Vol. 12 No. 3 (2016)

EDITORIAL

Glen Coutts

Pages: 239–240

ARTICLES

Art as research: Defending the significance of art practice in high school

Maria Letsiou

Pages: 241–255

Abstract: Recent reconsideration of education policies in Greece to include experiential learning in the high school curriculum signals a positive transformation of education. It is obvious that art as a school subject can benefit from this reconsideration. I hypothesize that experiential learning can be a proper context in which to teach art through the concept of art as research. To support this thesis, I draw on my involvement as art teacher in two experiential research courses during the 2014–2015 academic year. The first course is being taught in two eighth-grade, junior-high classes and the second in a tenth-grade, senior-high class. Given that the two courses are not yet completed, I will herein describe some of my decisions so far in constructing students’ research journeys.

Η πρόσφατη αναθεώρηση της εκπαιδευτικής πολιτικής στην Ελλάδα σχετικά με την διεύρυνση του διδακτικού προγράμματος με μαθήματα εμπειρικής ερευνητικής μάθησης στο Γυμνάσιο και στο Γενικό Λύκειο σηματοδοτεί την θετική αλλαγή της εκπαίδευσης. Είναι φανερό ότι η σημασία της θέσης του μαθήματος της τέχνης στα σχολεία μπορεί να βελτιωθεί από αυτή την αναθεώρηση. Τοποθετώ μια υπόθεση ότι η ερευνητική μάθηση μπορεί να είναι το κατάλληλο πλαίσιο για την πραγματοποίηση μιας διδασκαλίας με επίκεντρο την έννοια της τέχνης ως έρευνα. Βασίζομαι στην εμπειρία μου διδάσκοντας δύο προγράμματα ερευνητικής μάθησης κατά την διάρκεια του ακαδημαϊκού έτους 2014–2015. Παίρνοντας υπόψη ότι τα δύο προγράμματα δεν έχουν τελειώσει ακόμα, θα περιγράψω κάποιες από τις αποφάσεις μου στην διαμόρφωση του ερευνητικού ταξιδιού των μαθητών. Το πρώτο πρόγραμμα απευθύνεται σε δύο τάξεις μαθητών Γυμνασίου και το δεύτερο σε μία τάξη μαθητών Γενικού Λυκείου. Σε αυτό το άρθρο περιγράφω κάποιες από τις δυνατότητες που μας παρέχει στην διδασκαλία η έννοια της τέχνης ως έρευνα.

A developing research-oriented pedagogy for undergraduate teaching in art and design

Tara Michelle Winters

Pages: 257–270

Abstract: Art and design continues to negotiate its activity as academic research. It has had to build arguments for how its procedures constitute a disciplinary specific form of enquiry and communicate how its activities constitute something important in the world – an alternative means of thinking and generating knowledge. It has had to do this while not losing sight of its fundamental nature and purpose as art and design. This article surveys the ways in which practice-based research is achieving this, connecting key aspects of these efforts to a developing research-oriented pedagogy for undergraduate teaching and learning. I suggest that the development of a research culture has reinvigorated the undergraduate curriculum, advancing our pedagogical content knowledge. In this respect I outline a number of strategies of importance in assisting students to build more sophisticated conceptions of artistic research.

Drawing on philosophy – an investigation of theory in praxis

Alex Ashton

Pages: 271–289

Abstract: The article addresses the question: what is the relationship between perceptual experience and its interpretation through drawing? It is proposed that drawing, as knowledge and experience, is a particular way of coming to know the world that is explicated within personal practice. The research examines how drawing, through its expression of the concrete and the imaginary, provides interconnected ways of orientating knowledge that contribute to a multifaceted understanding of the ‘lived experience’. The practice of drawing is utilised as a research methodology in order to consider visualisations that are both descriptive and interpretive.

The study draws on philosophy, in particular the writings of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, to consider the complexities and interconnections of mind, object and body that are experienced through drawing. By being immersed in the visible, the concrete, through the body, the visible is not appropriated, but is instead revealed by the act of ‘looking’.

Challenging journeys: Contemporary Korean artist and some possible implications for education through art

Kyong-Mi Paek

Pages: 291–309

Abstract: The growing social need for a creative workforce in Korea has prompted teach-ers to look to the arts for innovative classroom practices. While a growing body of integrated curriculum studies acknowledges art and artists as valuable sources for alternative ways of knowing, a lack of comprehensive information on what shapes the practices of today’s artists limits ongoing discussion. This article aims to extend teachers’ current thinking on the potential role of art in educational innovation by exploring the growth of creative individuals in the art world, examining the diverse paths to artistic growth of three promising contemporary Korean artists. Within-case analysis provides insights into how these artists have navigated their individ-ual paths while interacting with their surroundings, and contextual analysis of their major transitions highlights the value of risk-taking in promoting creative educa-tional practice through art.

[Glen: the Korean typography won’t convert into Word when copy and pasting]

Creating and exploring a desert ecology site on the OpenSim world with middle-school students

Mary Stokrocki

Pages: 311–326

Abstract: Using participant observation methods, I explored middle-school students’ visual literacy introduction to the OpenSim Virtual World, which was hosted by the University of British Columbia. Using their school name theme of the Sonoran Desert, they drew and uploaded their favourite desert creatures and plants on square easel forms/prims, built some dome-structured caves as an installation site, and added pop-up notecards about animal symbolic meanings, as a kind of visual/ verbal literacy. Besides overcoming initial technical problems and experiment-ing with the Build/Design tools, they contacted biology information sites, to learn about desert conditions, animal plight (poaching/predator/prey/pesticide problems), plant acclimatization, and differing opinions about intervention. When students are guided and given appropriate digital art tools, they can create new worlds and explore ecological problems.

‘Skateboarding is like dancing’: Masculinity as a performative visual culture in art education

Annika Amelie Hellman

Pages: 327–344

Abstract: This article analyses the construction of skateboard masculinity as a performative visual culture, related to the conditions for masculine subject positions in upper secondary school visual art and media education. The empirical material comes from visual ethnographic research in classroom and discourse analysis of one pupil’s skateboarding video and an interview with the same pupil. The results show that the masculinity performed in both the visual art classroom and in pupil’s skate video is complex and moves between homosocial expressions and intimacy, risk-taking and visual culture enacted as being cool and an outsider. The analysis implies a linkage to a neo-liberal ideal in which the values of play and pleasure as a crucial aspect of counterculture are connected to entrepreneurial individualism, consumer creativity and market trends.

BOOK REVIEWS

Exploring Studio Materials: Teaching Creative Art Making to Children, Mary Hafeli (2015)

Peter Gregory

Pages: 345–347

At the Heart of Art and Earth: An Exploration of Practices in Arts-Based Environmental Education, Jan Van Boeckel (2013)

Wioletta Anna Piaścik

Pages: 347–349

Akademie X Lessons in Art + Life, Rebecca Morrill (ed.) (2015)

Marek Wasilewski

Pages: 349–350