Phew! And relax.

It's been another long, hard and exciting year with seemingly very little time to take care of non urgent business. Now the summer holidays have arrived, we can take stock, reflect and do a bit of much needed housekeeping at PhotoPedagogy Towers.

You may have noticed that the website is getting a slight facelift. Here are some of the changes we've made:

• The homepage is more visual with (a lot) less text. A grid of hyperlinked images highlights particular resources on the site.
• For those wishing to know a bit more about PhotoPedagogy, the old homepage is now an About page and sits underneath the new Home page with an invitation to Contribute to the site.
• The Threshold Concepts now have their own place in the menu and are, hopefully, easier to find and use.
• Some of the older Resources have been retired. If you really miss something, let us know and we'll reinstate it.
• The Lesson Plans have now been subdivided into KS3/4 and Post 16. We've removed reference to GCSE and A-level, since students and teachers of other courses (such as BTECs) in this country and abroad might also find the resources useful. These pages also look a bit different.

Finally, we've  sorted out some of the less obvious, niggling design details, such as colour consistency, across the site. As always, the website is a work in progress.

​Thanks to everyone who has contacted us over the last two days, whilst we were moving stuff around, to ask about the location of missing pages or dead links. If only we were professional web designers we'd have made all the changes without you even noticing, but we're not. Hopefully, most things are back where you might expect them to be now. If you spot anything weird or missing, please let us know!

In other news, we've had some really exciting discussions with various friends in the photography world outside schools in the last few weeks. Here's a short summary of those conversations:

The folks at pic.london have been in touch and we're hoping to support them with a workshop at their next big photography event sometime in 2019.

We have begun planning our next 2 day CPD session for Tate Exchange, working closely with Autograph ABP and The Photographers' Gallery. As soon as we have confirmed dates and details, you'll be the first to know but, at the moment, the plan is to hold an event similar to last year's during the first two days of the February half term (18 and 19 February 2019).

We've been invited by Photoworks to run a session for teachers at this year's Brighton Photography Biennial. This will take place on Saturday 29 September, the opening weekend of the event. Here are the details in case you're interested in getting involved:

We're really excited about all these opportunities to meet colleagues, share ideas and discuss the state of play in photography education. We hope you like the changes to the website.

​We'd like to thank everyone for your support this year and wish you a very happy summer holiday. We look forward to working with you again in September!

Best wishes,
​Jon & Chris

What has been the best professional development you've ever experienced as a photography teacher? 

I imagine no single course or experience has been able to satisfy all your needs but it would be great to know what you have valued. Here are some of the experiences that I have either valued or would value in any CPD event:

• an opportunity to be taught about aspects of the history and theory of photography by experts in the field
• an opportunity to be shown useful, innovative and unusual techniques and processes
• an opportunity to discuss photography pedagogy, how to interpret the various exam board specifications whilst maintaining a focus on creativity, independence and authenticity
• an opportunity to make photographs (in a studio and/or on location) alongside fellow photography teachers and to explore the identity of artist/teacher
• an opportunity to meet and hear from one or more respected photographers
• an opportunity to explore the transitions between KS4 and 5 and between KS5 and degree level study
• an opportunity to talk to colleagues from a range of settings across the country, to plan projects and discuss ideas for future schemes of work

Is there anything you would want to add to this list? Who has provided your CPD to date? I've been to fantastic courses at The Photographers' Gallery, for example. We really enjoyed our recent day of creative mischief at Tate Exchange during which we to to meet and work alongside several colleagues and their students. Some of the best CPD I've experienced has been through conversations, both real and virtual, with colleagues. Our Threshold Concepts were developed in this way, collaboratively and online.

What if we could organise a conference (an unconference even) specifically for teachers of photography? How might it work? It's an idea that Chris and I have discussed several times. The likelihood of being able to create one event that would satisfy lots of people (cost, location, duration) would be a real challenge. Nevertheless, it's a tantalising prospect. A first step would be to try to understand what colleagues might want from such an event:

• How long might it last (a few hours, a day, a weekend, over several days...?)
• Where might it take place (in a city, on the coast, abroad, in a rural location, in a gallery, in a school, online...?)
• How much might participants be willing/able to pay (nothing, transport costs only, £50-100, more...?)

In other words, if you could design your ideal CPD experience, what would it look and feel like?

As a photography teaching community perhaps we could collaborate in designing our own CPD and organise an event or events which would help to meet our collective needs? Please leave your responses in the comments below.

Jon Nicholls
Thomas Tallis School

By Jon Nicholls, Thomas Tallis School

This post is an attempt to document the impact of Tate's Summer School 2016 on my practice this year so far. I've written about the experience of attending the 5 days of workshops in a previous post. It's difficult to disentangle the various influences that shape your teaching - discussions with colleagues, visiting exhibitions, reading articles, students' responses and misconceptions, talks and workshops - but I feel there are several strands that can be unravelled that relate directly to Summer School and have helped shape my lessons over the last 8 weeks or so. 

The classroom as studio/laboratory
One of the challenges I've faced since September is teaching a Year 13 photography class in an art room (rather than our specialist photography room) with limited access to ICT. Inspired by Anna and Alex's inventive use of a range of materials, processes (and spaces) during the Summer School, this constraint has encouraged me to attempt a wider range of experiments, perhaps more closely linked to contemporary art practice than a traditional photography course. Thinking about the limitations of this space (no studio lights, darkroom or easy access to laptops/the Internet, printing etc.) has prompted a more inventive approach which has, in turn, influenced the activities I have offered to other groups back in the photography room.

​During the latter part of the summer holidays I printed about 300 of my own photographs (quite cheaply using Photobox) for the students to use in the early September experiments. The emphasis has been on looking, sorting, collaborating, discussing, selecting, sequencing, describing, displaying and documenting. These skills, I hoped, would all help them in the ongoing development and refinement of their Personal Investigations. I was also keen to explore another provocation from Summer School about the relationship between still and moving images. Here are some of the documentary images and videos from these early experiments, directly influenced by similar Summer School activities:

The students were asked to work in groups, selecting only 5 images and placing them in a sequence. These were then stuck to the classroom wall in a single line arranged edge to edge. Photographs were taken of the join between each pair of images and a camera on a wheel mounted tripod was used to film various tracking shots. One group decided to experiment with adding additional circular apertures cut from postcards. One of the tracking shots featured additional images added to the original selection, inspired by one of Anna's films. We also explored the relationship between photographs and verbal descriptions of their formal elements, creating a slideshow of captions minus the original photographs.

Summer School had raised the following questions for me:

• How can I encourage more purposeful collaboration?
• How can we all begin making much sooner and immerse ourselves in a dialogue with materials, not just photographic?
• How might we use the products of these preliminary making sessions in the next phase of our activities?

These experiments with the selection, sequencing and display of found photographs certainly put the emphasis on experimentation with materials. Together with a further set of prompts (again inspired by Anna and Alex's instructions), space was created in the classroom/studio for playful investigation designed to deliberately undermine the authority of the single photographic image. 

Our guiding Threshold Concepts were #5 and #6 (with the support of #4 and #7). Beneath the messing about was a more serious proposal - photographs are technological and cultural constructs, requiring critical intelligence on the part of the maker and viewer. ​

The colour photocopier proved to be a really helpful tool for undermining the single image (although several colleagues waiting behind us in the queue might not have been so sympathetic):

The use of old paper enabled us to discuss aspects of TC#10. Unexpected patterns, caused by years of light leaking onto the surface of the paper, reminded us of the materiality of the photographic image perhaps best exemplified in the practice of artists like Alison Rossiter.

Year 11 photographers have also been experimenting with a range of strategies inspired by Summer School, producing some exciting outcomes. The circle cutters have certainly been popular and students have enjoyed playing with openings/obstructions, inside/outside, text/image, digital/analogue etc:

Performing for (and with) the Camera
A central feature of our Summer School experience was the notion of performance. We took various objects out into the galleries, at one point making a spectacle of ourselves. I really enjoyed the process of creating cardboard apertures and the collaborative performance in the Tanks. I wondered in my previous Summer School post "whether we could make interesting use of break and lunchtimes to share work with the wider school community and use the element of surprise." Consequently, we have attempted our own (ongoing) series of performances in school, beginning with a reprise of 'Apertures' featuring Year 13 photographers:

I felt particularly sorry for the group who ended up performing in the pouring rain! I've encouraged the Year 13 students to explore the relationship between photography and performance, referring to specific examples and the catalogues of Tate's fantastic 'Performing for the Camera' and 'Conceptual Art in Britain 1964-1979' exhibitions. We've discussed the various roles a photographer can perform (pun intended):

• documenting someone else's performance (e.g. Shunk and Kender's practice)
• performing for the camera (e.g. the self-portrait)
• performing with the camera (e.g. John Baldessari)

We've attempted a couple of collaborative performances to test these notions. For example, we made a pinhole (binhole?) camera from a large, black waste bin in order to create class portraits:

We have made out of date photographic paper aeroplanes, flown them in public and developed the resulting 'aerographs':

We have explored the One Minute Sculptures of Erwin Wurm:

We've had some fun (a worthy end in itself) but I think the students have found these experiments a bit bewildering. It will be interesting to see what emerges later on this year. Hopefully, they will have become slightly more conscious of the performative role all photographers play when they are operating a camera (especially in public) and the nature of the relationship between photographer and human subject. A few of early video sketches, exploring time and motion, are encouraging:

We have some other performances planned across the visual, media and performing arts. Year 9 students helped to curate an event for The Big Draw, an activity from which was repeated with staff in Wednesday morning briefing. Other events include the operation of a drawing machine, created by our art technician, and numerous impromptu music, dance and drama performances that will pop up unannounced throughout the year in a series of unlikely places. Our aim is to generate a sense of surprise and delight.
​
​Working alongside an artist
This aspect of the Summer School is obviously the most fundamental and the hardest to replicate back at school.

Her visit was wonderfully inspiring, combing a short talk about her practice, some links to other artists working in unusual ways with found imagery and a practical workshop involving the cutting, reassembling and projecting of vintage transparencies. Here are some of the Year 11 responses:

I've not seen this particular class become quite so absorbed in the process of making photographic images as they did in Dafna's workshop. The excitement of moving from working with a scalpel on a tiny scale over a light box to seeing the images projected on the end wall of the classroom reminded me of the screening of our 16mm film during the Summer School - a strange mixture of surprise, wonder, pride and appreciation. Had I not experienced the tremendous benefit of working alongside artists myself at Summer School, I'm not sure I would have been as determined to get an artist into school to work with my students. Now that it's happened, I'm even more committed to making this a more regular occurrence!

I have by no means exhausted the ideas and opportunities generated during Tate Summer School. I'm still keen to make a rotating table and a makeshift track for video experiments. I'd love to work with Super 8 or 16mm film. I'm pleased to have begun the process of transferring ideas into my school context and excited about the way my own practice has expanded. I'm looking forward to seeing how these experiments impact on the students' work over the coming months.

Now, time to give some more thought to the PhotoPedagogy Tate Exchange Associate project...

I've just read 'Inside Out' by Solomon-Godeau in preparation for Monday's talk. Last week's lecture about John Berger produced some fairly heated discussion about whether Berger was more or less interesting than Walter Benjamin (to whom he was indebted) and whether his Marxism was an obstruction to the enjoyment of his writing. It was the sort of debate that reminded me of university or the early years of my teaching career. I really enjoyed it and came out determined to re-read everything by John Berger I could get my hands on.

Teemu has been an excellent guide thus far. We are about 25 students of varying ages, backgrounds and levels of expertise in photography. At least a couple of people have done Masters degree study. There is at least one professional photojournalist in the group. There are also people who appear to be interested amateurs and some who have never heard of Benjamin, Barthes or Berger. The lectures last about 90 minutes. Teemu, aware of his audience, is very good at pitching things so that they are challenging but accessible. We stop fairly frequently to discuss ideas or seek clarification. Often, there is just enough time at the end to enter into group discussion, like last week's exchanges about Ways of Seeing. In fact, that would be a much better title for the course in my opinion. Each writer selected is discussed in terms of their specific contribution to the history of photography theory but each lecture is careful to identify how one concept builds on another or where there are contradictions or changes of direction in the writer's own thoughts. Consequently, we are presented with a plurality of approaches to looking at photographs, a number of ways of seeing.

I have been very lucky that my school has helped to fund my attendance (under the generous banner of Continuing Professional Development) but at £18 per lecture it's really very good value. Some of these texts were familiar to me before the course began but I hadn't read them for quite a while. I have thoroughly enjoyed dusting them off. Some of the texts are new to me and I'm sure will give me much pause for thought. 

Chris and I are almost at the end of creating our set of resources to support the Threshold Concepts. We're just about to publish number 10, the final instalment. Lots of the ideas I've encountered in my re-reading of these great texts have found their ways into the TCs. I imagine, as I encounter more, I will want to add new observations to what's already there. I have certainly been weaving summarised versions of photography theory into my A level lessons, alongside more explicit reference to the Threshold Concepts. Feedback so far suggests that students are enjoying the chance to get to grips with big ideas. 

It's been such a pleasure to go back to school, to be taught again. This is the third iteration of the course and its popularity suggests that it may well be running again next year. I can think of worse ways to spend a Monday evening.

Jon Nicholls, Thomas Tallis School

By Jon Nicholls, Thomas Tallis School.

Like other aspects of contemporary art practice, artists' statements can be mystifying and alienating, mired in theoretical abstractions. The example above was generated by a website which aims to draw attention to the perils of artspeak. It could have been designed by George Orwell. So, why would I be recommend that photography students enter this dangerous territory?

Writing an artist's statement might seem like a curious activity for a photography student but I'd like to argue that the process can have all sorts of collateral learning opportunities beyond simply generating the statement itself. For me these include:

• exploring (and questioning) the jargon and lexicon that accompanies contemporary art
• reflecting on personal interests and ways of seeing/photographing
• playing with the identity of an artist/photographer (rather than just an art/photography student)
• thinking about making photographs as a kind of art practice
• experimenting with the relationship between language and images
• crafting and refining an authentic, personal, meaningful (and manageable) piece of writing
• generating ideas for new projects

This is an activity I've explored with Year 12 students at about the time that they are beginning to think about more personal investigations. I'm really interested in the idea that students are 'becoming artists' and, since writing statements that describe a practice (whatever that might be) are central to the business of being an artist today, I've speculated that trying this process out with students might be an interesting way for them to put on the mantle of a contemporary artist and try it out for size.

Here's how I explained the process to my students:

Using a statement generator is a great way to put some words on the blank page and begin to explore the curious language used in the world of contemporary art.** Some students will be adept with language. Others may feel very unconfident. In my experience, a significant proportion of the class will have chosen photography A level partly because they don't consider themselves to be 'academic'. The fear of the blank page can be overwhelming.

The 500 letters website is the most sophisticated statement generator that I've found (if you know one that's better please let me know in the comments below). Once you've clicked the 'this application' link, you're presented with the following questionnaire. This gathers enough information about you, your details and interests as an artist, to create a more nuanced statement than other generator like arty b******s, for example.

This is what I got back when I filled in the questionnaire:

Some of this is nonsense, some of it a bit silly. But, there are certain phrases that ring true. There are some interesting words to look up - "aleatoric", "transubstantiation", "assemblages", "analogies". The more items you select from the list available in the questionnaire, the longer and more detailed your statement. The point of using a statement generator is analogous to the act of photography itself. Photographers select from a world that is already full of stuff. Unlike the other arts, they rarely, if ever, begin with a blank page. The idea is not to keep the statement generated by the website. It's just an amusing way to get started. This brings us to Stage 2.

Now that the blank page has words on it, students are able to edit freely rejecting, augmenting and refining until they have something that sounds a bit like them. There is plenty of other helpful advice out there if anyone gets a bit stuck or if a student prefers top go it alone. This blog post is a really helpful guide to constructing an artist's statement from scratch. If you don't want your statement to "suck", check out this advice. 

I have sometimes asked students to interview each other about their work. You could provide a list of questions or ask the students to create their own. You could read or watch some great interviews online. The purpose of this activity is a bit like the hot-seating I used to do when I taught English. When interviewed, each student has to put on the mantle of the expert and act as if they are an artist/photographer with an existing practice. I provide some general guidelines. No false modesty. All questions must be answered as fully as possible. Interviewers should probe with follow up questions. That sort of thing. It's a good idea for partners to record these interviews (using their phones, for example) so that both parties can concentrate on the discussion.

The opening sentence is important. Spend a bit of time on this. Here's an example that I've adapted from an existing artist's statement:

Here's another:

There's a famous story about the novelist James Joyce bumping into another writer who enquired about his day's work. Joyce had spent the entire day writing two sentences. The admirer wondered whether he had been struggling with a particular word. Joyce replied that he had written all the words early that morning but had spent the rest of the day putting them in the "perfect order". 

Getting a range of feedback about your statement is really important. Other readers can quiz you about the details, check that it makes sense and ask you for further clarification, if necessary. It's also important that the authors take responsibility for their words and see the statement as personal and meaningful (and not just because this is what they are required to do for Assessment Objective 4). A statement may take several drafts to get right. It's something the student can return to time and again, adapting as they go, to better reflect the nature of their evolving practice. It might be worth considering using an online word processor (like Google Docs) which allows for collaborative, iterative, remote editing. Documents can be shared with multiple editors and each version is saved behind the scenes. It's also almost impossible to "lose",  "leave at home" or be accidentally consumed by the family pet. 

If the process has been successful and most students feel as though they have created an authentic statement about their practice as photographers/artists it might be a good idea to use these statements as catalysts for a new project. I have done this, asking my class to write or explain a proposed project that articulates the ideas in their statements. This could be as simple as a sentence or two or it might take the form of a conversation. Either way, it provides an opportunity for students to turn words into action, testing out their modus operandi. Ultimately, these statements might also form the basis of the students' personal study essays.

​If the process has been unsuccessful, it's important to reflect on the collateral learning. Writing reasonably substantial pieces of continuous prose has become even more important in the new A level specifications. Consider this a trial run. Studying a particular discipline can be a liminal experience in which students enter a particular threshold but may remain in a kind of limbo state for some time, struggling with troublesome knowledge. Acknowledging and explaining an artistic practice must surely be one of the most important experiences available to an A level arts student. Rome wasn't built in a day.

** For a detailed riposte to the accusations presented in Triple Canopy's article “International Art English" by Alix Rule and David Levine, check out this post on the e-flux website.

The new linear Art & Design specifications at A level separate the AS and A level courses. We've just taken the plunge. We're going linear. Why and what does this mean for our students?

I'll be honest. I've never really seen the point of the AS level qualification for photography students. Whilst many of my colleagues have enjoyed the opportunity to prepare students for public examinations in January and June of Year 12, I have always had problems with the AS. Many of our students come to us from other schools where they have not studied photography at GCSE level. We've only recently had our own GCSE course. We have to assume that most students begin photography A level with very little knowledge and rudimentary skills. This has meant that we've had to cram an introduction to photography into 5 months (September to January), asking students to produce work that is personal and meaningful for their coursework portfolio so that we can begin preparing for Unit 2 (The Externally Set Task) from the start of February. This kind of time scale can have one or two negative consequences:

• students are forced to generate work before they have developed a deep understanding of photography
• teachers are tempted to design programmes of study that exclude much risk, preferring to go with projects that are guaranteed to generate decent results

I also have an issue with a course that perpetuates the 'exam factory' treadmill experienced by students at the start of their advanced level courses. This was even worse with January entry modules. Fortunately, this was never an option for Art & Design courses, but the deadline of 31st January for the completion of Unit 1 came too soon for many students who needed a bit more time to develop their ideas and experiment with a wider variety of potential solutions. I was never convinced that 5 months was enough time to develop sufficient mastery of the subject required for examination.

Another issue was the effect of completing the AS course (50% of the student's final A level grade) at the end of Year 12 on their subsequent experience of Year 13. Despite my sense that the AS course was not in the best interests of students, ours tended to do well. Our retention rate to Year 13 was high. Students tended to do as well, if not better, in photography than in their other A level subjects. However, for many students, having 50% of their final A level grade in the bag, so to speak, half way through the course tended to encourage them to lose focus and motivation in Year 13. There were clearly other factors for this too. Students perhaps sensed the end of their time at school on the horizon and may have been distracted by applications to UCAS and preparing Arts College portfolios. However, I also feel that the AS experience gave them a slightly false sense of the demands of the subject. Having come to it fresh, with little prior knowledge, and having got a decent grade at the first attempt, they could be forgiven for thinking that A level photography was pretty easy. 

The best analogy I can think of is drama. The AS/A2 experience might be compared to a two act play. There is a crescendo at the end of Act 1 (AS) as the actors (students) achieve a pitch of emotion. Act 2 (A2) consequently begins in a bit of a lull and works up to its own climax. For the most committed students, the climax of A2 exceeded the intensity of that at AS but, for many of our students, the loss of energy between the acts was never fully recovered. When the new linear specifications were announced, I began to wonder whether we could switch to a one act play with a single arc of action leading to one final denouement. (My knowledge of dramatic structure is pretty limited so please forgive any technical inaccuracies in my comparison.)

So, what might this new course be like?

After some deliberation, we have decided not to offer an AS in photography for this year's Year 12 cohort. We are still in the process of testing and refining a new course structure but it will look something like this: