Image Descriptions within Art History Pedagogy

The new Art History and Visual Cultures degree is an opportunity for the department to review its position on accessibility for Levels 2 and 3. This short project will review our teaching of formal analysis (visual discrimination) of works of art, however broadly defined, and consider whether this is a question of improving our support for all students in teaching and learning for this fusion of knowledge/ understanding/ skills, as well as revising our approach to alternative provision. 

Students whose level of non-sightedness/visually impairment (NS/VI) is sufficiently severe as to affect their assessment performance at Levels 2 and 3 in art history are effectively left with the self-exclusion option, if they feel unable to meet the current ‘visual discrimination’ skill levels without the possibility of using image descriptions (skills which are only defined in practice through assessment rubrics). The study of art, architecture and design history at the OU is now being framed as a wide field, including visual culture as a broad engagement with popular, vernacular, and global forms of image and object, and this informs the new degree pathway. This project aims to test the strength of the ‘visual discrimination’ elements of art history pedagogy, noting that there is an extensive literature documenting the relationship between fine art teaching and NS/VI students, and a considerable literature for STEM pedagogy and NS/VI students. Architecture as a design profession is also being challenged over inclusion of NS/VI students, partly to follow-through on challenges to diversify the profession and partly in recognition that design training offers NS/VI students’ valuable transferable skills even if they are unable to achieve recognition as a chartered architect. Students point out that their prior learning includes skills in analysing space, in their daily lives. 

NS/VI students’ visual perception is highly variable between individuals, seen in the personalised opportunities for modifying how text is presented, either by the students or by the OU. There is a universal design at work in our pedagogy which produces a set of viable mitigations and assistive practices; students are able to personalise their use of this repertoire. However, the project will enquire about the ‘match’ between the complete provision of a set of image descriptions in a module (as an example of universal design) and the possible needs of NS/VI students intending to progress through an art history degree. Is there an opportunity to draw on the model of ‘personalised design’ as a reactive but student-led model of creating accessibility within visual arts teaching? In the early C21st, is it appropriate for a leading distance teaching university to continue to use ‘universal design’ or nothing as the two poles of our visual culture pedagogy? 

Specific questions for this initial project are therefore not addressing the student experience per se, but exploring fundamental pedagogical questions: 

• Pedagogy: what (not how) do art/visual culture historians expect to teach as ‘visual discrimination’ skills? 
• Exceptionalism: what would art/visual culture historians recognise as parallel ‘visual discrimination’ skills in other disciplines, if any, and how are these skills taught/adapted? 
• Experience: How is a sense of ‘visual discrimination’ discussed for NS/VI experiences of a visual and material world, either in a pedagogical environment or in informal learning/public engagement scenarios? 
• Expectations: how do projects that engage NS/VI citizens/students with aspects of design and visual culture report on aspects of agency, ownership and engagement?