Methodology
The national project was designed under the rubric of action research and the London
Cluster devised a model in which action research teams were allocated to each of the
four galleries. In this way, art teachers, artists and gallery educators met to plan,
implement, review and revise pedagogical programmes. A primary condition for the
success of the programme was therefore dependent on developing a culture of
collaboration and mutuality, especially as the professionals involved had diverging
beliefs and different pedagogic agendas. The process of ‘reflection-in-action’ [1] that
this entailed required participants to contribute to ongoing critical discussions and the
collection of data, specifically through records of events and outcomes. Parallel to the
gallery-based teams, the IoE research team adopted the role of ‘critical friend’ [2],
engaging in participant observation as well as the collection and analysis of language-
based data (in this process they adhered to the Bera ethical guidelines for research [3].
In this way, the London model was not typical of action research because the action
researchers themselves were not responsible for the findings and recommendations,
rather this was the responsibility of the IoE research team. Methodologically our
model was more closely allied to ‘grounded research’ as defined by Strauss and
Corbin [4]. The action research teams used the resources of partnership to construct
learning environments and situations. These formed the ‘ground’ out of which the IoE
research team were able to interrogate the various practices and discourses, conditions
and relations peculiar to the Critical Minds project. Action researchers selected three
pupils from each of the four schools using the following categories: ‘good at art’,
‘resistant to art’ ‘wild card’ (the latter category broke down into, ‘live-wire’,
disengaged’, ‘hyperactive’, ‘unfathomable’. Evidence of participants’ perceptions of