International Journal of Art & Design Education

2018 - Volume 37: Number 3

The Critically Designed Garden (pages 348 – 352)

ADAMS, JEFF & HYDE, WENDY

VOL 37.3

This article is concerned with design applied to gardens, using examples from the Chelsea Flower Show in London. There is a discussion of those show gardens that represented Syrian refugees’ gardens in Iraq and the Windrush generation immigration to the UK. The garden designs combine the aesthetics of organic materials and spatial architecture with an implicit critique of topical contemporary social issues. The article concludes by commenting on the risks posed by the reduced and impoverished UK arts education policies for producing the next generation of applied design practitioners.

Keywords

art education, garden design, Chelsea Flower Show, refugees, immigration, applied arts

DOI: 10.1111/jade. 12195 

The Effectiveness of Mime‐Based Creative Drama Education for Exploring Gesture‐Based User Interfaces (pages 353 – 366)

Ünlüer, Adviye Ayça; Baytas, Mehmet Aydın; Buruk, Oğuz Turan; Cemalcilar, Zeynep Yemez, Yücel

& Özcan, Oğuzhan

VOL 37.3

User interfaces that utilise human gestures as input are becoming increasingly prevalent in diverse computing applications. However, few designers possess the deep insight, awareness and experience regarding the nature and usage of gestures in user interfaces to the extent that they are able to exploit the technological affordances and innovate over them. We argue that design students, who will be expected to envision and create such interactions in the future, are constrained as such by their habits that pertain to conventional user interfaces. Design students should gain an understanding of the nature of human gestures and how to use them to add value to UI designs. To this end, we formulated an ‘awareness course’ for design students based on concepts derived from mime art and creative drama. We developed the course iteratively through the involvement of three groups of students. The final version of the course was evaluated by incorporating the perspectives of design educators, an industry expert and the students. We present the details of the course, describe the development process, and discuss the insights revealed by the evaluations.

Keywords

design education, user interface design, gestural interaction, creative drama, mime art

DOI: 10.1111/jade.12136

NGO Art Education (Pages: 367- 376)

KALIN, NADINE M

VOL 37.3

How is art education being put to use today? To explore this provocation, I read between the lines of teaching for civic literacy through visual arts education in the United States as mandated by the Partnership for 21stCentury Skills. I consider an art education of social practice's utility within this mandate. In order to accomplish this, I describe artist Rick Lowe's Trans.lation: Vickery Meadow social sculpture project and then analyse this through a service aesthetics’ lens and neoliberal motives. In the process of overlaying social practice within the Partnership for 21st Century Skills as a model for visual arts and citizenship education toward globally competent graduates, I articulate the possible limitations of such micro‐utopian ventures for art education that amount to NGO‐esque art, making the case that these efforts, while facilitating a feeling of civic engagement, only further intensify the depoliticisation of art education acting as a form of Rancière's better police in reasserting the neoliberal status quo. I sound a cautionary note about such a pragmatic turn risking the exacerbation of our collective interpassivity through aligning art education too closely to our apparent use value for late capitalism.

Keywords

art education, social practice art, 21st century skills, civic education, curriculum

DOI: 10.1111/jade.12135

Art Education and the Moral Injunction to be Oneself (pages 377 – 386)

STABLER, ALBERT

VOL 37.3

A primary function of schooling is to impart moral discipline, and art education distills this role to its core imperative of mandated pleasure, summarised by Jacques Lacan as the ‘will to enjoy’. This manifests in the insistence that, despite producing similar outcomes, students come to recognise themselves as unique and creative. In the twentieth century, art education in the USA has developed methods for extracting supposedly intimate personal expressions from young people, albeit without demanding the technical versatility, historical knowledge and critical reflection required of mature artists – the exception to this, despite its many flaws, being so‐called Discipline‐Based Art Education, or DBAE. In this article, I begin with reflections on the untapped potential of DBAE to relate to contemporary art practices. My ideas on moral instruction are expanded upon in the second section, when I undertake a ‘backwards’ history of British and American art education, in which the ideal of art class as a site of intrinsic and authentic meaning‐making is challenged by the functional requirements of education. My last section takes up a critique of critical pedagogy, in which I use the example of a project my high school students did about Michael Jackson to challenge ways in which trauma and pleasure are seen by critical pedagogues as features of experience that conflict fatally with the educational ends of individualist autonomy.

Keywords

Slavoj Zizek, discipline based art education, Jacques Lacan, Michael Jackson, art education history, visual culture art education

DOI: 10.1111/jade.12133

An Evaluation of Oral Presentation Competency in Interior Design Education (pages 387 – 398)

HYNES, WENDY & KWON, HYUN JOO

VOL 37.3

As digital modelling programmes become increasingly prevalent in interior design education, there is concern that graduates are entering the workforce relying too much on strong graphic presentation skills while lacking the basic ability to speak about design. This study explores the gap between practitioners’ perceptions of importance regarding oral presentation competency and students’ perceptions of their oral presentation performances. Additionally, the study explores correlations between in‐class activities and students’ perceptions of their oral presentation competency. Mixed‐methods of investigation include a Delphi study with a panel of interior design practitioners and a survey questionnaire of both practitioners (n = 102) and currently active interior design students (n = 91) in the USA. An Importance‐Performance framework is employed for comparison. Results identify performance criteria for evaluating oral presentation competency and indicate variances between students’ perceptions of their performance and industry perceptions of importance. Furthermore, students’ in‐class activities including studio critiques and written peer assessments show significant correlation with student oral presentation performance indicating activities already frequently incorporated into a design curriculum may have a greater impact on improving performance than specific oral presentation instruction alone.

Keywords

oral presentation, communication, interior design education, Importance-Performance framework, mixed-method

DOI: 10.1111/jade.12134

(Re) thinking Emotions in Visual Education Activities: Students' Experiences (pages 399 – 412)

CASIAN, SILVIA; LOPES, AMELIA & PEREIRA, FATIMA

VOL 37.3

This article focuses on the emotions of 13 and 14 year‐old students related to visual art education activities. Our aim is to understand the interference of the students' emotions with the processes of the creation and reception of their own pictures, as well as their characteristics in an art education context. The article adopts a Vygotskian theoretical perspective about emotion and aesthetic education that refers to the biopsychological nature of emotion and its cultural determination. The need to transform emotions in art activities is stressed and the teenagers' pictures are interpreted as a means of communication. The data collection was based on questionnaires and interviews with seventh and eighth grade secondary school students. It is concluded that students' emotions are not only present in the creative process and in its result, but also that they could have a significant positive or negative impact on students' motivation and achievement behaviour in art education classes. In this context, the students' pictures, acting as stimuli, may evoke their emotions.

keywords

art education, emotions, art activities, picture stimuli, secondary school students, Vygotskian theoretical perspective

DOI: 10.1111/jade.12141

Reinterpreting City as a Critical Ground in Atelier 1 Projects: Some Prospects and Projections on Ankara (pages 413 – 425)

ULUDAG, ZEYNEP & GULEC, GULSAH

VOL 37.3

This article is based on the critical approaches developed in Atelier 1, an architectural design studio in the Gazi University Faculty of Architecture, Department of Architecture in Ankara, Turkey. The main theme of Atelier 1 Projects in the 2014–15 academic year was the ‘City as a Critical Ground’, in which the city, ground and criticism were discussed within the interdisciplinary theoretical field of architecture. Atelier 1, involving second, third and fourth year undergraduate students, reinterpreted and redesigned the urban ground of Ankara with a critical approach to reveal its unique identities and implicit values. Ground, accepted as the main critical material in the design process, was criticised not only in its physical sense, but also its social, cultural, political, economic, technological and even psychological aspects. The students were able to discover their own design methods from their criticisms of the urban ground, which also allowed them to determine their sites and programmes. In this way, Atelier 1 promoted freedom and flexibility as well as criticality in the design process, and pointed out that the relationship of architecture with city, ground and criticism should be discussed from a new theoretical perspective, primarily in the architectural design studio, as the core of architectural education. Atelier 1, as a theory‐based architectural design studio, motivated the students to develop a critical approach to the urban ground of Ankara so as to replace the rising formalism with criticism in architecture.

Keywords

architectural education, architectural design studio, criticism, interdisciplinary, city, ground

DOI: 10.1111/jade.12144

Negotiating a ‘Radically Ambiguous World’: Planning for the Future of Research at the Art and Design University (pages 426 – 437)

LIINAMAA, SAARA

VOL 37.3

Theoretically and methodologically, understanding the role of research within art and design practices is a recurring theme within contemporary dialogue and debate. In the published literature, there are many questions around how categories and definitions of artistic research are employed within the increasingly under‐resourced realm of higher education. This article contributes to this larger discussion by building up our knowledge of a particular feature of this landscape: how research policy and planning documents at art and design universities represent and define artistic research. While examining research at the level of practice remains important, we must also understand the symbolic and practical weight that institutional directives carry. In light of recent literature on artistic research and the debates concerning its evaluation and institutionalisation, this article develops our contemporary understanding of the role of the art and design university as an important mediator of conflicting perspectives on the ‘value’ of art and design research. Based on a discourse analysis of research planning documents from Canada's three independent public art and design universities, this article will argue that it is not the definition of artistic research itself that is the most contentious feature of university research planning – it is defining the value of this research that invites conflict and concern.

Keywords

art and design universities, strategic planning, higher education, cultural economy, art and design research

DOI: 10.1111/jade.12143

Becoming a Design Thinker: Assessing the Learning Process of Students in a Secondary Level Design Thinking Course (pages 438 – 453)

AFLATOONY, LEILA; WAKKARY, RON & NEUSTAEDTER, CARMAN

VOL 37.3

Design thinking is a collaborative problem solving and human‐centric approach that fosters innovation by elevating participants’ creative thinking abilities. Design thinking techniques and practices have been implemented into different curricula in secondary and post‐secondary education to address the need for new skills to be learned for the twenty‐first century. However, little work has been conducted to clarify how to evaluate the students’ design thinking skills gained in these courses. This study reports on a successful evaluation of an interaction design thinking curriculum in secondary level education. Several types of data sources, including participant observation, open‐ended questions and document analysis were employed to gather extensive data on students’ skills gained during the course. The results of the study inform design thinking researchers about how to evaluate design thinking skills of students in a secondary level design thinking course.

Keywords

design thinking assessment, creative problem solving, interaction design, design education, secondary education

DOI: 10.111/jade.12139

The Design of Stereotype and the Image (pages 454 – 468)

ROXBURGH, MARK & CARATTI, ELENA

VOL 37.3

Our everyday life is influenced by an overproduction of images and by an iconogenic surplus that is connected to the proliferation of media. These contribute to both the quality and quantity of communication, but simultaneously amplify the knowledge gap between an audience that is able to critically process messages and another that is affected uncritically by prejudices and stereotypes. Bellino argues for a critical media education to address this gap by encouraging the development of students' critical thinking and social awareness. In this article we will discuss the results of a research‐driven design project in which visual communication design students engaged with theories of cultural stereotypes and critiqued the role of media in their perpetuation. We adopted Kolb's model of experiential learning as recent published research demonstrates that art and design students have difficulties in conventional academic approaches to learning theory. In this regard students learned theories of stereotype through doing and making and embodied this learning in their critical project outcomes.

Keywords

media education, design education, experiential learning, design practice and theory, critical design practice

DOI: 10.111/jade.12140

Analysing the Effects of Critique Techniques on the Success of Interior Architecture Students (pages 469 – 479)

GUL, CILER GOZDE GUNDAY & AFACAN, YASEMIN

VOL 37.7

In architectural design education, the most significant part in the curriculum is the design studio, where students learn how to design. Critique has a crucial role in the design studio, and in determining the best and most beneficial critique type for the architectural design education process. Student attitudes toward critiques and student satisfaction level with each critique technique are also significant. To that end, this article explores design studio learning by reviewing the design learning process and types of design critiques. Focusing on three critique techniques used in design education (desk critiques, pin‐up critiques and group critiques), the article analyses correlations between student attitudes toward each technique and its contribution to the design process. Research was conducted with 84 third‐year interior architecture students from the 2014–15 Fall semester at a university. No statistically significant differences were found between group and pin‐up critiques in terms of students’ preferences and their final performance scores; however, there was a statistically significant relationship between student preferences toward desk critiques and student success. Furthermore, the contribution of a critique technique to the design process was found to be highly correlated with student preference for this technique.

Keywords

architectural design education, design studios, critique techniques, desk critique, pin-up critique, group critique

DOI: 10.1111/jade.12145

I – from dreams to reality’: A Case Study of Developing Youngsters’ Self‐Efficacy and Social Skills through an Arts Educational Project in Schools (pages 480 – 492)

RUOKONEN, INKERI

VOL 37.1

This is a case study of a one‐year arts educational project ‘I – from dreams to reality’ in which artists worked at school with teachers and learning at the school was planned through arts‐based, co‐operative teamwork during one extra school year of 10th grade students in Finnish basic education. The theme of the year was ‘I’, and so the project was designed to highlight everyone's own way of thinking and expressing art. The research task was to determine whether long‐term holistic arts pedagogy and artist co‐operation at school have any significant connection to students’ self‐efficacy and social skills. Data has been collected through students’ self‐evaluations before and after the school year. Altogether 40 students from 10th grade participated in this case study. Half of the pupils participated in an arts educational project called ‘I – from dreams to reality’ and half formed the control group. Artists worked with the test group weekly during a period of one school year (altogether nine months). Students’ self‐evaluations concerning their self‐efficacy and social behaviour were collected by e‐questionnaire. The measures used were Likert‐based evaluation scores of pupils’ self‐assessment of their self‐efficacy and social behaviour in everyday situations at school. According to the results, artist–teacher co‐operation and learning through the arts can be worthwhile experiences to develop students’ self‐efficacy and social skills.

Keywords

learning through the arts, arts education, self-efficacy, social skills, artist at school

DOI: 10.1111/jade.12138

The Use of Activity Theory as a Methodology for Developing Creativity within the Art and Design Classroom (pages 493 – 506)

KINSELLA, VICTORIA

VOL 37.3

This article discusses the use of an activity theory system as an analytical tool within the school art and design classroom. It highlights reasons for its use and makes explicit its importance for investigations into teaching and learning. It proposes that through an activity theory system, teachers and researchers are enabled to reflect on the formation of thought and develop an understanding of pedagogy, where classroom roles, rules and participation are made visible. The article draws on primary research which explores the development of creativity within the English Key Stage 3 (age 11–14) art and design classroom. Illustrations are provided to show how through the use of an activity theory system a multi‐layered analysis took place. This generated reflection on relationships and structures within and surrounding the classroom, impinging creative activity. Through using the activity theory system teachers and researchers were enabled to observe the complexity of the classroom and question socio‐cultural‐political structures which empowered change.

Keywords

activity theory, creativity, identity, learning, secondary education, teaching

DOI: 10.1111/jade.12147

Social Expectations and Workplace Challenges: Teaching Artists in Korean Schools (pages 507 – 518)

PAEK, KYONG-MI

VOL 37.3

Social interest in art integration for curriculum enrichment and innovation, particularly at the turn of the century, has promoted extensive institutional partnerships between cultural organisations and public schools in many countries. Stimulated by social demands for innovative educational practices, these institutional partnerships have increased the numbers of teaching artists sent to schools. These artists are expected to contribute to the development of students’ creative imaginations by providing learning opportunities beyond conventional classroom practices. However, the extent to which teaching artists are able to develop creatively within their socially expected roles remains unclear, especially considering the marginal status of the arts in formal education settings. A recent survey‐ and interview‐based study conducted by the present author in South Korea demonstrated that teaching artists in schools find the structured educational system often limits the scope of their classroom practice. This article reviews the teaching artists’ concerns and needs identified in the study context and discusses ways to support their professional development and expand the roles of institutions in improving the quality of their teaching practice. The discussion also examines historical and socio‐political factors that have influenced the persisting challenges of structural issues inherited in the Teaching Artists in Schools Program in South Korea to provide suggestions for more sustainable and instructive collaborations.

Keywords

innovative practice, Korean schools, teaching artists, professional needs, partnerships with schools, art integration

DOI: 10.1111/jade.21149

Evaluating Students’ Performance in Responding to Art: The Development and Validation of an Art Criticism Assessment Rubric (pages 519 – 529)

TAM, CHEUNG ON

VOL 37.3

This article reports on the development and validation of a rubric for assessing students’ written responses to artworks. Since the implementation of the Hong Kong New Senior Secondary Curriculum in 2009, art educators have seen responding to artworks as increasingly important. In this context, the Art Criticism Assessment Rubric (ACAR) was developed. On the basis of Feldman's and Geahigan's theories of art criticism, eight evaluation criteria were identified. The inter‐rater reliability (IRR) of the ACAR was examined. A preliminary IRR test was conducted and an excellent intra‐class correlation coefficient (ICC) value of .91 was obtained. For the main study, six independent raters, who were divided into three groups of two, were trained and invited to rate 87 art criticism essays written by students from eight secondary schools. Most dimensions of the ACAR achieved good ICC values. The results show that the ACAR is an acceptable rubric for providing a reliable assessment of students’ written responses to artworks. However, two dimensions, Originality and Balanced Views and Application of Aesthetic and Contextual Knowledge, obtained poor ICC values. This may be owing to the lack of consensus on the definition of originality and the raters' unfamiliarity with the concept of aesthetic knowledge. The researchers suggest that dimension‐specific samples rated from high to low scores should be provided in raters’ training.

Keywords

art criticism, visual arts, assessment, rubric, validation, inter-rater reliability

DOI: 10.1111/jade.12154

Mind, Language and Artworks as Real Constraints on Students' Critical Reasoning about Meaning in Art (pages 530 – 540)

MARAS, KAREN ELIZABETH

VOL 37.3

To engage in discussions of artwork meaning is to engage in critical reasoning, a factor that is central to the interpretation of artworks in the art classroom. While this may appear as a common‐sense claim that reflects the tacit assumptions most art educators have about students' critical dispositions in art, it is also evident that little is known about the deeper structures underlying students’ critical reasoning and how such structures shape students’ interpretations of artworks. Drawing on my research on students’ theories of critical meaning in art, this article explores the nature of practical and theoretical constraints on students’ critical reasoning about the meaning of artworks. I account for how intentional beliefs, language and representational artefacts function as a nexus of real constraints that condition students’ advance into interpretations of the social meaning of art. After briefly outlining the design and methodology of my study, I examine students’ critical reasoning performances during the formative period of development between middle to late childhood. The findings reveal that with increasing age students gradually learn to exercise their own critical intentions and represent inferences that acknowledge the significance of constitutive rules and force of a collective intentionality in the artworld on their interpretations of artworks as artefacts. I then make some conclusions about the relationship of domain‐specific shifts in art understanding, the role of intentionality, representational understanding, beliefs about art and reasoning skills to the linguistic, theoretical and artefactual constraints conditioning students’ intuitive advance into real understandings of art.

Keywords

critical reasoning, art understanding, social reality, interpretation, intentionality in art, constraints on meaning in art

DOI: 10.1111/jade.12152

Developing Design through a Creative Problem‐Solving Process: A Group Community Art Project (PAGES 541 – 553)

HSIEH, CHIA-YING

VOL 37.3

For the past few years, creativity has gradually become an important element in the national cultivation of talent in Taiwan. Although traditionally art education is closely linked with creativity, the academic research on general art education is very insufficient. Therefore, the goal of this research is to investigate how creativity could be cultivated in curriculum planning for general art education at technology universities as well as what students’ learning process was when they participated in a course's creative activity. The research applied the theory and steps of creative problem‐solving (CPS) on a general art course to design a group practical activity combining with the local community. This involved converting the steps of creative problem‐solving into different stages of group design activities with the goal of constructing a design process equivalent to the process of problem‐solving. The main research results revealed that students could experience the problem‐solving process through group design activities and develop their divergent and convergent thinking at the same time. Moreover, the cooperative learning model is the most appropriate teaching strategy for students from non‐art‐related departments when cultivating their creativity.

Keywords

creativity, creative problem-solving, cooperative learning, general art education, group art project

DOI: 10.1111/jade. 12155

 

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