| Abstract: | My initial interest in multi-cultural art education coupled with a wish to promote more cultural equality was inspired by my two years teaching experience in Kenya, Africa. The contrast of cultures gave me an objective view of my own culture on my return home and I found that I had not only changed as a person as a result, but wanted to continue that change, which gave me the motivation to become a research student, whilst lecturing. As a lecturer in and around the Bristol area it came to my notice through informal conversations with my colleagues at work that they held quite racist views. This I felt was a very insular way of viewing the world when global communications were very efficient and wide spread. In view of this, I chose to investigate to what extent Further Education staff in art and design were racist, and to consider how that might affect students' performance in terms of self-esteem, achievement and assessment. I took a psychodynamic approach to the interview schedule which was based on my experience and training as an art therapist, as well as an artist-sculptor and lecturer, and used Race Awareness Training (RAT), and specific criteria to base and analyse the data collected during the research. An interpretative paradigm was used in the final analysis and evaluation of this small scale study. The qualitative methodology used was felt to be more applicable to a personal approach because it gained clearer and more honest information in this sensitive field. |
