Talking About Art

My story of Resistance Part 2 I became an Education Refuser. I rejected reading, writing and number. It did not make sense. I was put in the Special Needs Class. I couldn’t read well and not out loud and not the books they gave us which I thought were facile, pointless and uninteresting and teachers didn’t have time to explain. ‘ Students with dyslexia may avoid reading because it can be stressful and tiring. As a result, they can end up missing valuable reading practice and fall behind their classmates. This can hurt their self-esteem.’ (Gavin, 2013). In the special needs class, we coloured-in and laid tables (the wrong way round) for dinner. It was not really a class but about five of us pupils, some with downs-syndrome or autism and me, who sat with a dinner lady, we didn’t really do anything, we observed, marked time, waited for lunchtime.   I wondered why I was there. Gavin (2013) believes that, ‘ With the proper assistance, most students with dyslexia can ...

Creating a Community of Inquiry What is a community of inquiry? Lipman 2003, Biesta 2014 and Dewey 1934 believe it is a conceptual investigation into problematic situations. My problematic situation?   The FE Art courses I teach have both practical art and theoretical contextual studies elements, the conflation causes the problem. Students come to art school because they are practically interested in making art and are indisposed and resistant to writing and committing themselves to paper. Why is this? Research hopes to investigate how writing culture is currently viewed. To this end a reflective diary project has been established with 29 participants, in addition participants may also join a book club, interviews and critical incidence will be recorded with the intention of discovering some of the themes and threads, indicating possible issues, hindrances and hang-ups to written success? Does the concern lie in student expectations not being met or learni...

My Story of Resistance:   What Happened to a Human Being?  part 1. I was a dyslexic child of the 1970’s. In Primary school I was considered a slow learner, Dr Gavin (2013) in her report states that dyslexia is a learning disability that makes it hard to learn to read and understand written language. Heresay tells that the local council ignored childhood dyslexia in the 1970’s because of cost implications, this is upheld by a more recent document stating that the city council does not, even now, employ any dyslexia support staff for school children (Moor, 2012).  I was in my own dream world, in my imagination. I had no idea what teachers were talking about most of the time, there was an incomprehensible element to each days tasks which seemed to make perfect sense to the other children, I was amazed at their abilities to so readily comprehend when I found it so baffling.  The other children seemed to 'get it', to intuitively know what was ...