Curriculum change for good reasons: The domains & the reinvigoration of practice as

content in Visual Arts

Dr Karen Maras, UNSW School of Education Michele Brennan, Wenona School Ella Hungerford Sheaves, UNSW School of Education

2016 VADEA Conference: In the public domain

Abstract •  Facilitated through the superintendence of classroom teachers in collaboration

with a strong professional body and art education researchers, government agencies have supported successive iterations of the visual arts and design curriculum over several decades. These periodic syllabus revisions reflect logical shifts in how ideas of art practice have been represented in the curriculum. Since the implementation of the Stage 6 Visual Arts syllabus 16 years ago changes in artworld practice and new research in the subject have clarified the need to again rethink the relevance and strength of the current curriculum provision. This presentation briefly outlines curriculum antecedents that inform the present proposals for the inclusion of domains as a means for reinvigorating the articulation of practice in the visual arts syllabus. Following an overview of these proposals which have attracted strong support from a range of stakeholders as a logical way to renew our syllabus content, two art teachers will show how they have applied these ideas to programming as part of their postgraduate studies and classroom practice. The curriculum examples they showcase reveal how the domains support refreshed pedagogy and facilitate the reclamation of rich and varied traditions that continue shaping understandings of artworld practice over the centuries and into the future. We argue that inclusion of the domains as content in the syllabus is the next logical step in the ongoing development of dynamic syllabus content because it enhances the theoretical coherence of the syllabus and best supports teachers’ professional agency in sustaining high quality student achievement in the discipline.

What is a domain? • Sphere of reference, influence and activity

• A way of talking about practice

•  2015 - Reframing the Frames?

• Syllabus Proposal developed by Dr Kerry Thomas

•  The nature of curriculum change

Background: Curriculum Change in NSW 1980s -1998 McGaw Review &

New HSC

• Syllabus Advisory Committee (SAC)

•  Formal representation •  Conduit for communication

Systems reps •  Professional Associations •  Universities •  BOS representatives •  Unions •  Parents •  Principals

Function of the SAC

• Curriculum review • Exam specifications •  Feedback • Communication •  Leadership •  Innovation • Debate • Support and advocacy for

the subject

1970s • Practical • A major work

• Single entity •  ‘masterpiece’

• Art history: • Chronology, regions, • Compare and contrast

• 2 unit Visual Arts • 3 unit Additional

1980s – Yrs 11 & 12 Visual Arts Syllabus (1987)

• Making Art •  PROME •  Major work

• Studying Images and Objects •  Art & Australia •  Art & Culture •  Art & Media •  Art & Design •  40 Plates/Recommended

areas of study/’unseen’ images

•  2 and 3 unit courses

1990s 1994 Years 7-10 Visual Arts Syllabus

•  Content •  Subject matter •  Forms •  Frames

•  Practices •  Art making •  Art criticism •  Art history

1996 DRAFT Yrs 11-12 Visual Arts Syllabus - 2 & 3 Unit

1997- Yrs 11& 12 Syllabus – update/outcomes

1998-2001 McGaw Review NEW HSC

2001 Stage 6 Visual Arts •  2 unit course only • Subject Evaluation • Common content for art

making, art criticism & art history

CF

Practice

Frames

Interests

2000s 2003: Stage 4/5 Visual Arts

ACARA Wars

NSW presents ACARA an alternative curriculum for the

Visual Arts

Practice Frames

Conceptual Framework

Current situation •  Project-based curriculum reform

•  State/National focus on CORE subjects •  BOSTES Cross Sectoral Reference Group – no formal status •  BOSTES ‘consultation’ meetings across the state (? FOCUS?)

•  Healthy subject numbers prevail (new schools emerging too)

•  Endless invasion of the Acronyms …. STEM/STEAM, PBL

•  Teacher Accreditation •  Professional Learning – VADEA/AIS/CEO/Universities, not state driven •  Renewed interest in Post Graduate Programs in Art Education UNSW

(accreditation points)

•  Pre-service Art Teacher Education •  fewer options, oversupply

Key issues – 16 years on • Artworld continues

changing •  revival of traditions, new

ideas, new forms, innovation

• Classroom practice is changing

• Art Teacher education •  – new research – not

reflected in curriculum

• Syllabus content needs updating • Practice – generic

description, reductive, (conceptual/material)

• Postmodern frame, needs revision (practice/philosophy distinction)

An amendment – Stage 6 Visual Arts •  Scope? •  Rationale? •  Grounds of changes? •  On whose advice? – no formal way

to communicate with BOSTES

•  “Targeted” consultations? How many? When? Where?

•  BOSTES CROSS – SECTORAL REFERENCE Committee •  No formal status….yet engaged in

discussions about the curriculum

Visual Arts Stage 6 Amendments In 2016 the Visual Arts Stage 6 syllabus will be amended in response to feedback from targeted teacher consultations in 2015 and changes in artworld practices over time. The proposed amendments will: - be minor in scope - require no change to or impact on the design or conduct of the HSC examination in Visual Arts. Teachers and key stakeholders will be consulted on the draft syllabus amendments and have the opportunity to provide feedback to BOSTES in Term 2 2016.

31 March, BOSTES website

New options: Domains Table 3: The Matrix This matrix was proposed and developed by Professor Emeritus Neil Brown with the assistance of Dr Althea Francini. It was used as the organiser for the National Review of Visual Education (2006).

!

Domains •  Big ideas circulating in the field, enduring, re-emerging

interests •  Preoccupations •  Intentional interests

•  What practice is about – explanatory power to support students’ understandings

•  Apply to art making, art criticism and art historical investigations •  Used in conjunction with the Frames & Conceptual Framework •  Articulate developmentally

Plato, religion, spiritual

Examples of practice:

•  Illusionistic ceilings from the Baroque era

• Roman painting • Sculptures by Ron Mueck • Artworks by contemporary

Japanese artist focussing on Buddhist traditions: Takashi Murakami (The 500 Arhats Exhibition 2016)

This domain focusses on concepts including

• Mimesis/imitation •  Illusion • Heritage •  Identity •  Transcendence

technical & historical disciplines This domain focusses on concepts

including

• Craft • Design • Art Criticism • Art history • Skills • Guilds academies • Apprenticeship • Mastery • materiality

Examples of practice:

• Critical/historical practice Eg Sir Kenneth Clark, Simon Schama,

•  Leonardo da Vinci Drawings

• Gwynn Hansen-Piggot ceramics

• George Jensen jewellery design

creativity This domain focusses on concepts

including

• Experimental investigation • Genius & talent • Problem solving • Collaboration • Cross disciplinary

investigations (eg science & art)

Examples of practice:

• Yves Klein body paintings

aesthetics & taste

Examples could include: This domain focusses on concepts

including:

•  Intuitive sensibilities • Beauty • Embodied • Popular taste

• Arts for Art’s Sake debates – Whistler

•  Impressionists • Post Impressionists

perception & neurophysiology This domain focusses on concepts

including

• Optics and visual representation

• Visual perception

Examples Include:

•  James Turrell • Bridget Riley

rebellion, transgression, difference This domain focusses on concepts

including:

Examples Include

• Breaking the rules • Avant-garde •  Freedom •  Irony, humour, metaphor •  outsider •  bohemianism

• Old Mistreses, Art & Ideology (Nochlin and Pollock)

• Manet • Ai Wei Wei

Art as a way of knowing This domain focusses on concepts

including:

•  Feeling & affect • Experience • Embodiment • Artful concealment • Art as conceptual and

practical reasoning

Examples include:

• Marina Abramovich

communication This domain focusses on concepts

including:

Examples could include:

Munch – The Scream Frank Llyod Wright – New York Guggenheim Museum Frank Gehry – Bilbao Guggenheim Museum

• Visual literacy •  Images as signifiers •  Formalities •  transmission

Cultural Studies Examples could include:

• Egyptian Wall painting •  Dust Mask, 2009-10,

Vaughan Bell

This domain focusses on concepts including:

• Artefacts • Social identity & groups • Consumption, economies • Networks • Politics

visual culture This domain focusses on concepts

including:

•  popular •  everyday • mass media • Commodification •  image/text

Examples could include:

• Blue Poles, Jeff Koons • Cindy Sherman • Ricky Swallow • Andy Warhol

digital, relational & multimodal This domain focusses on concepts

including:

•  new media •  space, time •  global •  interactivity •  semionauts •  interactive • multi-disciplinary

Examples could include

• Phillippe Parreno, This is tomorrow, 2015

• Performances by Marina Abramovich

•  all our relations, 18th Biennale of Sydney

How the Domains inform Art Education in the Primary context Ella Hungerford Sheeves

Pre-service Education •  Psychological orientation (inherent in curriculum and syllabus).

•  Focus on expression and process.

•  Curriculum and syllabus

•  NSW syllabus - Conceptual focus on Making and Appreciating, Subject Matter and forms (important concepts yet lack models and frameworks). Needs further investigation into how it is articulated for revision purposes.

•  Australian Curriculum - Focus on expression and process as orthodoxy (doesn’t acknowledge other ways of knowing through interpretation and practice).

What could support a shift towards deep knowledge and understanding? •  Theoretically grounded models and frameworks (such as those in the secondary

syllabus) as tools for articulating practice.

Art Education Toolkit

Each tool functions differently and has a specific purpose in art education

Tool # 1 – Domains (content) Tool # 2 – Network of relations aka The conceptual framework Tool # 3 – Frames

artefact

Art as an intellectual pursuit It is rather a brutal way to investigate someone's theory to ask them point blank to define the object of study, but it is worth doing because it forces people to try to summarize the domain of application of their theory. Freeman, 1991, p. 68

Ø  Allows a developmental progression from naïve theories of art to a sophisticated understanding (deep knowledge)

Ø  Facilitates praxis

Program Example: Craft and Art Agencies Structural Example World Steeped in tradition

Discipline based Institutions

Artefact Produced Specific mediums & materials Method oriented (technical)

Knitting & Embroidery Paper craft/origami

Artist

Craftsman/person (skilled) Methodical Practiced

Akira Yoshizawa Fair Isle Knitters

Audience Consumers Royalty General Public

Program Example:Creativity and Craft Agencies Cultural Example

World Steeped in tradition Culturally contextual Shifting values Artworld

Bauhaus Bespoke

Artefact Culturally embedded & significant Symbolic Product oriented (social artefact contextually situated)

Knitting & Embroidery Paper craft/origami Ready-mades

Artist

Part of a cultural group and tradition Praxis utilised to manipulate and break tradition

Narelle Jubelin Marcel Duchamp

Audience Artworld participants & consumers Reserve right of judgement (determine creative object)

Gallery goers Bespoke collectors

K-6 Program Example: In the Public Domain

Difference and Street Craft Agencies Post-Modern/

structural Example

World Public domain

Streets Galleries

Artefact Differs from past structures and situated differently

Yarn bombing Geodes

Artist

Subversive Praxis at forefront of practice

Knitorious M.E.G. Page Smith

Audience General Public

General public

TheDomainhelpsyouiden.fythekindsofprac.ces

thatthear.stadoptswhentheyarebeingtransgressivewhilstthechosenframegivesyouthetoolstoexplainthisfromapar.cularposi.on.

Focus Image Ai Wei Wei Study in Perspective, Tiananmen Square 1995-2003.

Stage 6 Case Study overview using the Domain: Transgression and Difference Michele Brennan, Wenona School

TRANSGRESSION and Difference

Artist Practice

Artist as hero- a transgressor for the sake

of art, morally exceptional, innovator, interrogator, dissident,

taboo breaker

Positions Audiences that take pleasure in the subversive or that are in turn enlightened, liberated Or mortified?

Breaks World Rules Of art, canons, academies, philosophies, Pieties, ethics, prejudices , taste, institutional practices

Cultural Frame

Makes Artworks that break art rules by being resistant,shocking, anti-material

“Ar.stso>ensaywhatwouldotherwiseremainunsaid”

Ai Weiwei sparks controversy by posing as drowned Syrian boy Alan Kurdi The Chinese artist, who pulled his work from Danish museums to protest its refugee policies, poses face down on a beach on Greek island of Lesbos TWITTER He showed empathy and artists do that through the Visual! Like Goya. TWITTER Not by mimicking a horrible tragedy. It was a distasteful recap.

Student Response

Ai Wei Wei refers to himself as a ‘ready-made’, merging his life, activism and practice into one entity. His appropriation of the press photograph of three-year Old Alayn Kurdi washed up on the island of Lesbos as a drowned refugee is divisive and speculative in its transgressive sensibilities relating to taboos about death, childhood and humanity. It delves into the superficiality of popular culture, adopting the practice of asserting ones body into the pose of celebrities such as the Kardashians- a current pursuit on social media platforms. This powerfully and shockingly forces the audience to consider the role they play as passive consumers. It opens up dialogue about bystander behaviour in a very loud yet sorrowful manner. It equally offends, accuses and evokes. Student S age 16

“There will naturally be faint-hearted viewers who will flinch from the rigours of such an adventure” Gilbert and George

Banksy Image Forgive us our trespassing

Does this proposed amendment: •  support the design and implementation of quality

programs that represent the full scope of established and contemporary traditions of practice in the subject?

•  reflect contemporary art knowledge ? •  enrich syllabus content? •  compliment the role of the Frames and Conceptual

Framework in teaching and learning? •  enrich and refresh my work in teaching, pedagogy and

programming? •  continue supporting my professional autonomy as a

Visual Arts teacher? •  Is this change for good reasons?