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ART EDUCATION AUSTRALIA RESEARCH SYMPOSIUM
Accepted Abstracts
Age-related shifts in the theoretical constraints underlying children’s critical reasoning in art
Karen Maras, Australian Catholic University, NSW
Abstract
This paper outlines a recent empirical study focussing on the developmental significance of children’s critical judgements of paintings in art during middle childhood. Rather than describe critical development in terms of visual competence, the study examines how advances in children’s critical reasoning are linked to age-related shifts in beliefs about what artworks, do regardless of stylistic conventions. I propose that children gradually learn to ascribe pictures intentional meaning, and that this is an age-related symptom of changing theoretical constraints conditioning critical development. This proposition was tested in the study wherein three groups of children aged 6, 9 and 12 years were asked to adopt the role of a curator. Working individually, curators were asked to construct an exhibition of portrait paintings and justify picture choices. Analysis of curatorial performances revealed characteristic patterns in the critical reasons curators in each age group used to construe the meaning and value of their exhibitions. Findings demonstrate how developmental advance in children’s understanding of representational meaning is linked to proficiency in critical reasoning. Understanding how, and on what kinds of theoretical bases, children construe critical judgements enables art educators to know when and on what terms to intervene in children’s learning in art.
Author’s biography
Dr Karen Maras is a Senior Lecturer in Visual Arts Education in the School of Education NSW, Australian Catholic University. Her research in art education is focussed on mapping a developmental continuum of critical theories of meaning in art. This research contributes a realist theoretical framework that can be used to classify the ontological bases of critical development in art. Having mapped the developmental shifts in the critical dispositions of children during middle to late childhood, this research has recently been extended to include analysis of critical development in early childhood. Karen.maras@acu.edu.au
Can images be texts? Visual literacy, culture and thinking in educational contexts
Frances Alter, University of New England
Abstract
This paper discusses the concept of visual literacy and the problems inherent in regarding images as 'texts' that can be read in much the same way as words and sentences. In large part contemporary understanding of visual literacy has emerged through the work of Kress (2003) and other theorists (e.g. van Leeuwen, 2006) that explores the language and meaning of visual communication. While this creates further insight into the ways in which visual communication works, it rarely reveals 'the whole picture'. In essence the systematic nature of written language contrasts sharply with the schematic nature of visual language. While a systematic language has elements that are definable in terms of each other, schematic modes of communication reveal random patterns of ideas simultaneously. This variation in conceptualisation has created a division in the way visual literacy skills and strategies are currently taught. In this paper it is suggested that a dichotomy exists between a systemic functional approach to reading images as 'text' in English education and what could be described as an artistic or aesthetic approach in visual arts education.
Author’s biography
Frances Alter PhD, is a lecturer in the School of Education at the University of New England, Australia, where she teaches undergraduate and postgraduate courses in primary and secondary visual arts education. She is also the artistic director and coordinator of the annual University of New England Acquisitive Art Prize (UNESAP) and Let's Hang It! exhibition. Frances's research is in the areas of visual literacy and culture and her recent research examines the capacity of visual arts pedagogy to act as a mediating element in the development of critical and creative thinking. falter2@une.edu.au
Connecting to contemporary practice: The MOVING IMAGE in Visual Arts teaching and learning programs
Wendy Ramsay, New South Wales Department of Education
Abstract
Developing a coherent point of view in Visual Arts involves the active construction and knowledge of the agencies of the artworld through the practices of making and the critical and historical study of artworks. This paper will address the construction of high quality professional learning and the implementation of time-based forms in teaching and learning programs and how authentic engagement with the agencies of the artworld in the development of collaborative learning resources can advance knowledge and understanding in the field. Research is underpinned by the NSW Quality Teaching model and the dimensions of intellectual quality, quality learning environments and significance. Empowering teachers to build their capacity and knowledge of contemporary practice through video art connects students to their own world to learning beyond the classroom and a shared understanding of the construction and meaning of the moving image by manipulating time and space to inform their own artmaking practice and active participation in ideas, themes and issues that are currently circulating in the artworld.
Author’s biography
Wendy Ramsay is the state Visual Arts Advisor in the Curriculum K-12 Directorate at the NSW Department of Education and Training. Wendy provides curriculum advice and develops resources to support visual arts teachers and students in NSW government schools; delivers professional development workshop programs for K-12 teachers in metropolitan and regional areas throughout NSW; HSC study days and visual arts curriculum lectures for pre service teachers, conferences and symposia. Wendy is currently working with Kaldor Public Art Projects on collaborative education projects to develop innovative resources for teachers and students. MOVE Video Art in Schools has been a three year project consisting of an edition of 12 contemporary Australian video artworks with teaching and learning materials developed in NSW and currently being distributed in Victoria and South Australia. Wendy.Ramsay@det.nsw.edu.au
Drawing together as inclusive practice in early years learning
Dr Linda Knight, University of Canberra
Abstract
Contemporary critiques on early years education highlight a call for the need to implement teaching and learning strategies that are less managing, that emerge from equity and inclusivity agendas, and that recognise diversity and plurality in early years learning contexts. Such critique raises a need to reconsider the ways we engage as adults with children, and to rethink how we might assist in their education. This paper presents collaborative drawing as a socially inclusive pedagogy for early childhood contexts. Intergenerational collaborative drawing is a teaching and learning pedagogy that engages adults and children in chaotic, intercepting drawing activity, to open up lines of communication between them. Deleuzean (1980/1987) concepts of dreaming/becoming, and Foucauldian (1986) concepts of heterotopic space help to examine conceptual and bodily practices while drawing. Deleuzean/Foucauldian readings also assist in beginning to theorise on how we might develop more socially inclusive experiences in early childhood contexts, as they enable acknowledgement that children reference different things while drawing. Collaborative drawing exposes adults to the diverse referents that young children might access while drawing, and this exposure helps to challenge conventional adult/child power relationships, and dominant beliefs and discourses around early years/early childhood teaching and learning. Fieldwork data collected during 2008 (in preschools, long day-care, primary schools, and site visits to a gallery space) serve to provide samples and discussion points.
Author’s biography
Dr Linda Knight is Senior Lecturer in Arts, Design and Techniology Education at the University of Canberra. linda.knight@canberra.edu.au
Explanation and the arts as practices
Althea Francini
Abstract
The value of visual arts in education is often identified with creativity and so, having relations to innovation. This value can be sustained in explanation when the arts are understood as practices. But in my research into the visuality of arts practices, I found there are problems with explaining the visual arts. Longstanding errors in understanding how the mind works means these arts are characterised as ‘subjective,’ in contrast to ‘objective’ domains of knowledge. The identification has been done in good faith and it enables us to explore and explain felt aspects of experience in the understanding of art. But the characterisation rests on separations, between the senses and cognitive activity, on one hand, and the self and the social in experience, on the other. These problematic divisions derive from earlier explanations of cognition that separate, theoretically and practically, the senses, cognitive processes, and context. Contemporary explanation from cognitive sciences and philosophy is revising the separation and from my research, we can more appropriately understand the role of mind in arts practices as a qualitative, cognitive, and social unity. The outcomes to this revision enable rethinking the terms of explanation in the visual arts and affect education in arts practices.
Author’s biography
I am currently organising my thesis as a series of papers to be submitted for publication. In addition, I am pursuing my research and further writing on theories of mind and visual communication, in particular the qualitative and social aspects of mental representation and their roles in arts practices. Since the acceptance of my thesis I have also returned to my studio art practice. Between 2000 and 2002, I taught Visual Arts in secondary schools. In 2002, I received an Australian Postgraduate Award. From 2003 until 2006, I lectured in the methods and practices of research in the arts, design, and education, as well as philosophy and aesthetics, at the College of Fine Arts, UNSW. I have taught both contemporary qualitative (structural and post-structural), and quantitative methodological approaches and processes, as well as those of philosophical analysis, at undergraduate and postgraduate level. At the end of 2006, I resigned from lecturing in order to complete my doctoral research. I was awarded my doctorate in August, 2009. althea.francini@bigpond.com
Finding the ‘spaces’ for teaching in and through art: A proposal to investigate graduate primary teachers’ art teaching experiences
Marnee Watkins, University of Melbourne, Gina Grant, University of Melbourne
Abstract
Feedback from our student teachers’ experiences on practicum highlights far too often the lack of ‘space’ afforded to them to integrate the visual arts within their primary classroom teaching - for reasons many and varied. With recent emphases within curriculum for primary teachers to implement interdisciplinary teaching and learning we are concerned that our graduate teachers may lack the necessary preparation for teaching in and through the visual arts. In this pilot study we aim to follow a small cohort of teachers recently graduated from our university visual arts programs and investigate the possible challenges they encounter in integrating art into their generalist classroom teaching. We intend examining the experiences, beliefs, attitudes, efficacy, pedagogic content knowledge and needs of these graduate teachers over their first year. Data will be elicited through surveys, interviews, professional development sessions and an online forum designed to facilitate a community of reflective practice. This project is still in the early stages of development and we welcome this forum’s input into shaping its design.
Authors’ biographies
Dr Marnee Watkins is a Lecturer in Visual Arts Education at the University of Melbourne teaching in undergraduate and postgraduate programs. She recently completed her Doctorate of Education through the University of Melbourne on ‘art rich’ picturebooks, thinking and inquiry in the primary classroom. Marnee is currently a councillor for Art Education Victoria (AEV) and a member of the Art Education Australia (AEA) executive. watkinsm@unimelb.edu.au
Gina Grant is a Lecturer in Visual Arts Education at the University of Melbourne working in early childhood and primary visual arts education. She has taught at both government and independent primary schools and she has run numerous professional development sessions for teachers in visual arts, philosophical inquiry and creativity. Gina is a past president of AEV. grantg@unimelb.edu.au
From art sceptic to artist
Susan Paterson, University of Tasmania
Abstract
This presentation explores how primary teachers in training at the University of Tasmania perceived their experience of Visual Arts education in the first year of their Bachelor of Teaching. The research uses evidence from art works and reflective journals to understand the fears, prejudices, revelations and ambitions of adults who had not experienced practical art making activities since junior secondary school. The programme was presented to these students by two visual art educators trained with in depth experiences in visual art making, appreciation, curriculum design and pedagogy.
Author’s biography
Dr Susan Paterson lectures in Visual Arts Education in the Faculty of Education at the University of Tasmania. Susan.Paterson@utas.edu.au
Growing future innovators: Learning programs for schools by contemporary art institutions
Julie Robson, Edith Cowan University. Luke Jaaniste, Queensland University of Technology
Abstract
Growing Future Innovators is a study into the potential for contemporary art institutions to promote the theory and practice of innovation through learning programs for schools. It aims to identify, generate, trial and evaluate the most effective mechanisms for promoting the culture and dynamics of innovation to young people and teachers within primary and secondary school contexts and across arts and non-arts disciplines. An intended outcome is the creation, discussion and public dissemination of guidelines, exemplars, and rationales for how arts organisations and schools, in Australia and beyond, are able to work together to grow future innovators. It also addresses the need for (1) building the creative or innovation workforce; (2) placing contemporary arts in the innovation debate; (3) pioneering systems of innovation for arts and education institutions, and; (4) developing improved metrics in arts education research.
Phase One, a year-long scoping study is currently underway, led by Edith Cowan University (Western Australia) and the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, with support from the Fogarty Foundation. Its threefold emphasis includes a policy review that maps the arts, innovation and education nexus; case studies of best-practice education programs delivered by inter/national arts organisations, and; consultation with education sector representatives towards designing an optimal and viable arts and innovation program to be trialled in Western Australia. Final results of this scoping study are being documented for disseminated in a published report and exist as the groundwork and rationale for ongoing research.
Authors’ biographies
Dr Julie Robson is a postdoctoral researcher in the Centre for Research in Entertainment, Arts, Technology, Education and Communications (CREATEC), at Edith Cowan University.
Dr Luke Jaaniste is a postdoctoral researcher at Queensland University of Technology. j.robson@ecu.edu.au
How should the visual arts be represented in the Australian Curriculum?
Kerry Thomas, University of New South Wales
Abstract
The terms under which the visual arts will be included in the learning area of the arts in the Australian Curriculum are currently undecided. This commentary lists a number of ways in which the visual arts could be represented within the constraints of the National agenda of the arts and the ‘educational revolution’. It considers the possible implications of the alternative positions presented for students, teachers, curriculum development, assessment, and related issues of choice, specialisation, achievement and the recognition given to the subject domain. The discussion concludes with the proposal that the identity of the visual arts is most appropriately conceived of as a differentiated field of creative and cultural practice which is enacted in constantly mutating networks which are not co-extensive with knowledge in the field.
Author’s biography
Dr Kerry Thomas teaches in the areas of curriculum in art and design education, teacher development, creativity, design issues, and research practices in art, design and education at the College of Fine Arts, UNSW. Her research interests include creativity and practical reasoning in art and design education, pedagogical exchanges between art teachers and their students and high stakes student art exhibitions. Pierre Bourdieu, the French Realist philosopher and sociologist’s theories of practice, the habitus, symbolic capital and misrecognition underscore these interests. Prior to her current position, she was Inspector, Creative Arts at the Board of Studies NSW, the state curriculum, assessment, and registration authority. In this position her responsibilities included syllabus development in the arts K-12, in particular the visual arts, and the registration and accreditation of non-government schools in NSW. k.thomas@unsw.edu.au
Interpreting and Enacting Teaching from an Arts Based Learning Perspective
Adele Flood, University of New South Wales
Abstract
Sir Herbert Read’s ideas of learning through art have permeated my way of thinking regarding all avenues of learning: not so much the introduction of actual art making practices into other fields but rather through the way in which I approach my own teaching and the way in which I elicit responses when working with a group of academics to reflect upon how their teaching impacts upon their students. I recall my horror in one of my first workshops in the field of Academic Development when the following interchange took place: Academic: “Why do we have to have learning outcomes, I know what I my
students need to know” Me: “So you can align your assessment to make sure the students have understood what you have taught them” Academic: “that’s none of my concern, my job is to give them the content, it’s their job to know what to do with it.”
The challenge in working with these academics was to change their perception of teaching and learning and an essential component of changing practice entailed the acceptance and understanding a new language in terms of educational pedagogy. I could see that working with academics to change their practice would entail a shift or repositioning of their self as teacher. I turned to ideas of creative expression to begin to unpack their ideas of teaching and learning through visual representations of their conceptual understandings of what teaching meant to them.
Author’s biography
Dr Adele Flood is past Editor of Australian Art Education, past member of the Executive of Art Education Australia, and is currently Portfolio Leader, Curriculum Development, Learning and Teaching at UNSW. adele.flood@unsw.edu.au
Mapping and augmenting engagement, learning and cultural citizenship for children undertaking workshops with artists at ArtPlay
Robert Brown, University of Melbourne
Abstract
ArtPlay is the first permanent home for children’s art and play in Australia. It was established in 2003 by the City of Melbourne as a part of the artistic, creative and cultural development of Melbourne as an aspiring UNICEF child-friendly city. Open to children aged 2-12 years the facility provides artist-led programs involving diverse art forms and serves a broad community including, parents and teachers. Leading educationalist and social researchers (Catterall 2002, Deasy 2002, Brice Heath & Roach 1999, Costantoura 2001, Myers 2003, Hawkes, 2001) have identified the present as significant time in which to articulate the importance of the arts to active and creative engagement in the social and cultural life of the community. Community-based institutions such as ArtPlay are emerging in response to this need though there has yet to be a significant and sustained research into the processes and outcomes of such organisations. This paper reports on a four-year research project (2007-20010) that has been specifically designed to identify, map and evidence the practices of ArtPlay in relation to engagement, learning and cultural citizenship. This paper will present an outline of the multi-dimensional nature of the study and provide a formative analyse of key areas of inquiry including: What ArtPlay practices engages young children and their families? How is cultural citizenship evident in ArtPlay school programs? and What are the profiles of the artist teacher/teacher artists working at ArtPlay?
This project is sponsored by the Australian Research Council, The City of Melbourne and The Australia Council for the Arts, and is designed and directed by the Artistic and Creative Education Program in the Melbourne School of Graduate Education at the University of Melbourne.
Author’s biography
Robert Brown is a lecturer in the Melbourne School of Graduate Education, The University of Melbourne, and the Research and Training Liaison Officer at the University of Melbourne's Early Learning Centre. Robert's ongoing research interests are interconnected and include; teacher as reflective practitioner, artist pedagogies, Indigenous storytelling and arts-based learning. Currently Robert is the Senior Research Associate for an Australian Research Centre funded project investigating the practices of ArtPlay a community arts facility established by The City of Melbourne. r.brown@unimelb.edu.au
Practice and practical reasoning in the Visual Arts classroom
Karen King, Caroline Chisholm College, NSW
Abstract
This paper examines the ways in which current art educational research actively directs curriculum development and evaluation in a local school context. A project, involving teachers at a metropolitan comprehensive catholic girls school in Sydney, focused on the development of strategies promoting reflective and increasingly autonomous thinking in the visual arts classroom. The concept of practical reasoning was engaged to examine the nature of learning and teaching in the visual arts curriculum. Understandings about the interaction of reasoning with intentions, actions and desired outcomes in the development of teaching and learning strategies informed the re-design of curriculum for a Year 9 cohort. The project offers a model in which students are inducted into authentic practices and protocols of visual arts in the classroom context as means for attaining increasing intellectual autonomy. This approach counters simplistic or taxonomic formulas for developing higher order thinking promoted in art education and education more broadly. The project was undertaken as part of the Australian Catholic University research project Leaders Transforming Learners and Learning (LTLL).
Author’s biography
Karen King is the Visual and Performing Arts Coordinator and a Visual Arts teacher at Caroline Chisholm College, Glenmore Park, NSW. Over the past 15 years, she has been active in NSW syllabus development for and served as the Chair of the NSW Board of Studies Visual Arts Curriculum Committee during the writing and implementation of current Stage 4, 5 and 6 Visual Arts Syllabuses. She has also been active in the assessment and examination of NSW Stage 6 Visual Arts working on examination committees and as the Supervisor of HSC Practical Marking from 2000 -2004. Within the Catholic Education system she has been a diocesan consultant for Visual Arts and provided advice on Visual Arts to the Executive Director of the Catholic Education Commission. She has been extensively involved in professional development for Visual Arts teachers and has worked collaboratively with ACU National and UNSW COFA on a number of projects. k_king@parra.catholic.edu.au
Primary Focus: A partnership model for artists in schools
Miranda Free, Griffith University, Glenda Nalder, Griffith University, Lee Fullarton, Education Queensland
Abstract
The increasing marginalisation of visual arts in the primary education curriculum, partly attributed both to gaps in generalist primary teacher education (Davis 2008) and the narrowing national education agenda, as well as the low levels of income traditionally experienced by artists has led to compensatory funding to encourage professional partnerships. International arts education research literature reports on many partnership models including apprenticeships (Griffiths and Woolf 2008), mentoring programs such as Arts Impact (Gonzalez and Watts 2006) and arts integration programs such as Learning Through The Arts (Smithrim and Upitis 2005) that seek to increase understanding of and efficacy in using the arts to expand the repertoire of techniques available to teachers and promote active, creative teaching and learning (Oreck 2004). Primary Focus, a partnership between a teacher professional body, the Primary Arts Network Ipswich, and the Ipswich Art Gallery, arose from a shared interest in facilitating and sustaining quality Artist-in-Residence projects in primary schools using an approach that promotes ongoing relationships between schools, galleries, arts organisations and the local community. This paper reports on an evaluative study designed to overcome the limitations of routinely used self-evaluations and anecdotal evidence of successful outcomes. The project was embedded in the curriculum and incorporated a participatory action research dimension to generate quantitative and qualitative data to enable the impact of Artist-in-Residence projects on learning achievement to be substantiated.
Authors’ biographies
Miranda Free has a background in teaching, molecular biology and science communication but in 2000 returned to the study of fine arts studies through the Arts Academy, a now defunct Education Queensland initiative. This, and the experience of convening children’s art classes after school, led to her return to teaching as art specialist in a special school. At the same time she undertook a Graduate Certificate in Education Studies at Griffith University. Miranda then commenced an arts-based PhD studies investigating leadership in arts education combining qualitative and practice-led methodologies. At present she is enrolled part-time while working as a sessional academic and researcher on projects related to artist in residence programs in schools. miranda.free@griffith.edu.au
Dr Glenda Nalder has 25 years experience in arts/education teaching and research over a range of contexts. Her particular skills include research project design and management, community cultural development, arts training, cultural and education policy and practices, research methodologies in the arts and arts education.
Lee Fullarton is an artist and teacher who has been teaching in and through the arts for over 24 years in special, state and overseas schools. In 2000 Lee founded the Primary Arts Network Ipswich which provides professional development in arts education to teachers, arts rich programs for students, artist in residence programs through the collaborative partnership with Ipswich Art Gallery and Arts Education Research programs with Griffith University and the University of Southern Queensland -Springfield. The PANI was awarded The Ministers Award for Excellence in Leadership in 2007. Lee was awarded an Australian Day Medal in 2008 for her dedication to Education and The Arts. In 2009 PANI was awarded national funding from the Australian Council for the Arts to implement the Creative Community Hub Artist in Residence Pilot Project with Lee as Project Manager.
Seeing As A Way Of Knowing: the relationship between observation and meaning
Bernard Hoffert, Monash University
Abstract
This is a study of perception; the main objective of this discussion is to outline how directly the visual contributes to understanding and meaning. Observation, the apprehension of sensory impulses, is intrinsic to establishing meaning from the visual, for it is the starting point for whatever evaluation we ascribe, or understanding we extract, from what generates the sensory; it is what enables our perception. It is also the source of the expressive qualities which are integral to the visual, the emotional aspects which are a fundamental of any visual experience, but which are so often forsaken as a source of meaning. It is the need to reprioritise the visual in the process of obtaining knowledge which this paper considers, arguing that it is only through textual reinforcement that the visual is acknowledged as a source of meaning.
Author’s biography
Professor Bernard Hoffert is Associate Dean of Graduate Studies, and Associate Dean of External Affairs in the Faculty of Art and Design at Monash University, Melbourne, and Vice President of its Academic Board . Bernard.Hoffert@ArtDes.monash.edu.au
Shifting Early Childhood teachers’ pedagogical practices and beliefs: Enhancing teachers’ skills, efficacy and advocacy in Visual Art Education
Elizabeth Holdsworth, University of Canberra
Abstract
A considerable body of literature supports the notion that art education has a positively beneficial impact upon children’s wider learning. Despite this, art continues to be on the margins of the curriculum and is generally perceived as being more of a ‘frill’ than a core academic discipline. Recent research indicates that the willingness and ability of generalist teachers to teach art is influenced by factors such as their confidence, content knowledge and prior educational experiences. Little, however, is known about how Australian childhood teachers actually teach art in the classroom and the interplay between their practices, perceptions and knowledge of art. This research project, undertaken as part of an honours dissertation course, focuses on the visual art program at one early childhood centre in the ACT, using action research methodology. The study focuses on examining teacher practices; their perceptions of; and the challenges they face regarding visual art education, and further explores how such practices might be enhanced to provide richer and more meaningful learning opportunities for the children. A series of interventions (e.g. visual art lessons) were trialed and evaluated in collaboration with the teachers. The project’s findings are currently undergoing final analysis and are in the report writing stage.
Author’s biography
Elizabeth Holdsworth is a Bachelor of Arts honors student at the University of Canberra. Her honours thesis topic is Visual Art Education. Elizabeth holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales. She also has completed a Graduate Diploma in Education (Canberra University). Elizabeth is an experienced teacher of visual art in secondary schools and is currently a Visual Arts tutor at the University of Canberra’s Faculty of Education. lizzzied@hotmail.com
The Australian Aboriginal visual art of the Central and Western Deserts: A comparative approach
Christine Nicholls, Flinders University
Abstract
In this paper I will discuss the specific conventions that differentiate contemporary Indigenous Australian artistic practice in the Central and Western Deserts of Australia from the artistic conventions of this country's dominant culture. In many respects, Central and Western Desert artistic conventions also differentiate these people's visual arts practice from that of Aboriginal Australians in other regions. By doing so I am hoping to contribute to the National Curriculum in Art Education by providing teachers and students with a methodology for approaching the study of contemporary Indigenous Australian art, so often eschewed by Visual Art teachers as a result of their diffidence. My research is informed by more than a decade of living at Lajamanu, a remote Aboriginal settlement in the Tanami Desert of the Northern Territory.
Author’s biography
Dr Christine Nicholls, lectures in Australian Studies at Flinders University, South Australia. She is Australian Contributing Editor, for Asian Art News, and World Sculpture News. Christine.Nicholls@flinders.edu.au
The Formation of Visual as Concept and Practice in Art Education
Joanna Barbousas, Australian Catholic University
Abstract
This paper reports on research investigating the formation of visual as discursive practice in art education. Poststructural methodologies of discourse analysis are applied which disrupt traditional accounts of discipline configurations determined in histories of art education. Using Michel Foucault’s methods of history, archaeology and genealogy, art education as discipline is mapped through an investigation of visual as concept and practice. This research contends that the emergence of current practices in visual culture, as configured within the constraints of art education amplifies the conditions of visual to define art education as a field. The mobilisation of discourses, verified by discipline formations in art education is authorised by the distribution and categorisation of knowledge that is sequenced within power/knowledge structures. Therefore, the research demonstrates how visual, as a discursive practice is one way of tracing the conditions of the field, including the structure of discipline as knowledge and subject in art education. A discourse analysis of visual provides for an examination of past and present understandings and practices that are normalised and powered within and through art education as a field of practice.
Author’s biography
Dr Joanna Barbousas is Lecturer in Professional and Educational Studies in the School of Education at the Australian Catholic University. Her research focuses on discourse analysis to trace the mobilisation of concepts and practices in art education and the wider field of education. Within a poststructural framework Joanna’s research centres on an examination of practices to interrogate normalised truths. Currently she is undertaking a pilot study focusing on the ways in which secondary teachers utilise visual images in the classroom. The intention of this study is to examine how teachers, from a range of Key Learning Areas, incorporate visual images as objects of knowledge in the classroom and how these applications adhere with and contradict the claims formed through discourses of visual literacy. joanna.barbousas@acu.edu.au
The International Creative Boy Initiative: Issues associated with developing international research opportunities
Wesley Imms, University of Melbourne
Abstract
This paper will overview growing international interest in examining boys’ experiences within art education, and the potential this subject holds for assisting young males to explore egalitarian masculinities. The discussion will include a description of an art education intervention study currently being designed for implementation in Australian and overseas schools, and logistical issues associated with attempts like this to coordinate emerging international research in art education.
Author’s biography
Dr Wesley Imms is Senior Lecturer and Coordinator of Visual Art Education in the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne. His research includes multi-disciplinary curriculum, design, gender issues in education, and the artistic practices of teachers. wesleyi@unimelb.edu.au
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