Vol. 15 No. 3 (2019): International Journal of Education Through Art

ETA 15.3 Table of contents

 

Editorial

 

261–63

Rita L. Irwin, Nadine Kalin and Anita Sinner

 

Articles

 

265–280

‘Rethinking the roles of the art educator as participatory artist, researcher and teacher (P)ART:A South African perspective’

Merna Meyer and Lesley Wood

 

As an art teacher educator in South Africa, I am concerned about three issues: (1) the low status of art as school subject, (2) the restriction of art as a subject for the talented few, and (3) the isolation of art from the lives and social realities of learners. These concerns prompted me to embark on a critical study of my own art didactical practices in teaching professional development to pre-service art teachers. I draw on qualitative data in the form of observations, visuals and reflective notes to present my living theory and positional stance about how such concerns can be addressed to enable students to become transformative, interdisciplinary leaders within schools through embodying the roles of participatory artists, researchers and teachers. The knowledge generated by my self-reflective practitioner inquiry contributes to framing professional development in art education and the vital role that art teachers could play to improve the status of art education as art becomes more recognized as a catalyst for transforming how people think and act in the world.

 

281–295

‘Experiencing a space: Applying experiential methods to support the learning of art and design’

Jaana Kärnä-Behm

 

The purpose of this study is to promote the experiential learning (EL) method in the pedagogics of art and design in higher education. This article is based on a case study consisting of two pedagogical projects in interior design courses, the probing project and the multisensory space project, carried out between 2014 and 2016 with trainee teachers. Using the data from these projects I analyse using the qualitative content analysis method how and with what implications EL supports learning of

art and design in higher education. The results show that EL was found to be inspiring and self-expressive, and was an unusual and motivating way to learn interior design. In a teacher education context EL gave students ideas about collaborative and EL-based methods of learning that could be applied to their own future teaching projects.

 

Visual Essay

 

297–308

Relational connections through the space of learning: Exploring youths’ experiences of filmmaking with comics

Julian Lawrence, Ching-Chiu Lin and Isin Can

 

Youth filmmaking is considered as a relational practice through analysis of a case study that took place in an informal learning setting. Comics as a research form allows us to investigate and portray Sally’s story through a biographical style sequential narrative case study as we visualize her experience through various encounters with the space of learning. We identify characteristics of informal learning spaces that encourage youth to create meanings from filmmaking as media arts practice. This visual essay provides a contextual and unique outlook into Sally’s struggle and joy of learning, thus allowing teachers and educators to ponder the role of relationality in youth arts engagement.

 

 

Article

 

309–326

‘“Why did the photographer choose only dark-skinned kids?”: Young students’ reactions to Otherness in photographs’

Ya’ara Gil-Glazer

 

This article presents a case study of 2nd-grade Israeli students’ reactions to Otherness in photographs. The students participated in PhotoLingo, a unique intervention programme designed to promote thinking and language skills through a series of photo-based tasks. In the particular class, most of the students’ parents were Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union whose native language was not Hebrew, with average/below average socio-economic status. The study shows the students’ significant improvement in the use of thinking and language skills. Moreover, it highlights the ways in which the programme promoted the students’ social skills and enabled many of them to profoundly express well-considered ideas about Otherness, including reflections on their own sense of Otherness. These findings indicate the potential of employing photographs and photo-elicitation in stimulating discussions on cultural and social identities, differences and sense of belonging among children, and in enhancing their social awareness and sense of empathy.

 

Visual Essay

 

327–333

‘Using art to provoke: Interpreting Tammam Azzam’

Amber Merucci

 

This visual essay explores how art can become a classroom tool to discover, challenge and nurture discussions around identity and politics. How might students have a visceral engagement with concepts such as war, famine and political persecution when they may have never experienced these? What is the relationship between identity, war and politics? How might art provoke discussions on topical, provocative and controversial concepts? The above questions will be addressed through an exploration of Syrian artist Tammam Azzam’s artwork, which captures  personal experiences of, and sentiments on, war accompanied by questions that can assist in  provoking uncomfortable, authentic and supportive classroom dialogue.

 

Article

 

335–356

‘Engaging digital makers through interactive virtual art makerspaces: Possibilities and challenges in art education’

Lilly Lu

 

Recent maker movements have integrated many applications of digital technologies. However, the digital makerspace in virtual environments has not yet been fully addressed. Outside of schools, the sandbox type of Virtual World such as Minecraft and Opensim, is the popular platform for digital makers to experiment, share/exhibit and collaborate on creative ideas and outcomes with art, design and tech skills. In this article, I advocate how virtual environments can serve as additional digital/ virtual makerspaces to engage digital-generation makers by presenting the creative work of several groups of secondary and postsecondary students as critical digital makers in formal and informal school settings through my grant projects1 over ten years. I address the possibilities and challenges and make recommendations for implementing virtual art makerspaces for future contemporary art education.

 

Visual Essay

 

357–368

‘Curating with Ecologies of Girlhood’

Brooke Anne Hofsess, Jasmine Ulmer, Jennie Carlisle and Shauna Caldwell

 

In this visual essay we revisit a summer immersion, Ecologies of Girlhood. An array of women curators, storytellers, musicians, performers, artists, ecologists, scientists and scholars shared their practices in an intergenerational and interdisciplinary format with a group of girls between the ages of 7and 10. The immersion unfolded through a series of walking provocations sparked by local elements – indigenous plants, stories, poetry, ballads, sheroes, rivers, streetscapes and art. Exploring playful modes of curating, the girls gathered some of these moments and objects together, as last day overflowed into an exhibition with pop-up lectures, performances, and opportunities for making, learning and teaching. For us, curating with embraces our alongsideness with, rather than our acquisition of, what is ecologically threaded through girlhood, and offers a way of creatively placing and performing ourselves within the contributions of women in Appalachia, with the land and with one another.

 

Article

 

369–385

‘Creative reuse: The impact artmaking has on raising environmental consciousness’

Sue Girak, Geoffrey W. Lummis and Jackie Johnson

 

Education for Sustainability (EfS) seeks to initiate ways of preserving our planet beyond this current generation. Visual arts teachers can facilitate the students’ imagination to cultivate sustainable attitudes and behaviours. This research investigates whether 12 year olds would question their ecological footprint if they creatively reuse discarded materials in their artmaking. Engaging in activities with a sustainability focus, they recognized the power that aesthetic transformation has on discarded materials, triggering shifts in their attitudes and making connections between their actions and their impact on the ecosphere. This research has implications for teaching EfS, in that the power of aesthetic transformation through creative reuse has the capacity to invite reflection to motivate children to make environmentally sustainable choices.

 

Visual Essay

 

387–406

‘Youth connecting: Mental health and gardens’

Kerry Renwick, Kathy Romes and Vanessa Lam

 

Gardening has been associated with mental health and a sense of well-being. This article presents visual and written accounts generated by young people as they engaged in reflection through creative practice. The study was facilitated over a twelve month period that included the research team working secondary school aged youth engaged in growing plants, developing their skills in gardening and photography, and participated in two public art exhibitions of their work. The study used photovoice as a way to enable young people to ‘speak’ about their experiences of gardening whilst reflecting on aspects of their mental health – their well-being, resiliency, inclusion and a sense of belonging.

 

Article

 

407–423

‘The importance of the Goethe triangle in art education’

Jurij Selan, Ursa Lesar and Ursula Podobnik

 

When teaching about colour, including colour systems is an essential complement to engaging students through practical experience. This can be done using various colour models, each of which has explicatory strengths and limitations. An essential aspect of teaching and learning colour is the understanding of the historical contexts from which the knowledge of colour has emerged. In this article, we analyse one of the historically most puzzling and didactically significant models: the Goethe triangle. In art education, the historical aspect of the Goethe triangle is often mistakenly

attributed or even ignored, which leads to its incorrect use in art education. We examine the historical perplexity of the Goethe triangle, the issues of colour that this model illustrates exceptionally well (tertiary colours and colour chords) and, referring to the textbooks for colour education in Slovenian primary schools, demonstrate the proper and improper art educational use of the Goethe triangle.

 

 

Book Reviews

 

425–431

 

Critical Craft: Technology, Globalization and Capitalism, Clare M. Wilkinson-Weber and Alicia Ory Denicola (eds) (2016)

Rachel Mason

 

Crits, A Student Manual, Terry Barrett (2019)

Bernadette Blair

 

Handbook of Arts Education and Special Education: Policy, Research, and Practices, Jean

Crockett and Sharon Malley (eds) (2018)

Gill Nah

 

What’s next? Eco Materialism and Contemporary Art, Linda Weintraub (2019)

Edwina fitzPatrick