art craft and design professional development materials

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Ofsted’s subject professional development materials: art, craft and design November 2012

Ofsted’s subject professional development

materials: Art, craft and design

A training resource for teachers of art, craft and design in schools, colleges, early years and gallery settings

2012

of 37 Ofsted’s subject professional development materials: art, craft and design November 2012

Ofsted triennial subject reports Making a mark: art, craft and design 2008-

11 (110135), Ofsted, 2012; www.ofsted.gov.uk/resources/110135

Drawing together: art, craft and design 2005-8 (080245), Ofsted, 2009; www.ofsted.gov.uk/resources/080245

Ofsted reports which focus on outstanding provision (slide 3)

Ofsted’s good practice case studies These include examples of school, college,

community and gallery-based learning: www.ofsted.gov.uk/resources/goodpractice

About this training resource

This resource draws on the following Ofsted publications:

http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/resources/110135


http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/resources/goodpractice


This resource explores four themes linked to achievement: the quality of teaching, the curriculum, and leadership and management in the subject. It uses commentary from the Making a mark report to prompt self-evaluation and support improvement planning.

The themes are relevant to all educational settings and phases, and draw on other Ofsted reports which focused on providers that achieved, sustained or shared outstanding provision and outcomes.

These reports are: Twenty outstanding primary schools - Excelling against the odds

(090170), Ofsted, 2009; www.ofsted.gov.uk/resources/090170. Twelve outstanding secondary schools - Excelling against the

odds (080240), Ofsted, 2009; www.ofsted.gov.uk/resources/080240.

Twelve outstanding special schools - Excelling through inclusion (090171), Ofsted, 2009; www.ofsted.gov.uk/resources/090171.

Twelve outstanding providers of work-based learning (100112), Ofsted, 2009; www.ofsted.gov.uk/resources/100112.

Overview






The four reports are about very different but equally effective educational settings. However, all make clear the importance of:

focusing on the individual ensuring that expectations are relevant and

consistently high creating the conditions for learners to flourish developing and sustaining external links.

These factors contributed to outstanding provision and outcomes in the different settings inspected. This resource prompts you to consider how each relates to the subject nationally and poses questions for you to relate to your own educational setting.

Themes

Focusing on the individual

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Our survey found that enjoyment of art, craft and design was strong across the age and ability range.

This was reflected in high levels of early independence, positive attitudes in lessons, and course take-up that compared well with other optional subjects in secondary schools and colleges.

However, not all individuals or groups sustained positive attitudes to the subject over a significant period of time.


Discussion points

How popular is art, craft and design in your setting?

Is the subject more popular with particular individuals or groups? Why?

How do you evaluate learners’ attitudes to learning in the subject?

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Our survey found that effective teaching promoted positive attitudes in the subject. For example, learners:

prepared for or followed up lessons conscientiously – by researching creative practitioners thoroughly or maintaining sketchbook skills

participated actively in lessons – by initiating ideas and working intensively or demonstrating their skills to their peers

expressed views sensitively about the creative work of others or showed resilience when responding to constructive criticism

sustained interest in their work – by pursuing the full potential of ideas, media and techniques, or responded confidently to the unfamiliar

showed strong commitment to optional activities – such as a community ‘Big Draw’ event or an individual ‘Arts Award’

cooperated with their teachers, support staff, visiting practitioners and with their peers when working collaboratively.



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Making a mark reported that children made a strong start in the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) by developing their confidence and creativity through mark-making.

However, between Key Stages 1 and 3 pupils lacked confidence in drawing to the detriment of their enjoyment.

The notion that ‘everyone can draw’ was not being kept alive beyond the early years of schooling.


Discussion point

What are your plans and how effective are your actions to increase learners’ confidence in drawing?

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Our survey found that where achievement in drawing was at its best, teachers and subject leaders:

ensured that learners were exposed to a range of approaches to drawing across all key stages and supported progression in learners’ mark-making as drawing

helped older primary pupils sustain their enjoyment and confidence in drawing as a key process

tackled students’ low confidence in drawing in the early stages of secondary school

offered exciting reasons to draw which modelled those used by creative practitioners

attached importance to drawing in the development of the subject and in their evaluation of the quality of the provision offered to pupils and students

refreshed their own engagement with drawing through professional development, including work with creative practitioners and art galleries.


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Some of the resources to help you improve the teaching of drawing can be found at:

www.drawing-research-network.org.uk

More information about the case studies featured in Making a mark can be found at:

www.campaignfordrawing.org.uk


Discussion point

Which of the features contributing to confident and creative drawing do you do well and which do you need to develop as a priority? How will you do this?

http://www.drawing-research-network.org.uk/

http://www.campaignfordrawing.org.uk/

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Other factors contributed to variations in learners’ enjoyment and achievement. As a consequence, by the end of the statutory National Curriculum in the subject, twice as many girls as boys continued with the subject, and the standards they attained at GCSE were much higher.

Although the previous report found that girls started to outperform boys in their creative development early in the EYFS, Making a mark reported that strategies to promote the inclusion of boys were proving effective in primary and secondary schools.


Discussion points

To what extent do participation and achievement vary between boys and girls in your setting? To what extent have you analysed the reasons to explain any variation?

What are your plans to address this? How will you measure the effectiveness of these plans?


Focusing on the individual Issue Focus Findings

The gap between the high achievement of girls and that of boys in art, craft and design is wider than most other subjects nationally.

What are the contributory factors where different groups of learners progress equally well?

The curriculum was broad and embraced art, craft and design.

Digital media were used alongside 2D and 3D work.

Materials and processes included opportunities to explore tactile qualities.

Different research approaches were explicitly taught in lessons.

Learners created work for a range of purposes, including practical functions.

The achievements of female as well as male artists were celebrated.

Feedback was regular and systematic and involved direct scrutiny of work.

The personal experiences and imagination of learners were valued.

Opportunities to continue work after school were regular.

Long periods of coursework were punctuated with short, time-limited activities.

The range of drawing techniques taught was narrow, reinforcing learners’ insecurities; what they were possibly ‘best at’ remained undiscovered.

Classrooms were uninviting for potentially messy or large-scale work.

Presentation, particularly of sketchbooks, was emphasised at the expense of content or creativity.

The work of different artists, craftmakers and designers was rarely used to challenge stereotypes.

Choices were made by teachers and rarely by learners.

Learners’ own experiences and imagination had little influence on their work.

The responses of different learners to varied stimuli were rarely analysed or used to adapt and modify planning.

Subject matter focused on natural forms and starting points on observation.

Learners were expected to use writing as the only mechanism to demonstrate their understanding.

Assessment grades were given without comments or guidance to help learners know how to improve.

What are the features of provision where improvement in boys’ performance remains slow?

The gap still remains wide in particular schools.

Gaps in your school?

Focus in your school?

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Further information about one of the successful approaches reported that used contemporary crafts to improve inclusion can be found at:

www.craftspace.co.uk

Discussion points

Which of the features contributing to strong participation and performance in the subject by girls and boys do you do well? How effectively do you share your good practice?

Which gaps between different groups need addressing most? How will you do this? How will you know that your strategies have worked?

How well do you learn from good practice in narrowing gaps between learners?

http://www.craftspace.co.uk/

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In schools and colleges, learners that pursued the subject as an option spoke positively about the importance of art, craft and design education.

Typical comments emphasised the importance of the subject in helping them to be ‘more reflective, analytical, organised’ and that participating in cultural activities enabled people to be more ‘observant, appreciative and fulfilled’. However, the report also found that enrichment opportunities such as gallery visits or work with creative practitioners was rarely provided for all learners.


Discussion points

How do you ensure that all learners experience high-quality enrichment in the subject?

What do parents and carers think about the relevance of the subject?

How well do your policies and practice ensure that all learners understand the wider relevance of the subject?

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The report recommended that more learners should be given opportunities to reflect on and develop their roles as emerging artists, craftmakers and designers by working with younger students and pupils. Opportunities for learners to present work to a wider audience through exhibitions also brought benefits to the individual, including:

deeper reflection on the meaning, purpose and impact of their own work when listening to others’ reactions

improved critical and comparative skills through seeing their work alongside the work of other learners or creative practitioners

learning from ideas and experiences they had not encountered themselves

increased self-esteem and the determination to respond competitively

learning to maximise their time in an art gallery, through their involvement in organising and curating an exhibition

increased understanding of career opportunities through exhibiting alongside creative practitioners or in commercial settings.

Ensuring relevant and consistently high expectations

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The survey found too much variation in the quality of teaching. In every phase of education, early expectations were not always high enough. The lack of reliable assessment information or opportunities for learners to share previous work contributed to expectations which were too low.


The report refers to the development of the ‘Arts Award’ as an opportunity to promote consistently high expectations of individuals across different settings. Further information can be found at: www.artsaward.org.uk.

Discussion points

How do you ensure that expectations are pitched high enough? What do you know about learners’ prior achievements? How effectively do you use baseline assessment?

http://www.artsaward.org.uk/

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Making a mark identified the ‘subtle and strategic use of assessment, focused on individual pupils’ progress in developing subject-specific skills, knowledge and understanding’ as a feature of highly effective teaching.

Other features included:

skilful use of visual and tactile resources that stimulated learners’ curiosity early on and sustained their interest throughout

high priority given to experimentation with ideas and media, supported by judicious and confident use of teacher demonstration

opportunities for learners to make decisions about the scale of work, time taken on different tasks and when to move about or ask for guidance

reviews of practical work, supported by inspiring examples by other learners or creative practitioners, showing how to revisit, refine or combine skills

difficult concepts and language made easy to understand, linking with interests that clearly fascinated learners and creative practitioners alike.

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The best early years settings and colleges were particularly successful in meeting learners’ individual needs through well-designed induction activities. These often focused on learners’ skills in handling tools and improvising with a range of media, which exposed their wider experiences at home or, later, their understanding of how creative practitioners work.

It was no coincidence that in settings where differences between learners were clearly valued from the start, creative diversity was promoted well.


Group activity for staff

Using a sample of work from a group of learners, analyse the extent to which their individual creativity is expressed. How well do your approaches to assessment capture this?

Use the images that follow to prompt discussion about creativity over time and to consider how well creative development is tracked.

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Creating the conditions for learners to flourish

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Making a mark reported that the classroom environment had a discernible impact on the quality of teaching and learning. The report noted that in colleges ‘the learning environment often reflected the significant shift in responsibility from teacher to student-initiated research and project development’. In the best early years settings, the organisation of resources promoted children’s decision-making and experimentation.


Examples of learning environments suited to the subject can be found in Icknield High School’s good practice example, Learning through looking: www.ofsted.gov.uk/resources/120342

Discussion point

How effectively does your management of the classroom promote: independent enquiry and choice of resources; creative risk-taking with materials; learners’ decisions about using different scales or working individually or collaboratively?


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Not all learners experienced their most rewarding art, craft and design education in the classroom.

In discussions with inspectors, learners regularly cited visits to art galleries, work with creative practitioners and community-based projects as their most memorable experiences of the subject.


Discussion points

Which particular experiences do the learners you teach value highly? Why?

How have you used this information and that about successful national initiatives to adjust your planning?

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The factors which contributed to effective enrichment strategies included:

subject leaders who were imaginative and resourceful in identifying opportunities to conduct joint visits with other curricular subjects

subject leaders who built and sustained a partnership with an art gallery, and devised opportunities for gallery educators to visit lessons in school or see the work that followed a visit

communication with parents and carers that made them aware of exhibitions in local art galleries or creative practitioners that they could visit with their children, making clear their value

a culture where teachers and students in secondary schools shared their talents as creative practitioners with primary schools

the use of an artist, attached to the school, to help learners understand how the work of a creative practitioner evolves and responds to the changing economic climate

strong support for all aspects of the subject from school leaders, including a commitment among senior managers to ensure that all learners received their cultural entitlement through enrichment activities.

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Learners responded well to particular stimuli in different phases of education: sensory experiences in early years settings; cross-curricular topics in primary schools; issues-based work in secondary schools; and vocationally related work in colleges.

Achievement was often high where learners’ progression in developing subject skills and knowledge was promoted simultaneously. Although they revisited themes such as ‘identity’ and ‘the natural and built environment’ throughout their education, there were missed opportunities to help learners make links across the curriculum in order to apply their skills or deepen their understanding. For example, the interface between art, design and technology or between art and personal, social and health education (PSHE) remained underdeveloped.


Activity

Scrutinise a learner’s portfolio of work alongside their work in other subjects.

How could you help make their learning more coherent?

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Improved literacy in the context of the subject was often supported by successful links within schools and colleges. However, the most effective leaders of the subject were also outward-looking, using links with the art, craft and design world or other providers to question and inform their own practice.

Worryingly, Making a mark found that innovation and leadership of national initiatives at regional level by local authority specialists had declined dramatically during the survey. Subject leaders were often too isolated to share good practice between primary and secondary schools and colleges.


Discussion points

How effective are your links with other schools or colleges? What is the focus and why?

To what extent do your links promote learners’ continuity and progression in the subject?

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In some cases strategies to promote coherence between subjects across the curriculum had a negative impact on art, craft and design. For example, professional development programmes in English and mathematics were applied indiscriminately and inappropriately.

Similarly, teachers had conformed to whole-school approaches to assessment at the expense of developing more effective subject-specific assessment. When questioned, teachers and subject leaders said that not enough school-based training focused on adapting whole-school strategies to meet the needs of individual subjects.


Use the example of an effective subject-based literacy strategy on the next slide to prompt your evaluation.

Discussion points

How effectively do learners develop and apply their literacy, mathematical and communication skills in the subject in your setting?

How well do learners develop and apply their art, craft and design skills in other subjects? How do you know?

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Strong teachers designed and shared strategies to develop learners’ knowledge and understanding of art, craft and design and their literacy skills simultaneously. In primary schools, art was often used successfully as a context for writing. The following example highlights the effective work of a secondary school that built progression into its teaching of critical, contextual and literacy skills.

‘In Year 7 the students had evaluated their work using “Spinney” the spider and its web. Each section of the web encouraged students to note words that described successful or less effective features of their work, against different criteria. As their skills and confidence increased, more extended writing was used in the outer parts of the web. More academically able students started to dispense with “Spinney” by creating their own evaluation structure. By Year 8 the teacher used a series of prompts, encouraging the students to add to their collection of words by reading reviews where stories about art had been in the news.

A change of emphasis in Year 9 used students’ experience of evaluating their own work to reflect on and criticise the work of other artists, craftmakers and designers. By Years 10 and 11 students had internalised these processes, using annotation regularly and building a critical vocabulary systematically.

In the sixth form, teachers used the ‘4 Rs’ framework – react, research, respond, reflect – to extend students’ critical responses further and encourage fluent writing that incorporated accurate and powerful use of technical vocabulary.’

Developing and sustaining external links


Making a mark and Ofsted’s good practice database include a case study about Battyeford Primary School (www.ofsted.gov.uk/resources/120323) that shows how the school promoted a range of effective links. Clarity about the features that underpinned distinctive practice at the school, and an initiative that attracted the interest of others, included:


strong and strategic support from the headteacher and governors

a community and family dimension to the subject leader role

a sharp focus on promoting creativity in and through art, craft and design

clearly articulated expectations in relation to personal development

networking through an ‘adopt an artist, maker, designer’ initiative.


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More examples of good practice can be found at:

www.ofsted.gov.uk/resources/goodpractice

More exemplification of standards can be found at:

www.nationalarchives.gov.uk

Discussion points

Which aspect of art, craft and design education in your setting stands out in relation to other providers locally or nationally? How do you know?

How high are the standards of work achieved in your setting in relation to others? How do you know?

How effectively do you share your good practice and how transferable is it to other subjects or other providers?

http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/resources/goodpractice

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/

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Subject links, not necessarily with others working in education, enriched the quality of teaching. For example, the report found that ‘teachers who forged long-standing links with the creative and cultural sector used problem-solving approaches and managed collaborative activities particularly well’. Highly effective subject teaching often drew on contemporary practice to contextualise the subject and show how different times and cultures continue to influence art, craft and design.

However, the report also found that ‘in less effective lessons, opportunities were missed to capitalise on students’ enthusiasm and interest in the visual world’.


Discussion points

What links have you established with the creative and cultural sector?

What action have you taken in response to the cultural review of education?

More information about the cultural review can be found at: www.culture.gov.uk/publications/8875.aspx

http://www.culture.gov.uk/publications/8875.aspx

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Creative practitioners contributed to raising achievement. In primary schools, ‘non-specialist teachers were effective in promoting good progress where their subject knowledge and skills were enhanced by a visiting artist, craftmaker or designer’.

In colleges, more teachers worked to their own specialist strengths, often informed by their continuing work as a creative practitioner that helped to sustain their links with art galleries or develop community-based projects. They had greater capacity for in-house subject training.


Discussion points

How effective are your links with creative practitioners or creative industries?

How well do you draw on the specialist skills of staff in your setting or other schools and colleges, or the expertise of governors, parents and carers?

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The report found that gallery-based work had a strong impact on teachers and learners. ‘The high-quality work in school that followed gallery visits not only reflected pupils’ absorption in the subject but teachers’ renewed passion.’ Making a mark contains examples of innovative approaches to learning in gallery settings that teachers successfully adapted to school-based work.


More information about the impact of gallery-based education can be found at: www.engage.org

Discussion points

How do you enable learners and teachers to benefit from gallery-based work?

How strategically are visits used to boost achievement and maximise the performance of staff?

http://www.engage.org/

Make your mark!


‘Children see before they speak, make marks before they write, build before they walk. But their ability to appreciate and interpret what they observe, communicate what they think and feel, or make what they imagine and invent, is influenced by the quality of their art, craft and design education.’

Make your mark!

This resource should have helped you to evaluate the quality of art, craft and design education you provide. Where you have strengths you can increase the impact by sharing your good practice. Where you have identified priorities to improve, these too can be addressed quickly and effectively by working with others. No one teacher or setting provides learners’ total experience of the subject. But each can make an indelible mark on individuals and institutions. Make your mark!For further support contact: www.nsead.org


Conclusion

We hope you have found this resource helpful in improving art, craft and design in your school.

Further information and support is available on the Ofsted art webpage:

www.ofsted.gov.uk/resources/our-expert-knowledge/art

We suggest you look at the specific criteria we use to make judgements during art subject inspections:

www.ofsted.gov.uk/resources/20100015

We welcome comments on this training resource. Please write to [email protected] and ensure that you put ‘Art, craft and design professional development materials’ in the subject box of your email.

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