VISUAL ARTS AND DESIGN EDUCATORS ASSOCIATION NSW (VADEA) DRAFT RESPONSE TO ACARAs AUSTRALIAN CURRICULUM: THE ARTS

FOUNDATION TO YEAR 10 DRAFT FOR CONSULTATION (JULY 2012) Working response ONLY Overall comment: ACARAs draft Arts Curriculum (July 2012) fails the equal to or better than test when compared with the current NSW Visual Arts syllabuses and content K-10.1 The representation of Visual Arts, in particular, requires a complete overhaul.2 While we note that terms practices and viewpoints have been used in this draft3 their descriptions are far from acceptable. They are incomplete, incoherent and inappropriate. 4 Band and content descriptions and elaborations and achievement standards in Visual Arts fail to deal with how judgement and practical and critical reasoning is cultivated and agencies beyond the self are mobilised as students are knowingly initiated into the practices of artmaking and critical and historical studies. Thus these descriptions and the achievement standards are unacceptable. In sum, what has been proposed in this draft ACARA Arts curriculum lacks intellectual rigour and underplays any theoretical or practical knowing of consequence in Visual Arts. It naturalises the learning of students to the extent that few expectations are made of them F-10 and assaults the professional integrity and subject knowledge of qualified teachers. The draft is far removed from a commitment to world class best practice. We reject ACARAs draft curriculum.

Please note not all areas of ACARAs questionnaire are covered at this stage. THE ARTS RATIONALE AND AIMS 1. The rationale for the Arts learning area is clear about the nature and importance of learning in The Arts for all Australian students. NO 2. The aims for the learning area clearly state the intent for the draft Australian Curriculum: The Arts Foundation to Year 10. NO Comments: The rationale retains a preoccupation with students expression as a way to build community, which is at best only a partial view of the purposes of the Arts. The importance of learning in the area is understated. The Arts have a strong aspirational impact on how Australia searches and

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builds its identity (at the level of individuals and groups) artistically, culturally, symbolically and economically in an increasingly globalised world. While this is suggested tentatively the statement should be richer in its scope and more powerfully articulated. There is no sense that practical and critical reasoning or risk taking is valued in the production of novel, innovative and intelligible creative outcomes/objects or how judgements are afforded to creative performances. There is no sense of how a continual dialogue between the growing multi-modality of interactive technology and the need for precisely differentiated artistic discipline informs and is informed by previous works. There is little understanding of how the visual and aesthetic are playing an ever expansive role in the Arts and contemporary societies and the lived experience of students in so far as they reposition relations between aesthetics and the self, aesthetics and culture, aesthetics and technology, and aesthetics and the environment with a key driver being the unprecedented impact of digital technologies. There is no sense of how the curriculum is committed to exposing students to a wide range of material forms of aesthetic representation. At this stage, the rationale involves a spectacle of practice and the uniqueness of subjects. However, because of ACARAs commitment to keeping the Arts easy and prioritising similarities (eg the belief in a generic creative process that has been discredited for at least thirty years) over differences there is NO follow through with respect to students developing a body of understanding about the Visual Arts (or other artforms) or how they are enculturated into the artworld. All of these aspects are critical in positioning the Arts and the subjects within the curriculum. Where is the leadership in having readers understand that the old chestnut of creative expression is insufficient as an entitlement and as a way of understanding the value of the Arts in the Australian Curriculum and in contemporary cultures, locally and internationally? The approach as outlined reinforces a stereotypical and out-dated view about the role the Arts are believed to serve in the curriculum. It is a view that was commonplace 20-40 years ago. To accept this regression would undervalue the gains that the Visual Arts has made in the curriculum and in the lives of teachers, students and the wider community. The aims reinforce this partial and dated view. There is NO explicit identification of the value of knowing about a subject and its valuespractically and conceptuallyor the value of identification and recognition with a field of practice, like the Visual Arts, in the contemporary world. ORGANISATION OF THE ARTS LEARNING AREA 10. The organisation of the learning area provides a coherent view of the key components and features of the Arts curriculum. NO CONTENT STRUCUTRE 11. The content structure of the learning area is clear. NO 12. The interrelated strands of making and responding is appropriate, NO

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Comments: The organisation of the learning area is unacceptable as it stands. It suffers from two critical problems that are incoherent and which are magnified in the unsatisfactory write up about learning in Visual Arts (p. 113). This evidenced immediately in the diagrams, which incorrectly label making as learning in and responding as learning through (p. 6-7). This approach reifies false divisions about the nature of knowing that are untenable today. Knowing that, knowing how, and knowing that one (how one values) are each important to making and interpreting. More specifically there is: 1. A misidentification of what is involved in making that is reduced to a creative process. This outdated approach prioritizes processes as protocols or competencies over knowing.5 Its only purpose appears to be a regulation of commonality/comparability in/across the Arts. Where is the reference to art, artists, audiences, the world as well as the artwork? The approach lacks any sense of how interdependencies amongst agencies shape practice and resultant outcomes. The creative process approach is not able to deliver on what it promises. It offers NO guarantee of a creative performance OR creative ends. The process model distorts practice by having it conform to a simple means-ends or problem solving relation and reinforces a psychological view of experience as practice. The process approach denies any theoretical bases or value sources (such as creativity and field dependence, technical and traditional discipline, practical and conceptual reasoning, visual culture or the multimodal)6 and cannot account for how artistic ends are cultivated. It lacks a sense of how students practically and critically reason and how their intentions develop and are subject to retrospective reascriptions. It offers neither a basis for conceptual development within and across the bands nor any sense of the critical function representation plays in how artworks come into being. For instance, how does a students learn to represent (or to simulate) the world in an artwork? How can students make a work beyond their subjective response? How might the teacher intervene? These are all key issues that need urgent attention and which have significant consequences for band and content descriptions, and elaborations that are currently unacceptable. The creative process approach to making is rejected. It is misleading and unhelpful for best practice approaches to curriculum development and teaching and learning. 2. Confusion about the purposes of responding. The label is the give away and is simply incorrect. This section reads like a big bag of tricks but offers no sense of how the artworld (or the respective worlds of the other subjects) or practices intervene in what is made, individually and collectively. There is no sense of the conceptual or material demands artworks place on artists and audiences (in different times and places) or how the creative object has a history beyond the one off. Where is the reference to art, artists, audiences, the world as well as the artwork? The approach lacks any sense of how interdependencies
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shape practice and resultant outcomes. When do students get the chance to know about Visual Arts other than knowing about individual artworks? (c/f aims). The diagram does little to represent the interconnected function of different agencies and their affects on practice in making and critical and historical studies. The significance of these agencies in a practice requires a critical acknowledgment of value and supporting evidence. The role of these agencies is not self evidently true in the students performances or the practices/artworks of others. We reject the description of responding as it currently stands. We urge ACARA to use the term interpreting as it moves the emphasis away from the psychological I and links to practices in the Arts/ artworld including art criticism and art history/critical and historical studies. These are key issues that require urgent attention and have significant consequences for band and content descriptions that are currently unacceptable. THE ARTS ACROSS FOUNDATION TO YEAR 10 13. The description across year groups is appropriate. NO Comments: This section lacks any sense of how empirical research contributes to understanding what students are capable of which should have an impact on the band descriptions, content descriptions and elaborations and thus, the setting of high expectations. There is no sense of how students critical and practical reasoning is constrained at different ages and undergoes significant developmental and iterative shifts which have an impact on the expectations that might be set by teachers and which have a bearing on what students can do as well as what they bring to their learning/what they think about and how they go on. The approach to prioritizing the general rather than the specific in F-6 may satisfy the rhetoric of the structure and approach adopted by ACARA but it is at odds with what students would benefit from in the early and middle years in the Arts. For instance, it is reasonable that students would learn about and be taught about artists, including contemporary practitioners amongst others, and paintings, installations etc. as different kinds of artworks rather than as collective Artsworks which might include singing and performance!! Connectivity is better suited to the later years when students would have some background and understanding (if taught well) of practices, theories and forms. Connectivity too early leads to obfuscation, incorrect understandings, mediocrity and not knowing rather than knowing. It places a big strain on teachers and their students and leads to a default position of anything goes as long as there is some experience. ACHEIVEMENT STANDARDS 14. The explanation of the achievement standards in the Arts is clear. NO Comments:
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The text is generic and superficially reasonable although there is confusion over subjects and the learning area, which should be addressed. It is unacceptable that achievement standards could be generic given the different content in the subjects. It is unacceptable that the achievement standards in the Visual Arts are so poor as they currently stand. There is little sense of what is valued why is something is good, well reasoned and understood? Qualitative differences are key in the Visual Arts. Processes fail as a basis for establishing that differentiation F-10. GENERAL CAPABILITITES TBA CROSS-CURRICULUM PRIORITIES The relationship described between the learning area and each of the following crosscurriculum priorities is evident in the curriculum content: 23. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures 24. Asia and Australias engagement with Asia 25. Sustainability Not as it needs to be. Comments: Details are cumbersome. An overemphasis on these priorities may distort other options for learning especially when so few, if any useful references, are given in the content descriptions and elaborations. These priorities would be better placed in the content elaborations with specific examples (historical and contemporary). It is not self evident from the documentation why these are the priorities rather than others. LINKS TO OTHER LEARNING AREAS 26. The links between The Arts and other learning areas are appropriate. NO Comments: Links are superficial and generally unhelpful. Talking about Arts subjects acts as an obfuscation. Use the names of the subjects! Recognise the importance of theories and values to ensure that links are not simply at the level of what may appear as common subject matter or processes/techniques. IMPLICATIONS FOR IMPLEMENTATION 38. The glossary is comprehensive. Possibly but not necessarily of use. 39. The glossary definitions are helpful. Rarely
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Comments: The glossary is uneven. Reference to the aesthetic, 2D, 3D and 4D need far more work. It is difficult to understand the purpose of the glossary in this document. OTHER COMMENTS 40. Please provide any additional comments on the draft Australian Curriculum: The Arts (for example, strengths, priority areas for improvement). SEE ALL POINTS ABOVE VISUAL ARTS RATIONALE 1. The Visual Arts rationale provides a clear foundation and direction for the draft Australian Curriculum in Visual Arts. NO Comments: Better than previous versions but nowhere near good enough. It undermines the value the Visual Arts as a field of practice and body of knowledge (and as it currently exists in NSW syllabuses and education). The description retains a focus on the experiential at the expense of different foundational concepts (artist, artwork, world and audience) or theoretical frameworks that have an impact on how students understand, value and proceed in their practices in artmaking and critical and historical studies of the Visual Arts. There is little if any acknowledgement of the value of critical and historical understanding as part of knowing and practice in the Visual Arts. Students dont just make Visual Arts works. Please get rid of this expression! It is also inconsistent to see audiences being referred to here as viewers. Why has this occurred? The rationale is silent on the digital revolution at a time when this remarkable technological and social phenomenon should not be ignored, including its effects in Visual Arts. There is nothing explicitly articulated about relations between the Visual Arts and Design. This is a disturbing omission which should be addressed in terms of fields of practice and without a retreat to a design process as a default position. It is odd how there is the slide between Visual Art and Visual Arts. This needs to be handled far more consistently throughout the document. AIMS 2. The Visual Arts aims describe the intended learning in the subject. NO Comments:.

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Reinforces a subjective view of the Visual Arts. Not helpful for setting out what matters in knowing about a field of practice and domain of knowledge. Needs urgent attention. LEARNING IN VISUAL ARTS 3. The two-strand structure Making and Responding is clearly explained for Visual Arts. NO 4. The viewpoints and practices through which students can access Visual Arts are clearly explained. NO Comments: This section of the document clearly fails (p.114). It is close on gut wrenching to read with its obvious incoherence, incompleteness and inappropriateness. Who is the imagined audience for this write up? There is gross confusion around making and responding as major organisers in the Arts and what making, responding and practices mean in Visual Arts. This is inexcusable at this stage of curriculum development. While it appears that ACARA has attempted a conciliatory gesture in using the terms practices and viewpoints how they are described/explained is currently totally unacceptable. As key components in the subject they require far more thought and research on the part of the writers. For instance when practices are referred to their focus is on an extremely limited view of making and forms (2D, 3D, 4D) with a genuflection to elements! Why? This is NOT the focus of practice. It also seems the writers lack direction in what to do with elements and their focus here carries an unnecessary weight. Reference to particular elements would be better placed as possible examples within the content elaborations as a broader framework might include reference to communication visual language and reading the text. There is no articulation of what critical and historical practices mean for learning within the description of practice. This is a gross oversight. There should be reference to how judgements/critical reasoning is cultivated through critical study about art, artists, the world, artworks and audiences. There should be reference to how art, artists, audiences, artworks and views about the world are (critically/contextually) located in time and place through historical study. Making should involve reference to how students practically reason. The description of viewpoints lacks any rigour and is unacceptable. There is current confusion in the write up about viewpoints being a kind of defacto contextual investigation. But this is wrong. Viewpoints are NOT only about artworks but matters of significance that affect interpretations and the meanings of art, artists, the world, artworks and audiences. Viewpoints are NOT experiences (c/f glossary) but connected to different theoretical positions (including the functions of religious belief, discipline and technical knowing, creativity, aesthetics and taste, perception, rebellion and difference, practical and conceptual reasoning/knowing, forms of communication, cultural practice, visual/popular culture, and the digital, multimodal and relational)7 that may be explicitly or tacitly held. Viewpoints should be able to be interrogated, discussed, negotiated and written about, as they are not unique to the self. Each of these viewpoints (as referenced above) becomes more complex and nuanced with good teaching and learning and contributes to the students developing conceptual and practical autonomy. Viewpoints connect to the development of students practices in art making and their critical and historical studies of the Visual Arts. These interdependencies must be addressed.

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As per the rationale this section is silent on the digital revolution at a time when this remarkable technological and social phenomenon should not be ignored, including its effects in Visual Arts. . There is nothing explicitly articulated about relations between the Visual Arts and Design. This is a disturbing omission which should be addressed in terms of fields of practice and without a retreat to a design process as a default position. GENERAL COMMENTS ABOUT DRAFT BAND DESCRIPTIONS, CONTENT DESCRIPTIONS AND ELABORATIONS ACARA has requested that precise responses be given to the draft band descriptions, content descriptions and elaborations in Visual Arts and the other subjects. However this approach assumes that the underlying structure is well suited to its purpose and we DO NOT agree that this is the case given the comments above. Some general points: DRAFT BAND DESCRIPTIONS ACARA does not seem to be sure of the purpose of the band descriptions. The introduction (p. 8) states they provide an overview of content and emphasise connections between making and responding. The questionnaire is interested in scope. Band descriptions across subjects vary greatly from a process approach to a more conceptually differentiated approach but there are few if any reasons why this should be the case other than the best guess of writers. The band descriptions lack an underpinning conceptual structure that could be addressed by each subject. This needs urgent attention. Additionally what is said in different subjects within the bands appears to be uneven with respect to how the content structure and initial subject statements actually matter. For instance, to what extent does the creative process matter in Music or Media Arts? What is the role of responding in Media Arts? The band (and content descriptions), while semantically differentiated, offer little expectation of any increased and substantial intellectual demand from band to band in the Visual Arts. They underestimate the importance of conceptual development in the Visual Arts at all levels. This significant problem is then magnified in the content descriptions and elaborations. There is no logical or real development in the continuum of learning within the bands/across bands and within the content descriptions and elaborations. Whatever the case, ACARA and the writers do not appear to have taken into account research available on students conceptual development in the Visual Arts and thus the band descriptions read as nothing other than a common sense guess. While they are a little better than they were previously they are still seriously lacking. They do not cover the breadth of learning at any level. As importantly, they do not offer a sense of depth of learning or how learning is constrained at different ages (this is not a negative). At times they are simply wrong. ACARA must improve these band descriptions by addressing how students build domain specific knowledge [practically and theoretically] in the Visual Arts at different levels using foundational concepts of the artist, artwork, audience and world to understand/commit to

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practices. As Maras (2012) has indicated student gradually acquire a network of concepts and learn to use these to explain the artworld as they progress to adolescence (p.2). Nave theories emerge and [over time and with good teaching] form complex explanatory theories where students adopt different philosophical frameworks that include beliefs and values about the socio-cultural, symbolic, skill and technique and creativity amongst others (Maras, 2012, p. 2).8 This should be the focus of the band descriptions in relation to making and interpreting. DRAFT CONTENT DESCRIPTIONS and ELABORATIONS The draft content descriptions (in each band) appear laboured/tedious/self centred/cumbersome/ambiguous. At times, they emphasise subject matter and at others, processes and skills but there is little logical reason as to why this is the case. At times they seem so ambiguous it is not clear what is meant eg 10.6 Explore other artforms and learning areas to develop ideas and issues to explore symbol and representation (p. 134); 8.4 Makes Visual Arts works that demonstrate conceptual representation of the world as a source of ideas (p. 129); 6.4 Makes Visual Arts works as representations of self and others across places, times, cultures and societies (p. 125). At other times, the reason for the inclusion is questioned eg 2.1 Look at and imagine images, objects and patterns (p.116). Why this important content? Getting something into place appears to have taken precedence over the quality of what has been included. Put simply, these content descriptions do not describe the knowledge, skills and processes that teachers are expected to teach and students are expected to learn (p. 8). They lack coherence, completeness and are repeatedly inappropriate and should be rejected as totally unsatisfactory. The implications for the draft content elaborations are obvious. Current these read as nothing short of a hotch potch of activities which have little relevance to the scope, depth and expectations for teaching and learning and students practical and conceptual development eg 2.1 (content elaboration) playing with combining images, shapes, patterns and spaces (p. 116); 10.3 (content elaboration) deepening aesthetic and conceptual strengths and experimenting with past and contemporary technologies during imaginative problem solving (p. 133). While semantically differentiated there is no sense of how learning is conceptually/practically or actually differentiated from F-10. In making, the content descriptions are unhelpfully and loosely underpinned by the creative process driver and a retreat to experience F-10, which is unacceptable (p. 6). This process approach fails to provide a legitimate basis from which to develop content descriptions and elaborations. As previously stated the content descriptions (and elaborations) deny any theoretical bases or value sources and cannot account for how artistic ends are cultivated for students or others. They offer neither a basis for conceptual development within and across the bands nor any sense of the critical function representation plays in how artworks come into being or how practices impinge on what is valued. They fail to take into account the importance of intentions, especially in the early years of schooling and misrepresent the importance of students interpreting the artworks of others in F-2. They lack any explanation of the role of writing in making and interpreting. Students dont just talk about artworks! Given that practices and viewpoints are now represented as the content in the Visual Arts the content descriptions fail to address what these areas of content mean at different band levels. The content descriptions beg the question: Why wouldnt F-6 teachers work with content
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descriptions currently designed for years 9-10? ACHIEVEMENT STANDARDS The achievement standards currently FAIL to explain in understandable language what students should know and be able to do by the end of each band. They are inappropriately pitched and lack conceptual and material rigour. They are demeaning, an outright embarrassment and should be rejected. They would do little to encourage high expectations of students and their teachers. The achievement standards beg the question: Why wouldnt F-6 teachers work with content descriptions currently designed for years 9-10?

In sum, band and content descriptions and elaborations and achievement standards fail to deal with how judgement and practical and critical reasoning is cultivated and agencies beyond the self are mobilised as students are knowingly initiated into the practices of artmaking and critical and historical studies. They are rejected.

1 2

Also note the issue of design and the digital as further detailed in the comments about the rationale and learning in Visual Arts. 3 An improvement on elements
4

Clark, G. & Zimmerman, E. (1983). Towards establishing first class, unimpeachable art curricula prior to implementation. Studies in Art Education, 24(2). 5 See Thomas, K. (2009). How should the creative object be represented in the Australian Curriculum? Australian Art Education, Vol. 32, Special Edition, pp. 1-11. 6 Brown (2006). Literature Review for the National Review of Visual Education. Unpublished manuscript. For curriculum implications see the matrix and recommendations for the curriculum in the VADEA/AEA submission to the draft Shape Paper for the Arts (2010). 7 See the matrix included in VADEA/AEA submissions to the draft Shape Paper for the Arts (2010). 8 See Maras (2012). Arts short-changed in curriculum. Education Review.

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