Setting my sights: my experience of establishing a GCSE photography course

By Deborah Dodsworth, Art & Photography teacher, Oaklands School, Waterlooville.

Year 10 Destroy & Distort project

By rights it shouldn’t have been too difficult for me to start up a GCSE photography course. I have taught art since the beginning of this century and specialised in art photography during my degree. I then went on to work work as a photographer’s assistant in London. I am (or at least I was) well versed in Susan Sontag, Roland Barthes and fascinated by Claude Levi-Strauss, construction and de- construction of the image, semiotics etc. However, I haven’t truly picked my camera up, with serious intent (other than capturing those familiar precious family moments) since having children. I allowed life to take over. My work has taken a backseat and in the meantime photography became a futuristic digital minefield and I was left a floundering dinosaur. My camera knowledge is good. My Photoshop knowledge needs working on, to say the least, but is improving. To top it all I have been on the lighter side of part-time for the last 7 years, so light in fact that teaching GCSE level or above has not been a requirement on my timetable as it simply would not have been realistic.

As a team we are brand new: 1 part-time (myself) and 2 full time teachers with 4 GCSE groups across art and photography in a school with around 1200 on roll plus a 6th form. We have just one technician who has to facilitate art, textiles, food-tech, resistant materials and photography. This has not stopped me from wanting to have a course that is all singing and all dancing, despite there being very little money left in the singing and dancing pot in schools in the south of England.

Year 10 Destroy & Distort project

Year 10 Destroy & Distort project

We have made a great start. I have worked closely with my current colleague (I say current as she will leave soon after covering a maternity), without whom I doubt we would have got so far. We are still a long way off where I would like to see our department in the future. I decided that due to lack of money in education and, in particular, the arts, the best way forward would be to create student ePortfolios. Not only would this reduce printing costs, sketchbook costs and so on (Nooo! I hear some of you scream), but it would or should make things easier for students. Many of the problems of teaching GCSE - late coursework or homework - would be eased as research would be much more straight forward and, of course, the students would be excited to put together their websites and upload their images!  Minimal printing is necessary, therefore speeding up the production of the final outcome. 

I was, of course, wrong. There are as many pitfalls as there are advantages to ePortfolios and I am still working part-time making it just that little bit trickier to chase things up as quickly as I would like. I began by marking the work and giving feedback to my students directly on their sites. Do not do this – it doesn’t look "cool” and the students delete it! I have now ascertained that this is recoverable but I didn’t realise it at the time and so lost evidence of my valuable advice and the time I spent doing it was wasted. I have kept the websites password protected so that only those with the password can see them. I am now rethinking this approach since a public site will mean students are publishing their work to a real world audience and possibly feel more accountable for its content.

I now realise how very unrealistically optimistic I have been. Coursework and homework is still coursework and homework regardless of the fact that it's online. Students love doing the practical work- the photography, the dark room – always have. But scanning, uploading, evaluating and analysing is still considered to be a chore. 

​I have felt regularly that I am out of my depth and the reason I am faced with these problems is because the students think that I am too. I am now though beginning to recognise that I am doing everything I can with what I have and that, although I am continually behind with chasing, marking and technology, we are getting pretty good results, so much so that I have now been approached by another school for advice on how to set up their new course.

Without the PHOTOPEDAGOGY contributors, advice from Jon, Chris and ALL of their collaborators I would not have found my feet. Thank you all. I hope to add some lesson plans of my own and continue the “Pay it Forward” (and hopefully back) culture you have generously created. ​