Drawing education in junior secondary schools (11-14)

This thesis aims to explore the values and knowledge expressed in, and underlying, present secondary school curricula, which contain the , direct and indirect experiences of drawing. Initially, this will be a personal statement of my approach and appraisal of planning principles and strategies for drawing in secondary school curricula. However, it will be necessary to consider many other points of view, especially to place in a wider context the idiosyncrasies of my values and judgements. The identification of various assumptions and beliefs about drawing • education is the essential philosophical basis of this study. This is intended to be a practical working statement of ideas, rather than an abstraction of ideas from their working context, forming theory alone. The thesis will explore and reveal assumptions about 'what counts as drawing knowledge' in junior secondary schools. How drawing knowledge is selected and structured is of crucial importance in answering most of the questions about drawing education. A valuable way in which to look at the curriculum is to regard it as a 'selection from the culture of a society'. I should also suggest that there is a real need today to look at the curriculum more rationally and from basic principles. This is essentially a question of clarification of educational principles. Questions about how we regard 'the nature of education', or what are our aims for education, as well as questions about 'our society' do influence our decisions about what should be taught, the technical changes, social changes and changes in values and beliefs also, inevitably, influence schooling generally. [Continues.]