2016 - Volume 35: Number 2
Interrupting Everyday Life: Public Interventionist Art as Critical Public Pedagogy (pages 183–195)
DESAI, DIPTI and DARTS, DAVID
VOL 35.2
In this article we explore two urban interventions art projects in the public sphere designed by our Masters’ students at New York University as they set the stage for a discussion on how urban art interventions can function as a form of critical public pedagogy. We argue that these kinds of public art projects provided a space for dialogue with people on the streets about the increased corporatisation of the public sphere. This kind of urban interventionism, we believe, is needed in art education today, as the public sphere is increasingly being eroded by private interests and it is only by reclaiming the public sphere that we can develop a cultural politics that in turn renews our democracy.
DOI: 10.1111/jade.12050
Cognitive Activity-Based Design Methodology for Novice Visual Communication Designers (pages 196–212)
KIM, HYUNJUNG and LEE, HYUNJU
VOL 35.2
The notion of design thinking is becoming more concrete nowadays, as design researchers and practitioners study the thinking processes involved in design and employ the concept of design thinking to foster better solutions to complex and ill-defined problems. The goal of the present research is to develop a cognitive activity-based design methodology for novice visual communication designers, which will be achieved by mapping the findings from a comparative analysis of novice and expert visual communication designers' thinking processes onto the prospective methodology. Under the proposed methodology, activity modes take place in a chronological flow under specific guidelines involving various forms of design cognition. The guidelines correlate to design phases from problem structuring to detailed design and to the cognitive processes of divergent and convergent thinking. The methodology gives open-ended instruction to novices endeavouring to proceed with the design process, solve complex design problems and make better design decisions. This research has value for its unique approach to methodology development. Furthermore, the proposed methodology provides guidance for more effective cognitive activities during the design process and holds potential for implementation in design education due to its focus on the needs of novice designers.
DOI: 10.1111/jade.12054
Destined to Design? How and Why Australian Women Choose to Study Industrial Design (pages 213–228)
LOCKHART, CATHY and MILLER, EVONNE
VOL 35.2
Despite over three decades of legislation and initiatives designed to tackle the traditional gender divide in the science, technology and design fields, only a quarter of the registered architects in Australia are women. There are no statistics available for other design disciplines, with little known about why women choose design as a career path and who or what influences this decision. This qualitative research addresses this knowledge gap, through semi-structured in-depth interviews conducted with 19 Australian women who completed an industrial (product) design degree. Thematic analysis revealed three key themes: childhood aptitude and exposure; significant experiences and people; and design as a serendipitous choice. The findings emphasise the importance of early exposure to design as a potential career choice, highlighting the critical role played by parents, teachers, professionals and social networks.
DOI: 10.1111/jade.12053
Reconstructing Imagined Finnishness: The Case of Art Education through the Concept of Place (pages 229–242)
PAATELA-NIEMINEN, MARTINA; ITKONEN, TUIJA and TALIB, MIRJA-TYTTI
VOL 35.2
This multidisciplinary article presents a methodology, a research project and selected outcomes from an environmental art education course for teacher students. The course is part of an art education minor at the University of Helsinki, Department of Teacher Education. The students were asked to construct their place through an intertextual art method that provided them the means to study their place open-endedly as a space of plural cultural meanings. Applying the results from their intertextual process, they reconstructed their place artistically. The end product was a personal work of art that included traces of their chosen places, and created a new meaning for it. The outcome is a visual space of compacted meanings from different places. Places contain history and memories important to identity construction. The results show that the intertextual reading extends the students’ concept of place as a space for relational and plural cultural meanings. Foucault's concept of heterotopia, as it applies to otherness of places and spaces, was used alongside the intertextual art method.
DOI: 10.1111/jade.12057
Learning to Be: The Modelling of Art and Design Practice in University Art and Design Teaching (pages 243–258)
BUDGE, KYLIE
VOL 35.2
Learning to be an artist or designer is a complex process of becoming. Much of the early phase of ‘learning to be’ occurs during the time emerging artists and designers are students in university art/design programmes, both undergraduate and postgraduate. Recent research reveals that a critical role in assisting students in their maturing identities as artists and designers is played by artist/designer-academics teaching in university art and design programmes. By maintaining active art/design practices and drawing from these in their teaching, artist/designer-academics model professional practice to students. Witnessing and interacting with such modelling is part of the process of students learning the shared discourses, views and practices of the art or design worlds to which they aspire to belong. The modelling of professional practice is critical to an artist or designer's ‘learning to be’ experience because it enables students to access the tacit and nuanced behaviours, languages and cultures that constitute contemporary art or design practice.
This article outlines findings from a recent Australian study revealing the role of professional practice modelling in university art/design teaching. It highlights the centrality of professional practice modelling to artist/designer-academics in their beliefs and approaches to teaching their academic disciplines. In critically exploring the research data and findings this article describes the role that modelling of practice plays and how it comprises a core part of the value that artist/designer-academic participants contribute to the teaching of art/design education.
DOI: 10.1111/jade.12060
‘This is the best lesson ever, Miss…’: Disrupting Linear Logics of Visual Arts Teaching Practice (pages 259–274)
MATHEWSON MITCHELL, DONNA
VOL 35.2
Research in visual arts education is often focused on philosophical issues or broad concerns related to approaches to curriculum. In focusing on the everyday work of teaching, this article addresses a gap in the literature to report on collaborative research exploring the experiences of secondary visual arts teachers in regional New South Wales, Australia. Drawing on qualitative data gathered through a process of educational connoisseurship and educational criticism, discussion focuses on visual arts teaching as a particular professional practice that is complex, intricate, emergent and adaptive. In drawing on themes emerging from the research, examples of unplanned aspects of teachers’ work that disrupt linear logics about teaching practice are examined. The article concludes by raising issues for further consideration and research.
DOI: 10.1111/jade.12061
Drawing with Children: An Experiment in Assisted Creativity (pages 275–290)
KOUVOU, OURANIA
VOL 35.2
This report outlines the cognitive accomplishments of young children involved in graphic dialogue with adults. A token of collaborative drawing is examined exhibiting the degree to which adult informed tutoring enabled children in their drawing development, enhanced their motivation and ability in narration and resulted in drawings meaningful to them. The case studies examined are the result of a three-year research project conducted by undergraduate students of Athens University Department of Early Childhood Education under the supervision of the author of this article. This game-like pedagogical strategy is inspired by L. Vygotsky's educational philosophy and based on B. & M. Wilson's model of adult–child graphic dialogue. It is understood as a method of instructing drawing enabling children to pass from that which they can achieve alone to that which they can accomplish with adult assistance. This educational approach answers to a call for a more socially accountable art education addressing the child's need to deal with issues he encounters in his everyday life and as such is open to adult and cultural interference. A similar educational approach intends to challenge the long-standing, non-interventionist art educational theory also known as ‘child art’ and its contention that a prerequisite for a creative individual is expression free from social and adult influence.
DOI: 10.1111/jade.12056
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