Re-imagining the Art School: Paragogy and Artistic Learning

Re-imagining the Art School assesses the organisational development of the humanist ‘idea of the art school’ from the post-rationalist perspectives of constructivist and connectivist educational learning theory. It examines how recent internal (‘porous’) and external (‘para’) reforms have transformed the production of subjectivity in art schooling and pioneers the application of theories and methods of para-academia and paragogy in art education.

The Bauhaus transformed art schooling in the early twentieth century by embracing the latest reform movements in pedagogy. Over a century later, many art schools are still, unwittingly, recycling its modernist pedagogy. While most art schools doggedly pursue self-knowledge, many have adopted more porous approaches to resourcing and performing artistic learning, supporting interdisciplinarity and mutuality.

Para-academia and the not-for-profit art world have challenged the perennialism of the art school’s normative anti-curriculum and the market fundamentalism of the ‘ruined’ academy. Paragogy - tactics for peer-to-peer learning - equally promises to transform twenty-first century art education. Considering para-academia and paragogy as tertiary art education’s contemporary reform movement, Re-imagining the Art School presents a set of working principles that students and educators can adapt to compose and perform their own curriculum.

Re-imagining the Art School will be of primary interest to readers engaged in contemporary post-secondary art education, where “art education” is broadly conceived as a form of organisational knowledge that is reproduced in many facets of the artworld. The book’s readership extends to educators working in any sphere interested in the organisation of peer-to-peer learning practices.