From school centric to ‘material centric’ education

To craftsmen materials are part of the social world. More specifically, the way professional craftsmen interact with materials is shaped by the way product imaginaries emerge as part of embodied relations which are co-constitutive to their appearance in experience. Building on the distinction Dewey ([1934]2005) in ‘Art as Experience’ draws between art as an object and art as experience, this presentation examines the way in which education for particularly skilled students at vocational education schools in Denmark re-focus teachers attention to materials and student-material relations. Technically, in Denmark, becoming a craftsman is no longer solely a matter of apprenticeship at a local workshop, garage, kitchen or similar, but of going to school. It is an exchange-based education and students ideally spend half the time ‘in real life’. However, it is the school which forms the entry to a future as craftsman. A pilot-project in spring 2014 revealed that designing talent education pushed teachers (who all have a personal background in vocational jobs) to challenge a theory based and in this sense school centric curriculum objectifying materials as pre-existing elements or resources in an assignment, and re-consider relations with materials as dimensions facilitating the professional development of vocational ‘talent’. The broader topic of school centric versus ‘material centric’ education ties this research into vocational skills and craftsmanship with inquiries into framing and structuring of education aiming for students to develop ‘innovative’ and ‘clever’ practical solutions.