Victor Margolin wrote:
> Thus, a graphic designer is judged on
> numbers of exhibitions, recognition by peers in various forms, prizes,
> awards, medals etc., rather than by the number of articles published in
> a journal. This is as far as I can tell an issue in the community of
> practice-based research in the UK, where new or additional criteria must
> be devised to evaluate work that does not fit traditional scholarly
> molds.
The devil is in the detail and it's quite dangerous to characterise
scholarly work in this way. Exhibitions, awards and peer recognition may
be straightforward markers of professional standing but you have to
start again when looking at scholarly worth.
These "outputs" do not usually provide a valid check of criticality or
originality and they are very vulnerable the cronyism that Terry points
to. At the moment there appears to be no substitute for a second,
academic, peer review to check out whether the artwork or design and the
claims made for it stand up to comparison with other academic
"contributions".
As an example from our AHRC review of practice-led research, we looked
for examples of practitioners outside the academy undertaking research
or research-like activity. In the UK the National Endowment for Science,
Technology and the Arts (NESTA) provides financial awards for innovative
work and NESTA provide an excellent set of project profiles on their
website at http://www.nesta.org.uk/ (a good practice that academics
could learn from)
While many these projects look like original and inquiring work that
could be making a good contribution to the development of their field,
NESTA's criteria and the way the stories are told do not automatically
validate them in those terms. It was clear to me from reading them that
I would need to find out more about each project before I could be
confident that it would stand comparison with peer reviewed research in
other fields.
What has become clear to me is that there is no substitute for
developing a community of scholars which has its own ways of assessing
value. That may not always mean journal style peer review but it can't
involve uncritical acceptance of non-academic achievements.
Incidentally, I think Terry is not on target for this discussion in his
characterisation of design and the divisions he draws. I am interested
in the community of this discussion rather than the notional community
that might exist if all the activity that could be described as design
were welded together. Our present community has "artschool" designers,
it has architects and it has engineers and it has some other new kinds
of designer. Non-traditional academics make up quite a large part of
this community. Also the boundary is not between disciplines since peer
reviewed journals play a part in research in the visual arts and
arguable some engineers (for example) might be able to take advantage of
other forms of validation if they developed.
very best
Chris
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