Last year, as part of their series of subject reviews, OfSTED published their research into art and design, (Research review series: art and design). Its well worth a read for all Art Subject Leaders. Like many of the recent reports from OfSTED there is a lot of detailed and deep thinking into the types of knowledge, pedagogy and assessment approaches specific to teaching art.

This post is not intended to discuss or summarise the whole report. Others have done this well and I would recommend reading it alongside the response from NSEAD (the National Society for Education in Art and Design). Instead I want to focus on a section that stood out for me when I first read the report a year ago and has had me thinking ever since. Tucked away in a section about Curriculum Progression there are a few paragraphs on “Building towards divergent and convergent end points in the curriculum“. This wrestles with what good outcomes look like in art and how teachers can manage the challenge of supporting children to reach pre-defined technical skill and proficiency whilst also valuing creative and unexpected interpretations.

“When leaders set ambitious end goals for the curriculum, it is important that they do not confuse the content pupils need to know with the artwork that they create. As in other subjects that promote original thought, when pupils study art and design, they will make interesting and unexpected connections between content and generate their own creative ideas.”

Research Review Series – Art and Design, OfSTED, Feb 2023

OfSTED describes these as convergent and divergent outcomes:

Convergent Outcomes	Divergent Outcomes
Static or fixed outcomes e.g. practise mixing secondary and tertiary colours Prescribed so that pupils learn a specific curriculum object	Artwork that is diverse and radically different from other pupils’ work Pupils use what they have learned as well as drawing on their personal and creative thoughts and feelings to produce individual work
Learning ‘about’ and ‘with’ art	Learning ‘in’ and ‘through’ art

The report describes how the different outcomes should be carefully planned into a sequence suggesting that first children should learn the prescribed knowledge which will enable them to reach the convergent goal, before then they use their knowledge, skills and experiences, combining them in their own way to produce divergent and creative outcomes.

This interested me because I think in schools we risk focussing on either convergent or divergent outcomes. I have seen schools doing just this and yet having both is essential to developing confident competent artists.

I’ve seen art curricula that focus on the development of skills and techniques and the mastering of these over time where children develop high competency but teachers are perhaps nervous to allow them to break out from the prescribed boundaries. Where this is the case outcomes look good, work on display, though very ‘samey’ would be described as ‘high-quality’ and children are proud of what they produce. If they are able to follow the prescribed expectations, then they feel safe and competent, if not however they feel they ‘can’t do art’. There is little opportunity for free expression or true creativity.

At the other extreme, I’ve seen curricula that introduce children to a wide range of media, materials and approaches and allow them to respond freely. Outcomes are diverse and potentially more creative and yet the children’s lack of technical development means they are continually forced to experiment, learn as they go and repeat mistakes. They can get frustrated and, whilst they enjoy the process, outcomes often disappoint not just the teachers, but children too. Final pieces can look naive and not up to expectations.

Of course when described like this, it is clear that middle ground and opportunity for both sides is required. But how? Time is limited and how do we ensure that time is allowed for both technical skill development AND creative experimentation?

Planning for convergent outcomes

This is perhaps easier and a good place to start for an art leader. This is where we consider how specific skills and techniques are taught and developed over time. For example, where children will learn to mix colours, paint washes, etc. Most art leads are well on with developing progression maps which show this level of detail.

Planning for divergent outcomes

This is perhaps trickier. Where and how can you plan for children to create less prescribed interpretations? What should they look like? Should it just be a ‘free-for-all’?

Er, no! I’d say that children still need some boundaries and in fact artists themselves work within boundaries, often self-created, in order to support themselves to respond creatively. There is nothing as scary as a blank page and someone saying, “Go on then, create something!” I think this is where some schools have found things get unstuck when they have tried to introduce more creative approaches to how children use sketchbooks and then have found children struggling with this freedom.

But creativity can be nourished by introducing increased choice, freedom and options over time. Possible options and choices could include:

• Portrait or landscape?
• Type of paper
• Subject matter
• View/ perspective
• Choice of colour
• Brush type
• Material/ media
• Composition on the page.

Maybe within a sketchbook, choice is developed steadily so children are given some options on how they could lay out their artist study or present their experiments with colour. Over time, children would then become more comfortable with trying out different approaches, particularly when encouraged to learn from and share with one another and when divergent approaches are commended.

It seems to me that providing opportunities for divergence and a culture in which a variety of responses are encouraged are the key components of supporting creative expression. We can’t expect children to just ‘be creative’ without the same level of support that we provide in other areas of the curriculum – and this is in part due to the fact that we expect convergence in so many other areas of the curriculum and children have become used to following models and success criteria. Art is different and whilst some skills will need blanket teaching, we must also nurture, plan for and support divergence.