Vol. 10 No. 3 (2014)

Editorial

Glen Coutts

pp. 265-267

 

As we may publish: Digital scholarship and the future(s) of art education

Aaron D. Knochel and Ryan M. Patton

pp. 269-285

Abstract:

Qualities of digital scholarship for the arts and humanities are outlined as an ecology of research and pedagogy, expanding the scholarly journal by advancing the possibilities of online publishing. While moving away from paper-based scholarship is the first step, new models of digital scholarship that are multimodal and interactive allow for real-time effects, reflexive research, reconsider intellectual openness through a radical sense of accessibility, and broadly (re)define the textual body in research to one that is transdisciplinary. In this article, we elaborate on the current trends and opportunities in digital scholarship presented by online publications as an extension of research modalities, augmenting what art education research publications look like, presenting new and rich contexts for scholarship. We explore limitations and benefits found in the current state of academic publishing by asking how scholarship can be transformed in a technological ecology.

 

 

Practice-based research as an approach for seeing, re-seeing and creating artworks

Fakhriya Khalfan Al-YahYai

pp. 287-302

Abstract:

There is growing interest in developing an agenda for carrying out new ways of conducting research in art and art education based on looking, seeing, thinking, creating and rethinking from an artistic perspective, that is, establishing a new vision for and revision of visual research in art education. The overall aim of this article is to provide insight into an artistic investigation and re-examination of the researcher’s culture and textile traditions. Doing so provides aesthetic insight through a close examination of fabric qualities and structures. Thinking and seeing are used as pedagogical elements in the process of practice-based research. This method of enquiry offers a rich example of how we can participate in the everyday world with heightened sensitivity and discover the beauty of seeing what many take for granted and thus learn to see differently through systematic enquiry.

 

(Mis)Information highways: A critique of online resources for multicultural art education

Joni Boyd Acuff

pp. 303-316

Abstract:

This article calls to attention hegemonic online resources for multicultural art education. The author suggests that art educators carefully critique multicultural art lesson plans published online, as the Internet is increasingly a primary resource teachers use to make pedagogical and curricular decisions. The author demonstrates how some multicultural art education resources offered online contribute to an ‘us–other’ dichotomy, and contradict with the current progressive critical multicultural art education scholarship being published by contemporary art education scholars. The author asserts three contentions of support that illustrate how these online curricular resources maintain ‘liberal’ multiculturalism, exoticize cultural groups, produce surface knowledge about difference and fail to question power. This article concludes with a call to action in which art educators are encouraged to explicitly acknowledge, discuss and work with students and peers to build counter-curriculum that work against these damaging online multicultural art education resources.

 

Integrating Taiwanese culture into design pedagogy

Hsiu Ching Laura Hsieh

pp. 317-329

Abstract:

Many Taiwanese students enthusiastically accept the consumption cultures of Japan and the United States, but neglect the value of their own culture. Thus, as a design educator, it is necessary to guide the students reflecting on and identifying with their own culture. This pedagogical study adopted qualitative methods and collected and analysed data from interviews, observation on the creation process and related documents. The purposes of this research were: to explore the related research and theories and integrate them as a model of Incorporating Culture into Design Creation; to explore the advantages and challenges of applying the new model to pedagogical practice; and to reflect on the application of the new model to teaching. According to the findings, it is feasible to apply this model to the design pedagogy. The contribution of this study was to encourage the students to recognize the characteristics of their own culture and facilitate their capabilities of incorporating culture into the design creation.

 

Empathy and aesthetic experience in the art museum

Alice Arnold,  Susan Meggs, Martin Greer

pp. 331-347

Abstract:

The purpose of this study was to explore how students’ aesthetic understanding and ability to empathize were impacted by multiple learning experiences in the environment of an art museum. As part of a semester-long class in elementary art methods, education majors experienced a docent-led tour of the local art museum, featuring the work of fibre artist Deidre Scherer. The tour was followed by a series of learning events centred on the exhibit and the study of end-of-life care, the theme of Scherer’s work. Students then answered structured questionnaires prompting them to process the learning events with intentional reflection. A qualitative method of enquiry sought to uncover the lived experiences of the students enrolled in the class. Through these encounters, students developed empathy and understanding as well as the ability to describe the meanings of the art in terms of their own life scenarios.

 

The paradox of ‘teaching’ transformation in fine art studio practice: Assessment in the South African context

Dina Zoe Belluigi

pp. 349-362

Abstract:

Underpinned by an awareness that education systems inherently maintain the status quo, this article explores a paradox at the heart of fine art studio teaching, learning and assessment in the postcolonial context of South Africa. The content of most current curricula evidences a concern with power, and the politics and problematics of representation. As such, encouragement of student engagement around and negotiation of notions of transformation, critical dialogue and identity is espoused. However, in the article it is argued that current approaches to assessment often unquestioningly replicate inherited systems, and in so doing, unwittingly reproduce systems of cultural capital that may be non-transformatory and non-pluralistic. Thus, because of the way assessment is practiced, that which is taught may be radically different from that which is experienced and thereby learnt in the studio.

 

Children’s drawings from China and the United States and conceptions of female beauty

Tingting Windy Wang

pp. 363-379

Abstract:

Children’s perceptions of female beauty, as evidenced by their drawings, are the focus of this study. The extent to which universal domains, culture and media-projected ideas of female beauty might impact children’s drawings is considered. Two groups of six- to nine-year-old children’s drawings and verbally expressed ideas of female beauty in two culturally different but comparatively similar rural settings in the United States and China participated in this study. Findings confirm that the art activities of children are affected by universal domains, but even more strongly by cultures. Children develop distinct imagery of elements and categories that represent female beauty based on their interactions with cultural values, observations of their environments and imaginations. Media is found to play a lesser role than culture in their depictions, although the more susceptible to cultural changes the local community is, the more likely media is to affect children’s notions of beauty.

 

Role-playing games in arts, research and educationJason Matthew Coxpp. 381-395Abstract:Games are increasingly being used as tools to broaden pedagogical options in schools and create interdisciplinary linkages. This article pays particular attention to role-playing games (RPGs), and the applications they have for arts education. RPGs can be used in art classrooms and in arts-based research and as an exciting and useful form of collaborative art-making, interpersonal discourse and reflection. This article is divided into sections describing the games and the manner in which it has been applied to arts education. Interspersed within the article are reflections from the author’s experience in a game that examines the politics of oppression called the The Tribunal, which resulted in introspection on both personal and societal issues. The article concludes that RPGs can help make both personal and communal meaning of experiences and foster the development of empathy.

 

Student visual identities: exactitudes and significant details

Xabier Molinet and Ricardo Marín-Viadel

pp. 397-406

 

Abstract:

The educational institutions – the university schools in this case – have been described as reproducers of the social order and professional values and practices, according to Giroux and Simon concept of educational context. In this visual essay we propose an enquiry on the relationships between the students’ professional identities and the educational contexts through a visual discourse. The aesthetic relations in the visual essay, due to both the photographic searching process and the layout design, are fundamental to establish interpretative and metaphorical comparisons that enrich the verbal descriptions and interpretations commonly used.

Las instituciones educativas –en este caso las facultades universitarias– ha sido descritras como agentes reproductores del orden social y de los valores y prácticas profesionales, de acuerdo al concepto de contexto educativo de Giroux y Simon. En este ensayo visual proponemos indagar la relación entre la identidad profesional de los estudiantes y sus contextos educativos por medio de un discurso visual. Las relaciones estéticas en el ensayo visual, debidas tanto al proceso de búsqueda fotográfica como al diseño de maquetación, son fundamentales para establecer comparaciones interpretativas y metafóricas que enriquecen las descripciones e interpretaciones verbales que se emplean habitualmente.

 

Mongo: Refuse or resource? Residual narrations, an opportunity for the development of critical thinking and creative capacity

Augusto Zubiaga and Lourdes Cilleruelo

pp. 407-419

Abstract:

In ‘mongo, refuse or resource?’ we investigate the opportunities offered by the utilization of waste/retrieved products as a teaching resource for the development of critical thinking and creative capacity. Focussing on this uncertain and fluctuating transactional sphere allows us to access new dimensions when we undertake an intellectual dynamic of our sociocultural surroundings and when we accept and understand our values and how they can fluctuate. Entering the mongo dimension entails a shift of perspective when we attempt to tell ourselves stories in a creative way, because it allows us to speculate directly about the value of our objects, which leads us ineluctably to a constant rereading of our own identity, starting from that which we strive to conserve, as well as what we would like to dispose of – at least until others show that they would like to possess it.

 

Book Reviews

Rachel Mason, Brad Bucley and Nicholas Houghton

pp. 421-427

Design + Craft: The Brazilian Path, Jadélia Borges (2011) Sao Paulo: Editora Terceiro Nome, 240 pp. ISBN: 9788578160845, p/bk, R$80

On Not Knowing: How Artists Think, James Elizabeth Fisher and Rebecca Fortnum (eds) (2013) London: Black Dog Publishing, 160 pp. ISBN: 9781908966292, p/bk, £16.95

What do Artists Know?, James Elkins (ed.) (2012) University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 228 pp. ISBN: 9780271054247, h/bk, $74.95