Update on the Visual Arts in the Australian Curriculum

VADEA Conference 2013 Dr Karen Maras & Dr Kerry Thomas

Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians (2008)

• • • • • World class curriculum and assessment will enable students to develop knowledge in the disciplines of English, mathematics, science, languages, humanities and the arts ; to understand the spiritual, moral and aesthetic dimensions of life; open up new ways of thinking. It will also support the development of deep knowledge within a discipline, innovation and complex problem-solving. which provides the foundation for inter-disciplinary approaches to Australian Curriculum for the Arts F-10 promised The Arts (performing and visual)

ACARA VADEA

2009 May 2010 Aug 2010 Aug 2011 July-Sept 2012 Feb 2013 Mid 2013 Feb 2014 Arts Position Paper Advisory Panel appointed Initial Advice Paper Draft Shape Paper (DSP) Consultation Consultation Report on DSP Shape Paper finalised Draft Curriculum developed Draft Curriculum Consultation – no report published Validation of Achievement Standards - workshops ACARA Board meeting Curriculum published Implementation COFA Forum, proposals to ACARA 2 reps attend initial ‘launch’ Extensive Advice to AEA, BOS, CEC, ACARA Forum & Consultation Advice Alternate curriculum framework Forum & Consultation Advice Further advice to AEA, BOS, CEC, ACARA Ongoing meetings with AEA, BOS Revised Band descriptions written Further advice offered AEA – no indication of position VADEA rejects the curriculum BOS: ‘Not in NSW’

Political rhetoric

• • • • Crean, 2012: The Arts “empower the individual and underpin expression, tolerance and inclusion” Garrett, 2012: Arts education “produces other benefits, for instance contributing to improving school attendance, academic achievement and student wellbeing” supports the “development of learning skills and learning how to learn, with improved academic performance especially noted for students from disadvantaged backgrounds” can “help young people to move through difficult periods in their lives, and explore challenging personal issues in a non-confronting way”

ACARAs structure: The Arts

Organisation

• • • • • Music Dance Drama Visual Arts Media Arts

Content Structure

• • • Strands – Making, Responding Band descriptions Content descriptions

Learning in the Arts

• Aesthetic knowledge • Practices • Artists • Artworks • Audiences • Subject matter/world • Viewpoints

The Overall Approach

•

the underlying theoretical structure remains incoherent

•

a more embellished bricolage of earlier drafts

Visual Arts Content

•

Making

engaging the senses, emotion, cognition, imagination •

Responding

exploring, responding to, analysing, interpreting, critically evaluating

Practices

• visual language • representation

Viewpoints

• contexts

Skills

• Perception • processes

A confusion of Viewpoints

•

While viewpoints were an attempt to address the issue of how the visual arts is subject to different kinds of beliefs, values and understandings, there is no real sense within the content descriptions of how these actually function

•

There seems to be no understanding on the part of writers that the imagination and

experience are themselves viewpoints!

Viewpoints

• Shift according to different world encounters • Students ask and answer questions to interrogate artist’s meanings • Meanings and interpretations are informed by contexts of societies, cultures and histories, and an understanding of how visual arts language , practice, materials, technologies, skills and processes are used.

the muddled writing about design

• creative engagement with a set of opportunities and constraints and requires a purposeful, technical, scientific, imaginative thought process that links creativity and innovation. • connects the different art forms so that they inform each …to create innovative and hybrid forms of art. • Within all Arts subjects, design facilitates the creative and practical realisation of ideas and processes. • In the Arts, many different words describe the design process such as composing, choreographing, narrating, devising, constructing, sculpting and visually designing.

Appropriate level of intellectual demand?

•

The proposed curriculum fails the test of setting high expectations for teachers and students

•

there are large relational gaps in how students might come to understanding both practically and in their studies of the visual arts in complex ways.

•

atomisation of content descriptions does little to help

Bands: knowledge & Skills

• Representation • Subject matter • Forms • Techniques • Visual devices • Materials • Technologies • Practices • Spaces • Skills • Processes • viewpoints

Content description organisers F-6

• Exploring ideas & improving with ways to

represent

ideas • Developing understanding of practices • Sharing artworks through performance, presentation or display • Responding to and

interpreting

artworks

YR

Developing understanding of practices F-6

Content description

F-2 3-4 5-6 Use different materials, techniques, technologies & processes when making artworks Use materials, techniques, technologies and processes to experiment with visual language when making artworks Develop & apply techniques & processes to predict and innovate when making artworks

Content description organisers 7-10

• Extending ideas through combining elements/concepts • Developing intentions • Structuring & organising ideas into form • Developing & refining understanding of practices • Sharing artworks through performance, presentation or display • Analysing & reflecting upon intentions • Responding & interpreting artworks

Developing & refining understanding of practices 7-10

Content Description Yr

7-8 Practise & refine application of visual language, techniques & processes to enhance representation of ideas in their artmaking 9-10 Develop & refine use of visual language, perceptual & practical skills & selected techniques, technologies & processes to represent ideas & subject matter

Coherent?

underlying incoherence of the document which is dramatically exposed in learning/knowledge/skills in visual arts, the band statements, content descriptions and achievement standards.

Final Judgement

What has been developed is far from a world class curriculum. We have no confidence that this curriculum will improve visual arts education in Australia, certainly not in NSW .

All is not lost…

• • • • •

Alternative proposals developed during this process:

offer teachers robust theoretical underpinnings for future curriculum revision in NSW A conceptual framework grounded in current research on conceptual development in Visual Arts A continuum of learning that is coherent and respectful of students’ developing intellectual autonomy Research-based conceptions of practical knowledge that will support teachers to structure learning in the classroom Will provide a means to address contemporary practices in art and design