In those projects where sessions were organised in blocks of time, the action
researchers were able to develop constructive relations with pupils and colleagues. In
this sustained environment the teams were able to plan a series of sequenced activities
moving between discursive, investigative, creative and collaborative practices. This
afforded pupils the opportunity to come to know one another through common
endeavours.
Through their research Lave and Wenger have developed an understanding of how
communities of practice are developed and sustained [30]. They explain that for such
communities to function they need to generate and engender a shared repertoire of
ideas, commitments and memories, which takes time. As Hein insists co-constructive
pedagogy cannot be expected to take place on a three-hour visit to the gallery [31].
There is a danger that projects such as Critical Minds serve to reinforce normative
relations because they act as a one-off bubble where they are perceived as limited
outsider interventions. Alan Kaprow warns of this effect when he claims: ‘Almost
anyone will seem to flower if unusual attention is paid to them. It’s what happens
over the long term that matters’ [32].
3/artist: One problem is that we didn’t get a chance to contexualise the project within
the school... I asked one of the really able pupils ‘are you going to take art next
year?’ She said ‘No’. I said ‘Why not? That’s a shame’. She said ‘Because I don’t like
drawing and painting.’ And I said ‘But, but, but, but what have you been doing !!!!’
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