In light of recent attempts to defend the role of the arts in education against the effects of policies based on utilitarian principles, this paper examines the arts educational writings and practical projects of Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) at Santiniketan in West Bengal, showing how they were motivated by a Romantic and Upanishadic philosophy…

This article examines how undergraduate students on arts and humanities courses experience assessment and feedback. The research uses a detailed audit, a specially devised questionnaire (the Assessment Experience Questionnaire), and student focus group data, and the article examines results from 19 programmes, comparing those from "arts and…

This article asks: what is the significance of design history within higher education? It reviews the practice and purpose of design history, in the education of historically aware and critically engaged designers, as an emerging independent discipline, and in terms of what the subject has to offer allied fields such as history, sociology,…

This article focuses on the phenomenon of "rupture" identified in student narratives of uncertainty and scholarship experienced during the course of Fine Art research degrees in two Australian universities. Rupture captures the phenomenon of severe disruption or discontinuity in existing knowledge and typically signifies epistemological rift for…

While the majority of creative, performing and literary artists are self-employed, relatively few tertiary arts schools attempt to develop capabilities for venture creation and management (and entrepreneurship more broadly) and still fewer do so effectively. This article asks why this is the case. It addresses underlying conceptual and…

This article describes a project in which undergraduate students of beginning drawing were brought together with free improvising musicians to explore interaction in collective real-time art-making. Following a series of guided rehearsals, the students were free to choose their own strategies for interactive group projects. We discuss these…

Formal ceramics art education is becoming a fundamental requirement for professional practice in ceramics in Nigeria. Considering the ample resources available for ceramic practices in the country with a teeming population of over 140 million people, there is a promising future for the art, in spite of the effects of globalization and…

This article reflects my journey as a performing arts student and intern both in Portugal and abroad. It is not intended as a personal journal, but rather a reflection and an aftermath comment on my experiences and learning processes. First it provides a context regarding my university education in a Southern European country, against a previous…

This article provides a reflective perspective on the role that research-led teaching plays in the development of future arts workers in higher education. It explores the challenges faced by lecturers developing curricula in the performing and creative arts and argues that the increasing focus on employability can conflict with universities'…

In disciplines with long histories in higher education, academic literacies, including writing practices, are less contested than in newer academic fields such as art and design. The relatively recent incorporation of such fields and schools into the university sector has required these fields to create academic writing practices consistent with…

This review of the 5th International Conference held by the University of the Arts London's Centre for Learning and Teaching in Art and Design, 12 and 13 April 2010 at the Novotel, Tiergarten, Berlin, briefly summarizes the contributions of three keynote speakers, and considers some of the issues they raised. (Contains 1 note.)

Based on a review of its historical evolution and the contributions of significant writers in the field, this article addresses perennial questions of purpose, content and pedagogy in education in the arts and humanities and, more broadly, liberal education. Taking cognizance of the educational significance of service-learning and practical…

The contemporary art college makes a broad range of media available to students, from which writing is conventionally excluded. Writing entered the art college curriculum in the 1960s as a "frame", or means of integrating art and artists into an academic framework, rather than as a medium of potential study. Drawing on the philosophy of Vilem…

Funded as part of an EU collaboration, under the Socrates/Minerva initiative, the key motivation for the Interface: Virtual Environments in Art, Design and Education Conference was a sense that, while VLEs and the use of ICT tools are a growing facet of third-level education, and indeed play an important role at the cutting edge of contemporary…

This article proposes an approach to teaching and learning in the university arts sector that is able to accommodate and assess creative process alongside practice. In arguing thus, romanticized notions of "the spontaneous artist" are exposed to scrutiny, and the creative process itself is made subject to analysis. Notwithstanding its focus on the…