Hi all
a different discussion matter from current ones, and not disregarding
the valuable discussion on quality, value and innate abilities and the
right to draw or think visually, I would like to ask members for advice
here. Apologies to international members as this discussion is of
particular relevance to UK institutions, but the issues might be of
greater interest disregarding this?
There will be a staff consultation on forthcoming Research Assessment
Exercise assessment criteria based on citation at my institute in
early January. As academic funding of art and design is linked to
"doing well" in these matters, I'm interested in finding out if other
members of this mailing list are currently concerned with similar types
of consultation, and if there might be a way of us clubbing together in
building up a referenced (indeed) argument for alternative measuring
techniques so these can be forwarded to respective research
co-ordinators in your institutions and to Arts and Humanities Research
Council, plus other research councils? It seems ludicrous but in order
to make any impact on the minds of people who live by citation indexes
to measure research and brain activity, one must, so it appears to me,
play the same game. No doubt a lot of work has already happened here in
preparation for previous RAEs and so it seems silly to double up work-
better to built on existing knowledge and to share it.
My intuition is that art and design, drawing in particular as a means
of materialising visual intelligence, needs to be assessed radically
differently from the current approach where it is 'lumped' in with the
humanities. The latter traditionally rely on sequential thinking,
verbal logic and verbal outputs. So there are two stakes here: one not
to lose out in the next funding round ahead whilst criteria for
assessment are underway of being composed
the second to emancipate visual literacy, thinking and intelligence in
the arena of research and to give it greater prominence and status for
its own specific values and contributions towards knowledge. I think
the latter has been one of the reasons for why this mailing list has
been set up in the first place?
I found an interesting bibliography on the net which holds a number
(too many for me to read!!) of interesting references.
http://distance-ed.math.tamu.edu/techtools/valgebra/references/
references.htm
Is anyone here also concerned with this and might be facing similar
issues due to being institutionalised or 'patronised' (of sorts) by a
UK university or specialist tertiary institute of Higher Education? And
is there a way we could work together in mounting a strong argument
which will be heard not only by AHRC but also other institutions in
charge of measuring research?
Welcoming all your kind contributions,
Doris
Doris Rohr
drawer / (re)searcher/ birdwomen
array studios
http://www.arraystudios.co.uk
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associate lecturer in painting
fIne and applied art
university of ulster
http://www.ulster.ac.uk
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