One of the many exciting challenges in teaching photography at whatever level is getting students to think hard about the nature of the subject. Why is this important? I think there are several possible answers to this question:
Photography is often taught within art, craft and design GCSE and A level specifications but many practitioners and historians would dispute its place there, preferring to think of it as a vocational discipline.
Photography is a multi-disciplinary subject with its origins in science.
Photography is bound up in the history of technological innovations, from the invention of the Daguerreotype to the digital revolution. Each new technological breakthrough has shifted the way we see and represent the world photographically.
Photography is a democratic subject. Almost everyone is able to take a picture these days and the sheer scale of photographic picture-making across the planet is overwhelming.
Photography is therefore all around us. Students see numerous photographic images every day, many of which advertise products, services, lifestyles and ideologies. Being aware of the ways in which they are being manipulated, what might be called the visual literacy argument, seems even more important.
There are, of course, many other pressing arguments for the importance of photography literacy. I have been teaching photography for over 10 years. I was trained as an English teacher and came to photography with a background in art history and an amateur passion for taking photographs. I have taught photography in the context of a BTEC media course and as a GCSE and A level. Each context has affected the emphasis in my pedagogy so that I have taught photography as a vocational discipline (with a focus on documentary and commercial practice) and as a form of visual art (with a focus on creative expression). In recent months I have been thinking hard about my pedagogy and the affordances provided by the GCSE and A level photography courses for students at my school.