Temperton, John (2026) Tensions, Contradictions and Paradoxes in Attitudes to Drawing in Education: A Multilevel Exploration. Doctoral thesis, York St John University.

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Abstract

This thesis examines how cultural, political and pedagogical frameworks shape the perceived value of drawing in formal education. It treats drawing as both artistic practice and a critical learning tool, a dual role often obscured in performative systems but central to the study’s argument. The research addresses why drawing, widely recognised as fundamental to creativity and cognition remains marginalised within the English national curriculum. Positioned within Art and Design as one of several creative techniques, its role oscillates between instrumental utility and artistic autonomy. The study adopts a qualitative, multilevel design, combining historical and policy analysis, archival case study and interviews with arts educators. A Foucauldian genealogical methodology supported by grounded theory, provides the analytical lens. The concepts of utopia, dystopia and heterotopia operate as a triadic genealogical framework, tracing how cultural values, institutional structures and professional discourses have evolved and how they continue to shape drawing in education.

Findings reveal drawing’s paradoxical status: endorsed in the curriculum yet devalued under regimes of accountability and measurement. Educators experience tensions between creative autonomy and institutional constraint. Yet the study also documents how they sustain drawing’s epistemic, affective and relational richness, through adaptive strategies. These micro-resistances reveal that teacher agency persists not outside managerial cultures but through tactical negotiation.

The analysis demonstrates that drawing’s marginalisation is historically produced, not inevitable, and therefore open to reconfiguration. Drawing can be reclaimed, not merely as a technical skill but as a transformative mode of learning and critical thought. The thesis offers an alternative account that resists neoliberal constraints and reframes drawing as epistemically legitimate on its own terms. It contributes original knowledge by evidencing how educators contest and reimagine its status in daily practice, and how drawing continues to function as a site of ongoing struggle and possibility.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Status:	Published
Subjects:	L Education > L Education (General) L Education > LB Theory and practice of education
School/Department:	School of Education, Language and Psychology
URI:	https://ray.yorksj.ac.uk/id/eprint/14671

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