Category: TPP Blog posts

In Ray Land’s essay ‘Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge (3)*: implications for course design and evaluation’ he talks about Threshold Concepts as:

‘Within all subject areas there seem to be particular concepts that can be considered as akin to a portal, opening up a new and previously inaccessible way of thinking about something. A threshold concept represents a transformed way of understanding, or interpreting, or viewing something without which the learner cannot progress.’ (Land, 2005, p.53).

Land also refers to threshold concepts as ‘defined as concepts that bind a subject together, being fundamental to ways of thinking and practising in that discipline.’ (Land, 2005, p.54).

This is really interesting as a methodology for breaking down a subject/discipline, in my case typography, into its key ideas/concepts, the fundamental aspects that help a student understand and practise typography. I feel that this is something I have approached in teaching, as a way for me to prioritise what to teach and understanding more about the theory of threshold concepts could help me to do this more successfully. I particularly liked the idea of a threshold concept being akin to a portal, a really interesting way to describe it, a door that opens into new worlds of understanding.

Crucial to the use of threshold concepts seems to be identifying what these would be for my subject and how these specific concepts can help a student progress and unlock new areas of learning.

‘Students who have not yet internalised a threshold concept have little option but to attempt to learn new ideas in a more fragmented fashion. On acquiring a threshold concept a student is able to transform their use of the ideas of a subject because they are now able to integrate them in their thinking.’ (Land, 2005, p.54).

This suggests that threshold concepts can act like building blocks, and aid progression through learning about a particular subject, rather than learning in a fragmented fashion. This implies that a coherent and progressive structure is important in teaching.

The essay also talks about the integrative aspect being particularly difficult for students who are studying a specialism as part of their degree, as the students may not think of themselves as learners of the specialism and therefore may find it more difficult to grasp these threshold concepts and successfully integrate them into their practice. This may have particular relevance to my teaching as I’m teaching a specialism, typography, to group of students who are often more generalist, studying graphic design and associated disciplines.

‘Threshold concepts are inherently problematic for learners because they demand an integration of ideas and this requires the student to accept a transformation of their own understanding’. (Land, 2005, p.54).

Land talks about an in-between state resulting if this transformation doesn’t totally take place: ‘One outcome is that students present a partial, limited or superficial understanding of the concept to be learned which we have characterised as a form of ‘mimicry’. ’A more serious outcome is that students become frustrated, lose confidence and give up that particular course.’ (Land, 2005, p.55).

This perhaps explains how typography in particular can be frustrating and off-putting for many students, leading to them rejecting the subject and failing to interact further with it.

In the conclusion, Land talks about the task for course developers being to identify the barriers to knowledge and redesign activities and sequences of teaching through the use of ‘scaffolding’, the provision of support materials, etc that will ‘provide the necessary shift in perspective that might permit further personal development’ (Land, 2005, p.63). Importance of removing obstacles to learning, to free up various ways that a student will be able to be ‘empowered to move’. (Land, 2005, p.63).

As Land says: ‘The significance of the framework provided by threshold concepts lies, we feel, in its explanatory potential to locate troublesome aspects of disciplinary knowledge within transitions across conceptual thresholds and hence to assist teachers in identifying appropriate ways of modifying or redesigning curricula to enable their students to negotiate such transitions more successfully.’ (Land, 2005, p.63)

Bibliography

Land, R. ‘Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge (3)*: implications for course design and evaluation’, Rust, C (ed) (2005) Improving Student Learning Diversity and Inclusivity. Oxford: Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development.

‘Thus coloniality survives colonialism. It is maintained alive in books, in the criteria for academic performance, in cultural patterns, in common sense, in the self-image of peoples, in aspirations of self, and in so many other aspects of our modern experience. In a way, as modern subjects we breathe coloniality all the time and everyday.”
(Maldonado-Torres, 2007, p.243).

Decolonising the curriculum is a prevalent topic in universities today, and as academics we feel a responsibility to our students, to the design industry, and to the wider global society to play a role in contributing to this action.

Jess Crilly’s essay ‘Decolonising the library: a theoretical explanation’ has helped me understand the differences in meaning of the term decolonisation and related terms decoloniality, eurocentricity, epistemic totality, and pluriversity, so that I can begin to approach how I can play a role in deconlosing the curriculum through the way I teach, show references, critique and discuss art and design.

Crilly’s essay talks about coloniality living on beyond the period when a colonial power withdraws from its former colonies, that “coloniality refers to the long-standing impacts and ongoing structures of power that came about through colonialism” and “coloniality describes an ongoing present that is pervasive in all aspects of lived experience.”

This suggests we are living within the bias of our colonial past and these biases still affect the way we talk about subjects, the knowledge we have, how we perceive good/bad work, etc. These are, as bell hooks says, the “biases that blind and bind” (hooks, 1995, p.102).

Eurocentricity
‘A perspective of knowledge whose systematic formation began in Western Europe before the middle of the seventeenth century, although its roots are without doubt much older […]. It does not refer to all the modes of knowledge or all Europeans and all epochs. It is instead a specific rationality or perspective of knowledge that was made globally hegemonic, colonizing and overcoming other previous or different conceptual formations as much in Europe as the rest of the world.’ (Quijano and Ennis, 2000, p.549)

My classes, like many other in Europe and US, teach typography from a Eurocentric perspective, tracing the origins of latin typefaces back to writing styles in Europe, the use of the broad-edge pen, Roman inscriptions, Gutenberg’s type and printing press, 42-line bible, etc, to book typefaces, and beyond.

We are already aware of this perspective, so not totally blinded and binded by it, as hooks would say, but teach from this perspective, even if we acknowledge origins of movable type elsewhere in the world and other scripts.

The next steps are working harder to move towards the ‘pluriversity’ approach as advocated by Mignolo and Mbembe, acknowledging and understanding the existence of other traditions and systems. 

This essay really helped shape my understanding of decoloniality and opened my eyes to the true meaning. My previous understanding was that decolonising the curriculum / university / library could be achieved by diversifying our references. But the essay explains that:

Decoloniality
Is the “movement to counter, or the struggle against coloniality” (Crilly, 2019, p.3). “Infers an active undoing, deconstructing, or delinking from coloniality”. “In the library or archive, this is different to the process of diversifying collections or ensuring that multiple narratives are represented.” (Crilly, 2019, p.4).

In the conclusion, Crilly quotes Brian Rosenblum: ‘The academic library has a particular relationship to the university, as a site for the collection, production and consumption of knowledge, validating some narratives and excluding others. It can be characterised as both a site that replicates hegemonic power structures but also as a site of resistance and change, including in relation to decoloniality’. (Rosenblum, 2015).

This idea of the library as a site of resistance and change is inspiring, particularly as, by extension, this refers to the use of reading lists and references that we give to students in our teaching.

Glossary

Colonialisation
‘The action of settling among and establishing control over the indigenous people of an area’ (OED, 2019).

Decolonisation
‘Withdrawal from its former colonies of a colonial power: the acquisition of political or economic independence by such colonies’ (OED, 2019).

Epistemic totality
‘A characteristic of Eurocentric knowledge. Systems that presume to describe the whole of human knowledge, overriding existing knowledge and systems of belief. This occurred through the colonisation of non-European languages and oral traditions, relegating them to the status of primitive and irrelevant to modern life.’ (Crilly, 2019, p.3).

Pluriversity
An alternative to epistemic totality. Mignolo and Mbembe advocate the concept of epistemic pluriversity. This is the co-existence of different epistemic traditions and systems. Mbembe describes pluriversity as: ‘a process of knowledge production that is open to epistemic diversity. It is a process that does not necessarily abandon the notion of universal knowledge for humanity, but which embraces it via a horizontal strategy of openness to dialogue among different epistemic traditions.’ (Mbembe, 2016, p.37, italics by Mbembe)

Bibliography

Crilly, J. (2019). ‘Decolonising the library: a theoretical exploration’, Spark: UAL Creative Teaching and Learning Journal, 4(1), pp.6-15

hooks, b. (1995). ‘Talking art as the spirit moves us’, in Art on my mind: visual politics. New York: The New Press

Maldono-Torres, N. (2007) ‘On the coloniality of being: contributions to the development of a concept’, Cultural Studies, 21(2/3), pp.240–270. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502380601162548.

Mbembe, A.J. (2016) ‘Decolonizing the university: new directions’, Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, 15(1), pp.29–45. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1474022215618513.

Oxford English Dictionary (2019) Cited by Kennedy, D. (2016) Decolonization: a very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p.2.

Quijano, A. and Ennis, M. (2000) ‘Coloniality of power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America’, Nepantla: Views from the South, 1(3), pp.533–580. Available at: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/23906#info_wrap (Accessed: 20 March 2024).

Rosenblum, B. (2015) ‘Decolonizing libraries (extended abstract)’, Brian Rosenblum, 1 February. Available at: http://www.librarycamp.co.uk/2015/03/decolonizing-libraries-extended.html/ (Accessed: 20 March 2024).

Judy Willcocks, Head of the Museum & Study Collection, Central Saint Martins

An Introduction to Object-based learning

CSM’s Head of Museum & Study Collection, Judy Willcocks, spoke about the college’s long and rich history of collecting and archiving art and design artefacts, and how these can be used in teaching. Judy explained how she and the museum staff enable today’s students to engage with objects first-hand, in the studio environment and how object-based learning can enrich students’ experience of learning about art and design.

Since the early days of the Central School of Arts and Crafts, the founders of the school believed that “aesthetic appreciation was a learned experience” (Willcocks, 2018), with physical examples of designed objects used as part of the learning experience.

Judy talked about how the museum & study collection evolved from a global collection, including Japanese printed and German film posters, to a CSM student and staff focussed collection, a change that happened in the 1980s and 90s. This change has allowed the college to focus on its own narrative and document key developments in the history of the school and its influence on global art and design.

Judy also talked about her previous experience as a museum curator, typically interacting with younger and older audiences and how this changed when she arrived at CSM and met the demands of undergraduate students.

“My background in museums before I came to Central Saint Martins meant I hadn’t really met a great deal of the kind of person I was going to meet at Central Saint Martins. A lot of the people I saw were either younger primary school children or what I would describe as older autodidacts, quite a passive audience who see you in the traditional curatorial model as being the expert in the room and that’s what they want to see. But when I came to Central Saint Martins I met a body of art school students who were completely different. They’re very proactive, they’re very challenging, they want to kick back and they want to learn actively through doing and making, not through passive looking and listening” (Willcocks, 2018)

The museum’s Emotional Response video explains how we might ‘read’ designed objects: describe aesthetics, understand design features, and consider associated meaning and cultural contexts of designed objects. Ideas about universal perception, different cultural perspectives, audience understanding verses an educated designer’s understanding brings up some interesting points to consider.

Judy discussed online archives and the various benefits and constraints of object-based learning in these digital environments. Object-based learning can enable students to increase their vocabulary about design, develop fluency in design languages, and increase their design literacy.

During the workshop we experienced objects in three different environments:

Physical
For this first exercise an object was selected by the participant from their immediate surroundings. We were then asked to spend a few minutes examining the object: by looking, touching, and to think about size, shape, materials, colours, and intended use.

Digital 
We then investigated a digital object, a round earthenware bowl

Photograph
Finally we looked at a photograph of a piece of clothing

Each encounter required us to ‘translate’ what we were seeing based on prior knowledge of art and design, but also broader knowledge about objects, industrial and product design, materials, ergonomics, ethnography, culture, politics, sociology, etc. The physical encounter was a much richer experience as we could employ more senses: primarily touch, and we could hold and rotate the object and look more closely. The limitation here is to do with access to objects, which is also true in an educational environment. Online archives potentially offer access to much richer variety of objects from international archives, but rely more on visual interaction alone, mediated through the frame of the computer screen, and perhaps also more on the user’s prior knowledge of visual languages as it’s a purely visual experience. 

The session brought up lots of really interesting aspects and approaches to object-based learning and highlighted its potential role in teaching art and design. The rich multi-sensory experience of engaging with design objects first hand has many benefits, including access to CSM’s archive, as well as encouraging the tools of looking and engaging to be used with the students’ own objects. This could be an exciting way to encourage fresh perspectives on design, to diversify references, and encourage a decolonial approach to discussions and critique on art and design.

I have used object-based learning in a more informal / less structured way, by bringing in graphic design objects from commercial practice – a great way to inspire students, show variety of typographic approaches and uses, to show materials and printing techniques.

Typography Show and Tell is an exercise I have ran with short course students where they each bring in a typographic object they like the design of. This has been an interesting way to show global approaches to typography and showcase the many uses, styles, functions of typography in contemporary society.

We also have access to amazing museum resources in London that I have used in teaching typography in the past, from the Design Museum and V&A (eg the Trajan’s Column cast in the fakes and forgeries gallery). MoMA and Cooper Hewitt have excellent online archives as well as the Letterform Archive in San Francisco. New technology such as digital 3d archives, and photogrammetry allow for more advanced interactions with online archives, providing richer interactions with objects that cannot be viewed first hand.

Bibliography

Central Saint Martins. (2018). Museum & Study Collection: Judy Willcocks Copenhagen Presentation, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3O7MM5WuFo (accessed 12 March 2024)

Mende proverb (Boone, 1986 as cited in hooks, 1995, p.101)

In her 1995 essay ‘Talking art as the spirit moves us’, bell hooks writes about the biases that ‘bind and blind’ us. (hooks, 1995, p.102) and that seeing deeply can only happen if one is initiated, guided on how to see and understand a work of art from a culture other than our own.

Our biases bind and blind us whether we are aware of them or not, and this limits and constricts our critical vision. hooks refers to this as “white-supremacist identity politics” (hooks, 1995, p.102), and that those from the well-meaning left are complicit in this as well as the right. The view that the white, European viewpoint and approach to art (and design) is superior and the measure by which we judge other works.

This has huge ramifications for teaching art and design in European art schools, and is particularly impacting students from non-white European backgrounds, who presumably feel alienated by the curriculum, references, how we measure good or bad, and would presumably also create a feeling of insecurity, lack of faith in their own beliefs, and approaches, which are crucial for all students to nurture in terms of their own development and the development of art and design practice as a whole.

Reframing work by marginalised artists to fit with a white narrative is misguided and harmful to the true narrative of the work. This “represents a perfect gesture of colonisation and appropriation” (hooks, 1995, p.103).

Feedback and critiques are also an important space for discussion of work, for peers and tutors to be guided and initiated, and able to see and understand the work of non-whites more deeply. But also for the critical discourse to be meaningful, explored without fear of offending, not just giving praise to marginalised work, not applying the same criteria of aesthetics etc.

Something that I have found in my research into attempting to diversify the set of references I have for typography is that often the work of non-white designers, particularly black designers either fits into the category that hooks refers to as “Often it is only the anger and rage expressed by marginal groups that is “seen” by white folks” (hooks, 1995, p.103). 

Hooks talks about the “tension between reformist work that aims to change the status quo so that we have access to the privileges of the dominant group and the more radical project of resistance that seeks to dismantle or transform the existing structure” (hooks, 1995, p.104).

She talks about the how non-white artists have a tension between creating work that will allow them access to the privileges of the dominant group, and the bigger project of dismantling the existing structure. 

In her closing statement, hooks talks about the loss of art critic Sylvia Ardyn Boone, who was an influence on hooks, and the importance of being ‘initiated’, ‘guiding me so that I would look more closely at a given subject, so chat I would see deeply.’ (hooks, 1995, p.107) Hooks says ‘To sustain this critical legacy, African-American critics and our allies in struggle must dare to courageously speak our minds, to talk about art as the spirit moves us.’ (hooks, 1995, p.107).

As teachers, with big influence over our classrooms, we can create spaces for discussions that help students speak ‘courageously’ as hooks says. We can help create a space for open discussion and where global viewpoints can be expressed and discussed, challenging the dominant ideologies and perspectives, and to progress our understanding of art and design and how it can evolve as a global language for understanding the human condition.

Bibliography

hooks, b. (1995). ‘Talking art as the spirit moves us’, in Art on my mind: visual politics. New York: The New Press

Boone, S. A. (1986). Radiance from the Waters: Ideals of Feminine Beauty in Mende Art. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.