Vol. 7 No. 3 (2011)

Volume 7 Issue 3

Cover Date: November 2011

EDITORIAL

Glen Coutts, University of Lapland

Page Start: 219

To access this and earlier issues, please CLICK HERE.

 

 

Contents: Articles

 

 

Researching personal images and multiple voices: The methodological questions of ethics and power

Authors: MÄKIRANTA, M.; YLITAPIO-MÄNTYLÄ, O.

Page Start: 221

 

Abstract:

The article describes the use of personal photographs in a teaching case and in a research project. The teaching case was based on memory work and photographs; its aim was to make students aware of the socially constructed and everyday practises that shape our knowledge of the world and affect meanings associated with gender. In this case, the memory work also suggested for the participants the ways to affect our own future and operate in society. The research case concentrated on autobiographical photographs as well as the ways such images enable to arrate, present and recall the self. In the article, we ask: what are the methodological and practical possibilities and challenges introduced by the use of personal photographs in teaching and study cases? What ethical and power-related questions do private and personal data raise? By analysing the aforementioned cases, we will illustrate the methodological criteria and dilemmas for using images in teaching and research cases.

Keywords: photography; ethical issue; power; memory; identity; photo-related memory work

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1386///eta.7.3.221_1

Affiliations: 1: University of Lapland

Publication date: 2011-10-11

 

Coming to our senses: Revisiting the haptic as a perceptual system

Authors: LEE, YUJIN; DUNCUM, PAUL

Page Start: 233

 

 

Abstract:

The article responds to current calls by art educators to expand consideration of the senses beyond the visual. Revisiting the haptic is necessary in order to understand recent, especially feminist, art. Reconceptualizing the haptic is necessary because the haptic carries baggage from past uses of the concept that are deeply problematic. These include the proposal by art historians that the haptic constitutes an artistic drive comparable, though inferior, to a visual drive, and the proposal by art educators that the haptic represents a favoured personality type. These problematic proposals are outlined in order to demarcate them from the current reconceptualization that draws upon recent theorizing from psychology about the senses and perceptual systems as well as phenomenological philosophy, feminist art theory and women's art practice.

Keywords: haptic; perceptual system; senses; phenomenology; women's art; occularcentricism

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1386///eta.7.3.233_1

Affiliations: 1: University of Illinois

Publication date: 2011-10-11

 

 

Cultural dialogues in European art education: Strategies for enhancing children's culture and constructing diversity

Authors: RUSANEN, SINIKKA¹; RIFÀ-VALLS, MONTSERRAT²; ALEXANDRE, RUI³; BOZZI, GIOVANNA MARIA⁴; HÄIKIÖ, TARJA KARLSSON⁵

Page Start: 245

 

Abstract:

The aim of our article is to discuss the potential of art education to enhance children's culture. In so doing, we are contributing to a debate that began at the InSEA congress in Rovaniemi (2010) during the symposium on cultural diversity. The article is based on recent research and art pedagogy projects conducted by the writers in five European countries: Finland, Italy, Portugal, Spain and Sweden. When comparing and evaluating these projects, we focus on the space given to children's culture and on the power art has in constructing childhood as a social and cultural phenomenon. It was evident from the projects that enhancing children's culture can be achieved in multiple ways, as cultural dialogues that can produce new understanding and places for further cultural encounters. The projects also made visible how childhood can be constructed and reconstructed through art both by and for children. The projects emphasized the responsibility art educators have for organizing art education that enables the social and cultural participation of children.

Keywords: art education; contemporary art; cultural education; children's culture; identity; intercultural education

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1386///eta.7.3.245_1

Affiliations: 1: University of Helsinki 2: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona 3: Polytechnical University of València 4: Liceo Artistico E. Simone 5: University of Gothenburg

Publication date: 2011-10-11

 

Assessment techniques practiced in teaching art at Sultan Qaboos University in Oman

Author: AL-AMRI, MOHAMMED

Page Start: 267

 

Abstract:

Assessment in general, and in art and design in particular, is a problematic issue. Nevertheless, it is essential to inform teaching and learning n art and design education and to identify patterns of art achievement and development within different student groups. Assessment also provides a basis for art education epartments to be accountable to their communities for student learning in all visual art disciplines. In this study, the researcher draws attention to a number of important issues regarding the assessment techniques used in assessing students' work at Sultan Qaboos University (SQU) in Oman. The data from this research provide some indication of the problems of using a non-standardized system for assessing creative art courses at SQU. It appears that there is a need to re-think the assessment techniques practised in teaching art studio ourses at SQU for better preparation of art teachers as well as to try to find new mechanisms for implementing commonly practised assessment methods in art education. As a result, it is important to have appropriate approaches to the assessment of art-studio courses, and they should take into account developments in the field.

Keywords: art assessment; art studio; art lecturer; art education; higher education; SQU; Oman

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1386///eta.7.3.267_1

Affiliations: 1: Sultan Qaboos University

Publication date: 2011-10-11

Some notions of artistic creativity amongst history of art students acquired through incidental learning

Authors: NEWTON, DOUGLAS P.; DONKIN, HAZEL

Page Start: 283

 

Abstract:

In the West, creativity may be admired and valued but what it means can be elusive. Rather than being the subject of discussion in the classroom, meaning generally develops incidentally. We elicited twenty final-year history of art students' beliefs about artistic creativity in England using a questionnaire and interviews. The responses provided qualitative and quantitative data about these students' notions of artistic creativity. Beliefs and clusters of beliefs were identified. Together, these were similar to those of western artists and art academics, but clusters of beliefs showed there were also narrow and deficient notions regarding the product, process and locus of creativity. Teachers in higher education should be aware that students' responses may give the impression that their beliefs about art are sound when, in reality, they are unsound or narrow. This could have implications for employment, especially in a widening global economy.

Keywords: undergraduate; art education; notions of creativity; incidental learning

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1386///eta.7.3.221_2

Affiliations: 1: Durham University

Publication date: 2011-10-11

 

Critiquing commonly available multicultural art education resources

Author: CHIN, CHRISTINA D.

Page Start: 299

 

Abstract:

To assist art teachers in making informed choices regarding multicultural programmes for implementation within the artroom, within this article the author critically reviews and critiques a broad range of multicultural art education materials that are currently available to practitioners. These include commercially providedmulticultural art curricula and kits and praxis-oriented multicultural literature in art education. The author additionally highlights ethnographic art education literature that offers promising direction for remedying the tendency of many multicultural art education resources to advance Eurocentricity, superficial appropriation of formal elements, cultural stereotypes, ahistorical understandings and a hegemonic game of ethnic determinism to authorize representations of what allegedly constitutes a so-called culture's art.

Keywords: multicultural education; Eurocentric; hegemony; multicultural kits; multicultural curricula; stereotypes

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1386///eta.7.3.299_1

Affiliations: 1: Western Michigan University

Publication date: 2011-10-11