The Big Landscape

I'm pleased to announce that the NSEAD has published in AD issue 37 two chapters I have co written with Ged Gast on curriculum design. The Big Landscape is part of a new website resource for art and design teachers. The Big landscape functions as a visual classification and interactive interface for building understanding of the content, dimensions, scope and wider aspects of the curriculum. This includes the pedagogical approaches that promote high quality teaching and learning. It is a non-hierarchical taxonomy which can function like an aide-mémoire to support curriculum planning, review and research, as well as providing definition and exemplification. As a research tool, we can use this to seek definition, explore links, make connections across concepts and view best practice exemplars. NSEAD plan to include a ‘wiki’ function to make this fully interactive, so that members can edit, add and extend concepts and ideas, sharing their own better practice to keep the curriculum alive, relevant and evolving. The Big Landscape reminds us of the importance of determining our values and the ethos we set for learning in our subject. It will help us select the relevant knowledge, content and process learning to develop the most suitable skills, habits, behaviours and attributes which will enable students to think critically, analyse, explore and express themselves in response to visual and other sensory stimuli, concepts, issues/themes and dimensions.

We hope to have the website fully launched and functioning this Sept. I will announce the latest developments in the blog as they happen.