachers describe (Wertsch, 1998). Doddington & Hilton (2007) add that didactics are “rarely made on the
basis of a single value” (p. xii), which further adds to the complexity of pedagogic reflection.
For my research, I was attuned to the notion that uncovering values and its re- lationship to action is mysterious. I assumed moving forward that this mystery partly stemmed from the role of values in pedagogy, which is inescapable and in- herently complex. Therefore, I was mindful that pedagogic research should wrestle with and present this complexity. An interest in complexity led me away from tax- onomies of artist pedagogy, such as Jeffery’s (2005) or Gradel’s (2001) accounts. It led me towards an interest in representing pedagogy poetically, allowing for metaphor that attempts to grasp at its somewhat elusive characteristics (van Ma- nen, 1990). Representing this complexity would reiterate that any represented actions and values are not the final say that could be effective in any situation. I was seeking to engage in pedagogic research that represented the complexity and the specificity within particular situations that artists confront. I hoped this focus on specificity would provoke others to consider and perhaps author pedagogies most relevant for their values and situations.
The mystery of discovering underlying values might also emerge from the em- bodied nature of pedagogy. The emerging portrait of pedagogy discussed so far represents actions done with bodies, though these bodies are immersed in dis- course, as Alexander (2000) argues, that shapes possibilities for action. Educators such as teachers and artists are immersed in a particular time, place, and discourse as they engage with others. Phenomenologists describe this methodological field as the lifeworld (van Manen, 1990). Reflecting upon pedagogy is perhaps an attempt to scratch at the surface of that immersion, thus uncovering how different values manifest in situated action. James (1901) argues, through his immersive theory of
time and continuity, that any effort to represent this situatedness is retrospective. Reflection produces second-hand representations never fully up to the task of cap- turing what occurred.
The values described through pedagogic research can not be interpreted as causes of action. Therefore, I approached values as the fruit of constructing meaning ret- rospectively. Attempting to discover why actions were meaningful to artists would not be possible until the actions settled into what Dewey (1938/1998, 1934/2005) describes as experiences, or situated events identifiable in the past. The process of values clarification that Noddings (1991) describes, and that I facilitated at New Urban Arts, can be part of preparing, or perhaps refashioning, the body to act in the future in ways that attempt to author one’s interpretation of the good. Pro- ducing pedagogic research in the UK that is generative for artists was important to me because of the centralisation of pedagogy and the little concern given to artists’ values when shaping initiatives to engage them. I wanted to represent the complexity of artists’ pedagogies to provide points of connection and departure that provoked artists engaged in similar work.
The way artists described values is also inevitably shaped by the discourses in which they are immersed. The possibility for genuine commitments for which Noddings (1991) advocates is therefore contested. Yet I believed there remained some possibility for them, no matter how remote. If the possibility for genuine au- thorship was not assumed, then there would be no basis for attempting to engage in or understand the distinctive quality of artists’ pedagogies.
In summary, this consideration of action and values allowed me to consider the specificity, complexity, and possibility of pedagogic research. I next review what
is presently known about artist pedagogy. I have argued that there is little known and I now will substantiate that claim.