Good Practice at A level
As artists and teachers, we cringe at the thought of 2 students in our class making an identical portfolio of work – it’s a habit at KS3, by necessity, that every student follows the same project, learning the same skills and even developing identical sketchbook pages, but surely what we really want children to do is to work beyond our starting points and introduce their own ideas. In my departments, we’ve always awarded the highest grades to those students that took responsibility for developing ideas beyond the limitations of our curriculum, whatever their age/level. In particular, we used homework as an opportunity for students to gather ideas and images that they could use in the classroom to develop their work more independently.
Equally, independence must be at the very core of 6th form teaching. The first term of an A level course, is structured with specific skills and stimuli, but even at this point we teach them to work independently. In the dream world, every student is super-motivated with multiple capabilities, but of course, many have been pushed into the A level as an ‘extra option’, and lack either motivation or skills necessary to work without a clear structure.
However, the aim should always be to push post-16 students toward developing their own enquiries, and we specifically use the Spring term to teach this habit. The best students will already have learnt, in their GCSE exam, the value of selecting artistic stimuli as gateways to individual processes and outcomes, but this skill may need to be retaught to the less confident. A useful trick is getting the student to select two different art responses dealing with the same theme and getting them to mix them together to make a 3rd original artwork of their own. By putting the focus on artists and artworks, the teacher immediately gives control to the student, while the teacher themself becomes the guide.
To begin with, students might need a selection of stimuli to choose from, but the aim is to teach them to choose their own starting points, where possible, supported by gallery visits. We’ve always wanted to get students thinking globally and get students to imagine ‘fantasy’ round-the-globe journeys, ‘stopping off’ at 6 different destinations, using appropriate search engines to seek out contemporary artistic practice from each one. Not only does this wipe out Euro/Western bias but it lifts students out of the Picasso/Lucien Freud/Jenny Saville cliché, which examiners are very bored with!
Of course, this approach doesn’t work for everyone – some need considerably more support – but it’s the target. Almost every piece of feedback to parents should begin with ‘X is able to work independently and develop their own ideas’ – these are also the words that art colleges want to see when we write references.
Good Practice at A level – Keeping a Record
Often A level classes are taught by more than one teacher, so a useful tool we used to help develop independence was the student-teacher folder, in which both teachers record longer conversations and agree targets with the student in a weekly tutorial.
We kept the folder simple, with 3 columns enabling every student/teacher tutorial to have a clear focus, identify positives [we can all do this – weaker students might not be proud of what they’ve achieved in 7 days, but even a mess of paint and plaster was an experiment which taught the student how they can move forward] and, importantly, AGREED targets:-
Always use SMART targets (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound), even specifying the amount of sketchbook pages you expect to see by an agreed date/lesson The student needs to be on board with what you expect of them. By the summer term of year 12, they should be telling you what their plans are, but if they’re really stumped, of course you’ll offer ideas. And specific agreed dates are vital – if a student has a massive French exam next week, then it’s not going to happen, but then it’s reasonable they’ll spend longer on their Art in the following week. This is a great way to record that at least one of your teaching team has had a proper conversation with every student every week – Previously, when we’d had bigger A level classes, some students got more teacher time than others. Our students valued the clarity and while targets were sometimes missed, this system really prevented any drift while allowing them to individualise their enquiry rather than doing a generic ‘homework’.
Importantly, we didn’t use this folder to grade work – nothing is more demotivating for a student developing their practice than to get any score less than ‘brilliant’. The emphasis is always upon their journey, moving forward and learning to work independently, developing their own ideas and processes.
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