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“Arts-Designly Co-Physis” Methodology; Using Arts-Design Praxis as Lens and Prism

for Learning within the UK, Department of Education (DfE) National Curriculum. 

 

 

Case studies with explanations are here:

(The Arts-Design Co-Physis menu on home page constitutes an earlier version)

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Abstract

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A., (4), raises his arms high holding up his painting “LOOK!” He beams radiantly, his eyes wide in wonder and emotion, “Look

at this! Can you see what I see?” He excitedly and imaginatively deciphers meaning in his abstract, painterly gestures. Last

week, we looked at Rorschach painting (“RoarrrrR ShaCK”) and they understood. The class enthusiastically crowd round and

further elucidates about what A. sees. 

 

Here, abstract, designly qualities like colour, line gesture, shape, contrast, spacial arrangement, pattern, and texture, express a

raw phenomenological, communicative syntax that may or may not be recognisable (legible). How might Arts-Design Co-Physis

introduce an organising structure and shared framework to transform, for example, an Early Years Foundation Stage class’s

abstract expression, (priceless Twomblys, Matisses, or Picassos), into an enchanting, heuristic, visual tool for practical learning? 

 

Arts-Design Co-Physis (AD CP) is not co-design. As something children love to do, how might self-determined art and design

“co-research” be further utilised (instilled) as qualitative praxis, an interlocutor lens and prism for other subjects. AD CP has

potential as an integral, organising principle within the UK, DfE; across the National Curriculum from Early Years Foundation Stage

to Key Stage 5 (age 4-18). Since a transdisciplinary, horizontal axis (arts-design praxis) across and uniting DfE curriculum sub-

jects is possible. Most especially in ‘Early Years Foundation Stage Reception, and Key Stage 1’, (as rigorously tested in our

practice-based work). Over nine years of iterative practice, our AD CP comfortably co-existed with traditional modes of DfE teach-

ing and learning.

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1.1. Introduction

 

“… [T]he joyous affirmation of the play of the world and of the innocence of becoming, the affirmation of a world of signs without fault,

without truth, and without origin which is offered to an active interpretation".  Jacques Derrida, 1966.

 

In this paper, I posit using arts-design praxis as method, lens, and prism for child/ adolescent learning within the UK, DfE National Curriculum.

Whereby AD CP is methodological framework for “co-researcher” sēnsī – from somatic sentIence, to sense-certainty,  to sense-making. Primary

and secondary research was practice-based, iterative, and helically reflexive. Interdisciplinary theory-building mixed methods such as phen-

omenology, aspects of co-creation, co-design, and continental superstructuralist  pedagogies with qualitative interplay between philosophical

ideas and empirical research.  

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Here, “education is child-led creative inquiry” that is “research-based and knowledge-producing”.

Each collective engagement, camaraderie, and entanglement is novel.  

 

Research findings offer an insightful, useful, and critical interpretation of a research problem: does the DfE and Ofsted focus on assess-

ment and “accountability” (“bankability”) of academic learning outcomes, (meting, maintaining, and monitoring by testing, measurement,

and analysis) inhibit serendipitous “flow” of child learning? Within the National Curriculum is Art and Design “just art?”  Post English

Baccalaureate (EBacc) relegation and a 50% reduction in State funding for arts education to prioritise “enshrined,” “high-value subjects,”

it is vital to reassert validity claims for arts-design praxis across the curriculum. This paper presents a proposal to heal a gap in the

making; the loss of Art and Design subject categories, disciplines, and their material, transferable practice.

 

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1.2. Field-site and community of practice (COP): 

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“A. is our home; I mean my second home". (H, 11)

 

This paper is based on frontline, immersively embedded, and experiential, professional practice as a DfE Primary school teacher within a

secular, Independent Primary school. Developed, tested, and iterated by children within the National Curriculum and within UK, Gov. DfE

ethical, safeguarding, and pastoral care guidelines, our AD CP was peer-reviewed and positively accessed twice by Ofsted. Case studies

(here) photo-document the adaptive agency of this method in the classroom.

 

A. Primary School  is a large family house with approximately 105 co-ed pupils over seven classes. Participating "co-researchers" were Class

1: Early Years Foundation Stage - Reception; Class 2: Key Stage 1; and Class 3: Key Stage 1. Children were Infants and Juniors between the

ages of 4-7, oftentimes working collaboratively across class years. A longitudinal study, research took place every Monday, Tuesday, and Friday,

over a nine-year period with a Lower School cohort that varied from 75 to 17. Findings are based on deductive and inductive analysis of collect-

ed qualitative and empirical data: photo-documented and archived (descriptive) Co-Designly Practice; discourse analysis of dialogical inter-

actions and my anecdotal and observational notes. (A photographic archive accompanies this paper, is integral and is frequently referenced.) 

 

According to Alain Badiou, “The principle that there is a single world does not contradict the infinite play of identities and differences.” With

an internationally vibrant and largely multicultural cohort, A. school prioritises a sense of ‘school as [heterogenic] family.’ There is an establish-

ed and holistic community of support and care in the form of an intricate network of family, relational, and societal ties and a neighbourly,

local community kinship. 

 

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2. Methodology: 

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I use a mixed-methods approach to child pedagogy, as “[a] mixed method design is useful to capture the best of both quantitative and qual-

itative approaches.” Interdisciplinary theory-building uses methods such as phenomenology, aspects of co-creation, co-design, and Super-

structuralist  educational pedagogies. With an academic, visual communications background; the pluralistic and inquiry-based Reggio Emilia

Approach “of a hundred languages” was helpful in open-mindedly working with multi-cultured children. The elemental simplicity of Russian

Suprematism and the (utilitarian) responsiveness of the Vkhutemas school were also influential. 

 

AD CP is a learning toolkit designed to be “co-designly” adapted by co-researcher children or adolescents: inventive mixing of methodologies

is illuminating, as each (re)configuration offers different levers, levels, and scales of dynamics of practice. In their practice, “[p]ractice theories

are a kind of ‘modest grand theories’ as they offer […] frameworks of categories and assumptions for developing substantial theories on specific

practices.” Is “co-designly practice” then, the new imperative, materialism, and ontology? If so, why aren’t we experimenting, trying things out

and practising more?

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(As Creative Commons, (CC BY NC DD: Attribution + Non-commercial + No Derivatives) and self-funded research; Co-Designly Practice, (CDLY P) and Co-

Designly Sēnsī, (CDLY S) are intentionally copyrighted – so either cannot be made commercial: commodified, marketed (advertised, sold, or purchased) as

written materials, a toolkit, a service, training, or used (withheld) for profit. (I work prosocially and entirely from within issues, so fairness, equity and egalitarian

access is important to me.) 

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