THE ARTS: INITIAL ADVICE PAPER

(ACARA, APRIL 2010)

PRESENTATION TO AIS VISUAL ARTS TEACHERS, MCA, 20.05.10

Dr Kerry Thomas
Senior Lecturer, School of Art History and Art Education COFA UNSW
VADEA Co-President, State and National Issues and Special Projects
2

  A note to readers
An earlier version of this power point was used in my presentation to AIS teachers at the MCA on 20.05.10.
The intention of the presentation was to focus on what ACARA is saying about its approach to the Australian
Curriculum in order to provide some background for a further discussion of the ‘strands’ and approach to the
artforms as presented in ACARAs The Arts: Initial Advice Paper. It should be noted that the Initial Advice
Paper was not widely distributed by ACARA but 160 ‘arts’ stakeholders from around Australia were invited
to a formal consultation on the paper in Sydney on May 3, 2010. Karen Maras and I were invited to this
consultation on behalf of VADEA. My comments, as represented in this power point, are directed at this
Initial Advice Paper. They may be relevant to the further iteration in the Draft Shape Paper, but perhaps not.
It is not certain at this stage. Nonetheless, they point to some serious issues with the Initial Advice Paper.
You may want to consider these points in your own/school/network evaluations of the Draft Shape Paper
when it is distributed. ACARAs draft timeline, as per ACARAs website, is included so that you will be
prepared to respond to the public consultation on the Draft Advice Paper. Your voice will be important.
There will be further discussion about the Australian Curriculum and the Arts at the VADEA conference in late
June.
Kerry Thomas 22.05.10 (k.thomas@unsw.edu.au)
 The Australian Curriculum
3

  Learning Areas
  ‘All young Australians’ become successful learners, confident
and creative individuals, and active and informed
citizens’ (from the Melbourne Declaration)
  The curriculum will be designed to develop such learners
  A solid foundation in knowledge, understanding, skills and values
on which further learning and adult life can be built
  Deep knowledge, advanced knowledge, advanced learning
  General capabilities (10) includes literacy, numeracy, thinking
skills, creativity, ethical behaviour…
  Cross curriculum dimensions – Indigenous history and culture, Asia
and Australia's engagement with Asia, sustainability
 ACARAs Learning Areas
4

  To include:
  Contentdescriptions (knowledge, skills and
understandings ‘for each learning area at the year
level’)
  To include a well researched scope and sequence of
teaching
  Content elaborations

  Achievement standards
  The
quality of learning (depth of understanding, extent of
knowledge, and sophistication of skill) expected of students
 ACARAs proposed timeline for the Arts (draft)
5

Stage Activity Timelines

Curriculum
 Literature
Review
 August-Sept
2009


Shaping

 Position
Paper
 October-Dec
2009

Initial
Advice
Paper
 January-April
2010

  The Arts Initial Advice Paper was distributed for
Consultation

 National
forum
(May
3)

 June-August
2010

discussion Draft
Shape
Paper
finalised

at the 3 May national forum that
National
consultation

attracted around 160 ‘arts educators’. Following
discussion Broad
outline,
scope
and
sequence

Curriculum
 at the forum a revised version will be
Oct-Feb
2011

Development

prepared Content
descriptions
(and

and distributed for a 10 week period of
elaborations)
and
achievement

national consultation.
standards


  Expect to National
consultation

Consultation
 see the revised document byMarch-May
2011

mid July.
Publication
 Digital
publication
 September
2011

 The lead writer and ‘arts discipline’ contributors
6

Professor John O’Toole

Chair of Arts Education, University of Melbourne
Arts focus, background in Drama, also writing Drama

Professor Elizabeth Grierson

Professor of Art and Philosophy, and Head of the School of Art at RMIT University Melbourne

Professor Margaret Barrett

Professor and Head of the School of Music at the University of Queensland

Dr Michael Dezuanni
Lecturer in media literacy, film and media curriculum, Queensland University of Technology in the School of
Cultural and Language Studies in Education

Mr Jeff Meiners
Lecturer and researcher in dance and arts education, University of South Australia
 
 The Arts: Initial Advice Paper
7

  The Arts are being represented as: ‘Sensory,

cognitive, affective’
  It is being proposed that two hours per week at
least will be dedicated to the Arts (K-8) ie
around 20 mins per week for Visual Arts!
  It is anticipated that the arts would be ‘taught

distinctly’ with a recognition of their

‘connectivity’.
 Initial Advice Paper: The Artforms
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Dance   Learning through a

Drama   Core

  Extension
Media Arts
  Specialised learning
Music (from Year 9-12
Visual Arts students should have
the opportunity to
? Design
study in one or more
of the artforms) but
mediated via the
‘strands’.
 Initial Advice Paper: The Strands
9

  Conceived of as:
  ‘Experiences’ – organising strands
  Organising principles (for the artforms)
  Apply K-10
  In 11-12 ‘terminology specific to each artform’
  Subsume ‘previous artform specific terminology, other uses in
previous curricula’
  These strands (supposedly) address the question
of ‘What do humans do when they engage in the
Arts?’
 Initial Advice Paper: The Strands
10

  Generating: using the elements of the artforms,

imagining, designing eg exploring, fabricating,
sketching
  Realizing: managing the materials, instruments and

media to communicate to an audience eg

constructing, mixing, producing
  Responding: apprehending and comprehending eg

analysing, appraising, interpreting

 Cui bono? (who benefits?)
11

  Generalists , primary teachers

  Non-specialists ‘arts’ teachers K-10
  Those states who have adopted an ‘arts’ focus
  Educational systems: easily ‘managed’
  ACARA: Equity arguments enlisted: the Arts ‘for all Australians’
  But what of the identity and value of work undertaken by specialist
teachers and the value of cultivating artistic ends (knowingly); students’
interests in and commitments to the visual arts; the body of knowledge in
the visual arts that is not ‘common’ to the arts or easily represented in the
strands; research prospects in art and design education and art, design
and media; the undergraduate training of future art and design teachers;
post schooling and employment options for students in art, design, media
and education etc…. What of the impact on the visual arts in the cultural
life of Australians?
  What of NSW curriculum requirements and structures, and state legislation?
 1. Conflicts/issues:
12

  Serious tension with NSW curriculum requirements:

Mandatory (100 hour) and Elective Courses (100, 200+
hours)
  No recognition of the Arts as distinctive fields of
creative practice with their own histories, traditions,
theoretical frameworks and trajectories etc
  Serious issue of loss of rigour, conceptual demand,
diminution of expectations… flow on effects eg for
assessment/standards (strand based assessment??),
ARTEXPRESS
  Potential for reduction in current provision for teaching
and learning in Visual Arts in NSW K-12
 2. Core, extension and specialised learning
(in the artforms)
13

  Any writing about the core, extension and specialised

learning needs to take into account how students’
understanding in the artforms does not occur simply as a
result of maturation or further tutored or untutored
‘experience’ (eg in doing more generating, using more/
different media or exhibiting an artwork).
  The development of understanding needs to be understood
as cognitively and practically constrained (in a positive
sense). It occurs as a result of development that involves
cognitive shifts and a greater representational flexibility
and control (see Karmiloff-Smith 1995, Brown 2000, 2005, Efland 2002,
Freeman 2005, Jones 2005, Maras 2010) (c/f the frames, the move
from dependence to autonomy, description to explanation,
transparent to opaque understandings. See the Visual Arts Years
7-10 Syllabus, Board of Studies, 1994, p8, pp.11-12).
 3. The unacceptable terms of the strands
14

  The Strands (Generating, Realizing, Responding):

  Are intended to regulate commonality and comparability
in language and structure across the Arts
  Are not unique to the Arts! Trivially true

  Lack meaning and value and will force and distort the
artforms, leading to a loss of their particularity
  Will deny students access to the sustained and
developmental learning and relational thinking involved in
the acquisition of practical and conceptual understandings in
the Visual Arts K-12 in artmaking and critical/historical
studies.
 The unacceptable terms of the strands (cont)
15

  Are not sufficient to function as a basis for artistic practice or

relations in any of the artforms
  Provide no basis for conceptual development, relational
thinking or the development of artistic understanding
  Belie the importance of knowing and how understanding,
actions and judgement are intentionally employed in each of
the artforms
  Do not assist in the selection of content or in how assessment
could be negotiated, except in the most superficial or banal of
ways

Ironically, the strands may be accepted because they ask so

little of anyone and thus appear to be reasonable!
 Recommendations
16

1: Reject the strands as the basis of curriculum development

in the arts
2: Reject the current definitions of the artforms and how the
core, extension and specialised learning is represented in
each of the artforms
3: Reject the current time provision for the Arts as
proposed for K-8
4: Reinstate the categories of the Visual and Performing
Arts (as per the Melbourne Declaration)
5: Identify the Visual Arts as a discrete learning area to
include Visual Arts, Design and Media Arts
 Some further recommendations
17

6: Reconsider the positions of subjectivity, semiotics and

the ‘(re)constructivist’ view that underscores the
document to a Realist conception
7: Delete language that attempts to regulate meaning
and strip the artforms of their own histories, practices,
traditions and trajectories
8: Review the confusion around the discourse of the
aesthetic in the document
9: Review how creativity is conceived throughout the
document (Thomas, 2009)
 References
18

  ACARAs website: http://www.acara.edu.au/

  VADEA website: http://vadea.org.au/
  (VADEA conference 25-26 June 2010 ACU, Strathfield)

  Board of Studies, NSW (1994). Visual Arts years 7-10 syllabus. Board of Studies: North Sydney.
  Karmiloff-Smith, A. (1995). Taking development seriously. In Beyond modularity a developmental perspective on cognitive
science (pp. 1-28). Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
  Brown, N. (2000). Bodies of work and the practice of artmaking. In Bodies of work in the practice of artmaking.
Occasional Seminar in Art, Design and Education 9. College of Fine Arts, School of Art Education: Paddington.
  Efland, A. (2002). Art and cognition: integrating the visual arts in the curriculum. Teachers College Press: New York.
  Brown, N. (2005). The frames and relational aesthetics. In Learning and teaching new media practice and the frames in
visual arts and photography. Occasional Seminar in Art, Design and Education 11. College of Fine Arts, School of Art
Education: Paddington.
  Freeman, N. (2005). Psychological analysis of deciding if something is presented in a picture. In Learning and teaching
new media practice and the frames in visual arts and photography. Occasional Seminar in Art, Design and Education 11.
College of Fine Arts, School of Art Education: Paddington.
  Jones, S. (2005). Pictorial reasoning in children’s photography. In Learning and teaching new media practice and the frames
in visual arts and photography. Occasional Seminar in Art, Design and Education 11. College of Fine Arts, School of Art
Education: Paddington.
  Maras, K. (2010, in press) Age-related shifts in the theoretical constraints underlying children’s critical reasoning in art,
Art Education Australia Journal, Research Symposium, 33(1).
  Thomas, K. (2009). How should the creative object be represented in the visual arts in the Australian Curriculum? Art
Education Australia Journal, Special Online Edition, 32.