THINKING THROUGH DRAWING: PRACTICE INTO KNOWLEDGE

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THINKING THROUGH DRAWING: PRACTICE INTO KNOWLEDGE 85


michelle Fava

directness in the resulting marks made (as we saw
in AR’s drawing process), which can be stifled by
continuous self-judgement. I feel that a widespread
overemphasis on assessment in UK schools and
colleges engenders this type of anxiety. Of course,
some assessment is necessary, and formative feed-
back can inform learning, but it is possible that a
continual sense that all one’s work will be assessed
and judged (against often ambiguous criteria) might
be unhelpful, perhaps giving rise to an excessively
self-judgmental attitude that is detrimental to spon-
t an e it y.
Assessment may be extrinsically motivating in
the short term, but it is important to also think of
the bigger picture. For a young person to have spent
the majority of their lives in institutions that give
quantitative feedback on every piece of work, must
have a substantial effect on the way they relate to
themselves and the world. McLuhan’s (1964/2001)
dictum that “the medium is the message” seems
particularly apt in this scenario. What kind of atti-
tudes are we conditioning young people to leave
school with, as a result of our teaching methods?
And how many of these are unintended?
While addressing this issue would be a very
complex task, both in terms of addressing the
research questions implied, and the possible rami-
fications, it is nevertheless possible to consider how
we might develop teaching resources which account
for the skills of spontaneity and postponement of
judgement. I would like to invite responses to this
proposition.


Footnotes


1 Please contact the author for an account of the
procedure.


2 There are a number of issues with the use of ver-
bal reports as data in studies of drawing, such as
the possibility of post-rationalisation, the incom-
pleteness of the reports, and the effect of the ver-
balisation on the drawing itself. The study pro-
poses also to explore the extent to which these
methods can be useful, although these matters lie
outside the scope of this paper.


3 Contact the author for details of definition of


codes and rules for parsing.

4 Different shades in the drawing categories rep-
resent different types of drawing behaviour not
discussed here.

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