Art as Education: Redefining a Live Art Practice as a Pedagogical Tool, and its Perception and Place in the Learning Environment
type: CreativeWork
description: My research study examines and tests how the pedagogical elements of live art have the potential to contribute to young people’s development and to play a transformative role in secondary education. It uses a methodology underpinned by a constructivist epistemology that promotes knowledge construction through disruption. The problem that this research addresses is revealed through the rising crisis for art under the STEM curriculum (Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths, excluding the arts). Moreover, a focus on attainments generates a counterproductive anxiety for students, and for teachers who are driven to ‘teach to the test’ (Giroux, 2017, p.9). This transpires through contemporary educationalist discourse in the field of critical pedagogy. These issues demonstrate a need for change that motivated this research study, in which live art acts as an agonistic tool in secondary education. An investigation of past pedagogic art projects, which began with Beuys’ teaching performances in the 1960s, highlights the tensions that this practice brings to education. The rise of social art from the 1960s onwards presents the artistic context in which the radical stance of live art as a shifting practice has developed. Criticality, resistance, and disruption emerge as pedagogical elements. My research study tests their potential impact within educational contexts. This live art methodology becomes embedded in an action research investigation in schools as a democratic and self-reflexive enquiry. Elements that contribute to young people’s development are revealed through a diffractive qualitative methodology that considers a ‘more-than-human assemblage’ (Hickey-Moody and Willcox, 2019, p.1). The final presentation of findings in a performance reveals the role of live art as an episteme that provokes self-reflexivity. My immersion in the secondary education system authorised the integration of this live art practice in the art curriculum (UK). An artistic manifesto is propose…
abstract: My research study examines and tests how the pedagogical elements of live art have the potential to contribute to young people’s development and to play a transformative role in secondary education. It uses a methodology underpinned by a constructivist epistemology that promotes knowledge construction through disruption. The problem that this research addresses is revealed through the rising crisis for art under the STEM curriculum (Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths, excluding the arts). Moreover, a focus on attainments generates a counterproductive anxiety for students, and for teachers who are driven to ‘teach to the test’ (Giroux, 2017, p.9). This transpires through contemporary educationalist discourse in the field of critical pedagogy. These issues demonstrate a need for change that motivated this research study, in which live art acts as an agonistic tool in secondary education. An investigation of past pedagogic art projects, which began with Beuys’ teaching performances in the 1960s, highlights the tensions that this practice brings to education. The rise of social art from the 1960s onwards presents the artistic context in which the radical stance of live art as a shifting practice has developed. Criticality, resistance, and disruption emerge as pedagogical elements. My research study tests their potential impact within educational contexts. This live art methodology becomes embedded in an action research investigation in schools as a democratic and self-reflexive enquiry. Elements that contribute to young people’s development are revealed through a diffractive qualitative methodology that considers a ‘more-than-human assemblage’ (Hickey-Moody and Willcox, 2019, p.1). The final presentation of findings in a performance reveals the role of live art as an episteme that provokes self-reflexivity. My immersion in the secondary education system authorised the integration of this live art practice in the art curriculum (UK). An artistic manifesto is propose…
author: Dubé-Rushby, Laurence Elizabeth Jeanne
language: en
keywords: Fine Art, Academic studies in Education
identifier: Dubé-Rushby, Laurence Elizabeth Jeanne <https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/view/creators/Dub=E9-Rushby=3ALaurence_Elizabeth_Jeanne=3A=3A.html> (2023) Art as Education: Redefining a Live Art Practice as a Pedagogical Tool, and its Perception and Place in the Learning Environment. PhD thesis, Arts University Bournemouth.
date published: 2023-10
date modified: 2026-07-24T01:00:50Z
provider: University of the Arts London
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of the Arts London