2004 - Volume 23: Number 1
Role of Art and Craft Collections in Teacher Training Institutions in Australia
COLLET, PENELOPE J.
Volume 23.1
In postwar Australia, rapid population growth increased the demand for teachers. The colleges at Ballarat and Bendigo were revived and expanded by the Victorian Government. At Bendigo in 1955 F M Courtis, Head of Art Education, acquired art works initiating a valuable and significant teaching resource at the College. The study of the F M Courtis Collection raised obvious questions about the role of collections in the early teaching colleges and what events or factors led to their beginnings. This case study will be situated within a broader picture of art and craft collections in institutions across three states. My discussions in this paper are framed by some of Raymond Williams’ notions about country and city and the ‘contrast between country and city, as fundamental ways of life’. I hope to demonstrate the important role art and craft collections have played in visual arts education in country institutions.
Art Interpretation as Subject Constitution: A Research on the Role of Critical Art History in Teacher Education
TRAFÍ, LAURA
Volume 23.1
This article describes the foundations, development and some of the findings from a research project about how the use of ‘the gaze’, as a key idea from critical art history, might affect the understanding of art by art educators. It shows how the use of this key idea involved not just the disruption of a modernist model of art interpretation (based on the author and the oeuvre), but also mediated the discursive production of the subjectivity of the interpreters as readers/writers of the work. The research was based in the interpretation of a specific artwork by Manet, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère.
Multidisciplinary Approaches to Anti-racist Education: An Introduction to the Talacchanda Exhibition and Education Project
THAPALYAL , RANJANA
Volume 23.1
The Talacchanda project took place as an independent research/exhibition undertaking supported by the Glasgow School of Art. Over seventeen months an exploratory education programme was introduced at various levels of schools and higher education. The education programme sprang from a contemporary art exhibition and dance performance called Talaccahnda which was informed by ancient Indian thought on art and drama. The exhibition and performance took place in Glasgow’s Tramway Project Room and Theatre in October 2002. It had been shown previously in the British Council Gallery in New Delhi in 2000, and later in 2001 at the artist run space ‘Out of the Blue’ in Edinburgh. Thanks to Scottish Arts Council Lottery funding, Talacchanda Glasgow was accompanied by an education programme, which offered workshops and events in schools, at the gallery, through community groups as well as at GSA and Reid Kerr College, Paisley.By demonstrating connections between apparently disparate activities, the project aimed to serve as a catalyst for fresh thinking on inter-cultural and anti racist education, and to strengthen connections between the community groups and institutions involved.
Creative Disruption – A Task Based Approach to Engaging with Original Works of Art
WALKER, KEITH and SMITH, LIZ
Volume 23.1
This paper examines the value of a task based approach to engaging with original works of art and focuses in particular upon the experiences of a group of PGCE Art and Design trainees when they visited an exhibition entitled ‘Air Guitar: Art Reconsidering Rock Music’ to carry out given tasks. The extent to which a task based approach might creatively disrupt trainee teachers’ thinking and the nature and significance of such thinking within an educational context is considered, as is the impact of the tasks on their developing understanding of the need for a diversity of approaches to critical engagement. It draws extensively upon selected responses to the tasks and the trainees’ subsequent reflections on the experience. Comparisons are made between trainees’ responses to particular works and references to these works that are detailed in the exhibition catalogue. This is undertaken with the intention of examining the interrelationship between understanding and knowledge when reading and responding to works of art in the gallery context. A further concern is to generate debate and challenge assumptions regarding the nature and dynamics of gallery based activities and contribute to a process of development and innovation in which all participants can play an active part.
The Empirical Spectator and Gallery Education
FULKOVA, MARIE; STRAKER, ALISON and JAROS, MILAN
Volume 23.1
This paper examines the onto-epistemic status and understanding of contemporary material culture and of visual art, particularly in the context of gallery education. It does so through a case study of the response of 15 year-old school students in the Czech Republic and in England to a recent photographic exhibition, I.N.R.I., created by artists Bettina Rheims and Serge Bramly. It supports and develops further the proposition that the tradition grounded in the concept of a single ‘objective’ interpretation of a work of art has been significantly undermined by the paradigmatic change that has taken place in the last decades. In the course of this process the vocabulary of signification (e.g. doves, the royal blue, temptations of Christ, class struggle) inherited from the age of ideologies and grand narratives has been significantly weakened. In its place there emerged the vocabulary of signs born out of the language of high tech media. It takes the form of dynamically constituted units identifiable via daily exposure to techno processes, e.g. familiar from advertising and networking, at best mere fragments of traditional narratives. The recognition of reality is couched in terms of consumer units originating in objects (e.g. gadgetry) and object-based practices filling (indeed constituting) the living place of today. This shift is particularly apparent among English young people, brought up in a more consumer-oriented society, and to a lesser degree among Czechs. This is well in keeping with the concept of the post-modern ‘empirical spectator’ developed in recent literature on art and material culture education.
Profiling Primary School Teachers in Relation to Art Teaching
PAVLOU, VICTORIA
Volume 23.1
This paper contributes to the on-going debate about specialisation and teaching art in primary schools. This is done by investigating several profiles of teachers who teach art in primary schools in Cyprus. It describes five profiles of teachers, which emerged from analysing data from pupils (questionnaire and interview data) and teachers (interview data) and thus brings a fresh insight to the learning-teaching situation. There are two profiles of art specialist teachers, named as artist-teacher and specialist-teacher, and three profiles of non-art specialist teachers, named as enthusiastic, disappointed, and indifferent non-specialist. The most effective teacher in the pupils’ eyes is the specialist-teacher, who integrates more successfully than the others their subject matter knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, knowledge of learners and knowledge of the environmental conditions.
Door to the Future, Understanding Portals of Ancient Seljuk Colleges
GOKAY, MELEK
Volume 23.1
Symbols of artistic features on architecture employed by people living in Konya in the 13th Century (circa 1258) have been examined to express their philosophy of art and culture. University students who are educated to become art teachers in secondary and high schools living around these architectural inheritances are supposed to have the same cultural background, but it was found that they did not recognize these historical and artistic values in spite of the art lessons given to them. The purpose of this study is to analyze the output of the students’ general art knowledge about the neighboring art environment when the teaching method in lessons is changed. After changing the methods of teaching, according to DBAE requirements, students were asked to design their own architectural portal and prepare related stories for Ince-minareli Seljuk College. Artistic features engraved on the selected portal of the Seljuk College and student design works were compared and differences and similarities between them were presented by using semiotic studies. The study suggests that through this teaching and learning strategy students gain more understanding of the artistic features of their art heritage
Integrating ‘Outer Space Design’ into Design Curriculum
WILSING, MARKUS
Volume 23.1
The imagination of human beings and the exploration of novel ideas have always contributed to developments in science. These developments lead us to re-examine the existing structures in our environment and society so that they can be further improved. The review of literature regarding science fiction and its place in education also highlights the need for novel topics in design education. Thus, integrating a course in the curriculum of design education that aims to explore futuristic and visionary oriented environments like Mars Colonies, Orbital Space Colonies or Orbital Space Hotels would seem crucial. Such topics would probably not only stimulate the students in their design process, but also develop their imagination, as they require research and synectic thinking. As to whether stimulating imagination should be among the priorities in teaching, in fact, it is the dreams, imagination and creativity that has shaped and will shape human development and social-cultural contexts.