Abstract

This thesis is a study of lived experiences of the English education system, my own and those of students in an arts education college. It chronicles my experiences of becoming and being a skilled professional: a photographer, an artist, and then a teacher. It also presents narrative accounts of the lived experiences of my students as they learn to be and become skilled artists and craftworkers in the vocations and creative arts they come to pursue in the context of the arts college in which this research study is set.

The ways in which concepts of experience, knowledge, skill, craft, and practice are currently understood are explored, compared, and discussed in relation to how these concepts have been understood in more coherent ways in the past. The legitimacy of fabricated divides between practice and theory, insight and imagination, academic and vocational education, emotion and thought, thinking and doing are questioned and challenged.

This research draws upon the work of Richard Sennett (2008), in his writing regarding the nature of craft and stages and processes involved in the acquisition and development of different forms of knowledge, skills, traditions, and practices. It also builds upon the works of John Dewey (1902), in his writing about the nature of education and experience in relation to both the child and the curriculum, and Elliot Eisner (2002) on his discussion of embodied learning. For an older and more coherent philosophical discussion of the concept of practice and forms of knowledge, this thesis turns to the work of Aristotle (384-322 BC) and his discussion of technè, poesis, phronesis, and praxis to offer a critique of contemporary understanding of these concepts and to their consequences in action in education today.