Mind,Language and Artworks as Real Constraints on Students' Critical Reasoning about Meaning in Art

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.     

Reliability and validity of rubrics for assessment through writing

This experimental project investigated the reliability and validity of rubrics in assessment of students’ written responses to a social science “writing prompt”. The participants were asked to grade one of the two samples of writing assuming it was written by a graduate student. In fact both samples were prepared by the authors. The first sample was well written in terms of sentence structure, spelling, grammar, and punctuation; however, the author did not fully answer the question. The second sample fully answered each part of the question, but included multiple errors in structure, spelling, grammar and punctuation. In the first experiment, the first sample was assessed by participants once without a rubric and once with a rubric. In the second experiment, the second sample was assessed by participants once without a rubric and once with a rubric. The results showed that raters were significantly influenced by mechanical characteristics of students’ writing rather than the content even when they used a rubric. Study results also indicated that using rubrics may not improve the reliability or validity of assessment if raters are not well trained on how to design and employ them effectively.     

Understanding Art: Preparing Generalist School Teachers to Teach Art with Artworks

This article focuses on ways of building preservice primary teachers' confidence in teaching art with artworks and, in particular, on how to develop their pedagogical content knowing. It is suggested that through opportunities offered for engaging in observational and reflective practices with artworks an initial groundwork is set that can challenge pre‐service teachers' preconceptions about art and promote an aesthetic form of inquiry. A qualitative approach was followed which included in‐depth interviews with twenty pre‐service teachers regarding their attitudes and knowledge towards artworks. The findings indicate that enhancing teachers' abilities to practice factual inquiries and then move on to interpretive inquiries of artworks can help them learn how to learn about artworks and how to organise meaningful art viewing activities with children. Issues relating to the participants' level of aesthetic understanding are also discussed as participants were asked to engage with artworks and their aesthetic encounters were documented.     

An Empirical Study of Geahigan's Inquiry Model in Learning Art at Senior Secondary School Level

The philosophical foundation for teaching art criticism in schools has been dominated by formalist and expressionist aesthetics, while from a practical point of view it has been influenced by art criticism models that emphasise observation and linguistic practices. Instead of asking students to observe an artwork and make verbal or written statements, George Geahigan proposed an inquiry‐based art criticism learning model that engages students in personal response, research, and aesthetic concept and perceptual skill acquisition activities. Using inquiry‐based art criticism as a foundation for curriculum development and connecting the model to authentic situations in schools, the present study investigated the effectiveness of the model on student learning. Fifteen secondary school teachers were invited to participate. Eight teachers taught the experimental group (n=85) with inquiry‐based curriculum plans and the other seven teachers taught the control group (n=82) with their own school curriculum plans. Students of both groups were asked to write an art criticism essay before and after the implementation of the curriculum plans. The results demonstrated that the overall improvement of the experimental group after one academic year was significantly greater than that of the control group. This article reports on the theoretical framework, methodology and results of the study. It was found that the inquiry‐based approach was a successful strategy in improving students’ skills in analysing, judging and using aesthetic and contextual knowledge in art criticism writing. The discussion focuses on the improvements that were made in the art criticism essays of the experimental group.     

The Project ‘Art for Learning Art’ in Contemporary Art Museums

Projection‐based augmented reality and virtual reality are used in a visual arts‐based educational project in contemporary art museums from an a/r/tographic perspective. The project ‘Art for Learning Art’ (in Spanish, Arte para aprender arte), at the Museo CajaGRANADA in Granada (Spain) has been developed in collaboration with the University of Granada since 2013. We have employed creative, educational and research methodologies inspired by exhibited works in art museums to encourage visual feedback of visitors participating in collaborative installations. Two such experiences also were produced at the Tate Liverpool Gallery and Museum in March 2018; utilising the methodology of mediation through projection‐based augmented reality and virtual reality, which introduces facets of visual and physical experience that alter the whole experience for the museum's public. By putting on virtual reality headsets, and playing with physical movements, we generate images and change the projections in the museum using projection‐based augmented reality to disrupt the way the public typically moves in the museum. The purpose of the developed interrelations with artworks in the Museo CajaGRANADA and the Tate Liverpool Gallery and Museum was to create collaborative digital images by playing with select artworks exhibited in the museums’ collections. We use this kind of mediation in art museums to develop a visual understanding to provoke learning about art through art creation in a contemporary way. The results are extraordinary as images; they are collaborative artworks, which connect visually with the artworks in the exhibition.     

On Art and Knowledge

I comment upon the recent blossoming of writing on art, knowledge and research and connect this to its material roots in the changing nature of higher education. I find much of this writing wanting in that it implies a division of art into ‘knowledge‐producing’ and ‘non knowledge‐producing’ art. I examine how art objects might be said to generate knowledge, particularly the kind of propositional knowledge which sits at the centre of both traditional epistemology and ‘knowledge transfer’ in the contemporary academy. Although there are many ways in which artworks might variously generate such knowledge, I conclude that there is none that is common to all. I go on to examine other kinds of knowledge, particularly Gilbert Ryle's ‘knowledge‐how’ and use this as a staging post to suggest that there is yet another kind of knowledge, produced by all works of art. Finally I borrow some ideas from recent work in the philosophy of science to suggest a concrete mechanism by which this knowledge is made available to us.     

Community Participatory Ecological Art and Education

This paper presents a phenomenological case study on ecological artist Lynne Hull by investigating the connections between ecological art, nature, and education. The research examines Hull's ‘positive gesture towards the Earth’ as conceptualized in her work of creating habitats for wildlife (Hull, 2004, para 1). It illustrates how she seeks to inspire changes in human behaviour through her artwork in addition to developing action steps based on her works. Through an examination of Hull's work, the researcher explores how ecological art can inspire environmental education by presenting innovative ways of thinking about existing concepts. The paper discusses how educators can incorporate inquiries about ecological art into the school curriculum. Furthermore, it considers ways in which educators can adopt Hull's art‐making processes and integrate these into the curriculum. It argues that educators can help students to interact with these artworks and develop their own creative processes in a meaningful way that involves art, aesthetics, and nature – all of which may raise students' consciousness about the environment in themselves and others. Ultimately, appreciating the elements of nature and their connection to the aesthetic can become a vehicle for raising awareness about broader     

The Perfect Marriage? – Language and Art Criticism in the Hong Kong Public Examination Context

Art education in Hong Kong has undergone various changes in response to educational reform. In art assessment, a major change in the Hong Kong New Senior Secondary (NSS) Curriculum is the inclusion of art criticism as a compulsory component of the new public examination. Assessing students’ abilities to interpret art in an art criticism public examination context is a critical issue in Hong Kong because the new senior secondary curriculum and assessment has brought attention to the role of written language in the art examination paper. This means the examination assesses not only students’ abilities to interpret art, but also their language abilities required to respond to art in written form. Since this new mode of assessment of art criticism has been published a number of issues have appeared. Recent studies show that teachers and students perceive this development negatively and they believe that the written format will assess students’ written language abilities rather than their critical abilities. These findings challenge the justification of the new art assessment policy and raise questions about the role of written language in responding to art. This article aims to raise the issue of the marriage between language and art criticism in the Hong Kong public examination context. It argues and examines the relationship of language to art interpretation, reasoning in the assessment, and issues in the public art criticism examination context. The issues addressed in this article provide opportunities for researchers and policy makers to reconsider and refine the new form of examination.     

The Integrated Approach to Teaching Visual Art in After‐School Activity Classes

The present article discusses the possibilities of interdisciplinary integration for teaching art to primary‐school students in after‐school activities. Integrated teaching, as one of the ways for putting into practice the socioconstructivist approach to learning and the theory of the guided construction of knowledge, is used as a basis for conceiving and implementing the two projects described in the empirical part of the article. The research questions, addressed here, aim at finding out how a project‐based approach and the knowledge gained in school and through the students’ individual experiences can be applied pedagogically in after‐school art activities. To achieve the aims of the study a two‐cycle action research was conducted where the integrated teaching was viewed as a developmental spiral, in which the insights, experiences and results gained from the first project fed into the planning and realisation of the second one. The outcomes of the two projects suggest that the integrated presentation of teaching material enhances the students’ learning abilities to make associative connections between the different subjects, to transfer their skills from one project into another, and to apply their knowledge from one subject area to another by processing various sources of visual or verbal information in their creation of artworks. The two projects have proven empirically the validity and educational relevance of the integrated approach to teaching art, and the usefulness of the ideas in the New Finnish Core Curriculum for the holistic development of the child in the complexity of today's world.     

Building Bridges: Experiential Art Understanding

When building the bridge of experiential art understanding, the focus is set on the key stone of self in the centre of the arch. Art interpretation as a means of understanding and constructing self is based on the view of self as an unilinear collage of the accumulated life experiences each of us possesses. It is a whole consisting of different roles and relations, cultural identity being a crucial part of it. Self-identity is the experience of distinctness, agency, and continuity that is formed through one’s personal life history. In the model of experiential art interpretation, the process of art interpretation is understood as a series of events where the viewer’s past and present experiences are the basis for constructing new knowledge. The dialectics between personal and social knowledge happens through the different, coequal forms of grasping and transformation. Experiential art interpretation combines strategies from the disciplines of art history, aesthetics, and criticism, and connects them to the experientially-based processes of reflective observation, conceptualization, and production. A central concept in experiential art exploration is transfer, which means the ability to apply knowledge and skills learned in one context to other situations. Transfer leads to increased self-consciousness and metacognitive skills. For transfer to happen, learners have to be able to apply processes of artistic inquiry both in understanding other artworks and in making their own artworks. The second level of transfer has to do with the ability to apply the new ideas and attitudes adopted in the interpretation process in real-life situations.     

Developing an Assessment Stance in Primary Art Education in England

Many English primary teachers find the notion of assessing children's work in art difficult. This paper reports on work carried out with non‐art‐specialist primary teachers’ and student teachers’ use of a three‐point assessment model and related tasks, which supported teachers and students to engage critically with children's development, or lack of it, in observational drawing. This enabled teachers and students to develop appropriate planning and differentiated strategies for children's work in art. Equally important is that in engaging with these assessment tasks they were able to develop aspects of the critical language needed for teaching and learning in art.     

Performance Art at Secondary Level

This article considers the far‐reaching potential and the particular characteristics of performance art within the secondary art curriculum. It discusses the means by which an art department has incorporated it into their teaching curriculum at a state secondary school with reference to installations and the work of different performance artists in residence; details of their performances, methods and artistic intentions are discussed. After consideration of the varied responses from staff and students within Trinity Catholic School, the values and significance of direct experience are discussed. In its transience and its reflecting of the performative acts common to ordinary life, performance art offers a challenge to young people's thinking and creativity.     

Turning Polemics into Pedagogy: Teaching about Censorship in Art Education

In recent decades, the field of art education has seen an increasing interest in issues of social justice and social reconstruction which has led to pre‐service art educators often being encouraged to include potentially controversial topics in their pedagogy. Surprisingly, however, there seems to have been little concurrent discussion concerning the inherent risks involved in introducing polemical themes within the classroom. Indeed, despite its obvious importance, the subject of censorship is often given little attention in art education circles, save for when it has already become an active problem, such as when an instructor is accused of censorship by a student, or when forces outside the classroom seek to involve themselves in pedagogical decisions. In this article, I describe my experience creating and implementing an undergraduate pre‐service art education course on the subject of censorship. I begin by examining my students’ reactions to some of the themes explored, and then explain how discussing cases of art censorship and controversy can serve as a platform for introducing students to the key role that context plays in how we perceive, value and react to artworks. Finally, I make the argument that by including censorship as a subject within their curriculum, teachers can help students better to navigate the psychological, moral and ethical complexities of contemporary art making.     

Critical Thinking: Art Criticism as a Tool for Analysing and Evaluating Art,Instructional Practice and Social Justice Issues

Recent educational initiatives have emphasised the importance of fostering critical thinking skills in today's students in order to provide strategies for becoming successful problem solvers throughout life. Other scholars advocate the use of critical thinking skills on the grounds that such tools can be used effectively when considering social justice issues. In this article we make the case that the teaching and learning strategies of analytic art criticism can serve as fundamental tools used not just for the study of art but can also centre critical thinking and analysis in all aspects of the art education curriculum. Our argument begins with a review of literature on the use of art criticism for critical thinking and meaning making. Then we describe our efforts to address critical thinking with our students by using the critical analysis model of art criticism and applying it to learning environments for forming reasoned judgments about teaching and learning, and also as springboard for examining social justice issues. We believe that promoting this form of affectively driven, intellectually guided critical thinking makes our students potentially more successful not just in their encounters with art and education, but also in their lives as human beings beyond school.     

Learning to Be: The Modelling of Art and Design Practice in University Art and Design Teaching

Learning to be an artist or designer is a complex process of becoming. Much of the early phase of ‘learning to be’ occurs during the time emerging artists and designers are students in university art/design programmes, both undergraduate and postgraduate. Recent research reveals that a critical role in assisting students in their maturing identities as artists and designers is played by artist/designer‐academics teaching in university art and design programmes. By maintaining active art/design practices and drawing from these in their teaching, artist/designer‐academics model professional practice to students. Witnessing and interacting with such modelling is part of the process of students learning the shared discourses, views and practices of the art or design worlds to which they aspire to belong. The modelling of professional practice is critical to an artist or designer's ‘learning to be’ experience because it enables students to access the tacit and nuanced behaviours, languages and cultures that constitute contemporary art or design practice. This article outlines findings from a recent Australian study revealing the role of professional practice modelling in university art/design teaching. It highlights the centrality of professional practice modelling to artist/designer‐academics in their beliefs and approaches to teaching their academic disciplines. In critically exploring the research data and findings this article describes the role that modelling of practice plays and how it comprises a core part of the value that artist/designer‐academic participants contribute to the teaching of art/design education.     

Quantitative analysis of the rubric as an assessment tool: an empirical study of student peer‐group rating

Although the rubric has emerged as one of the most popular assessment tools in progressive educational programs, there is an unfortunate dearth of information in the literature quantifying the actual effectiveness of the rubric as an assessment tool in the hands of the students. This study focuses on the validity and reliability of the rubric as an assessment tool for student peer‐group evaluation in an effort to further explore the use and effectiveness of the rubric. A total of 1577 peer‐group ratings using a rubric for an oral presentation was used in this 3‐year study involving 107 college biology students. A quantitative analysis of the rubric used in this study shows that it is used consistently by both students and the instructor across the study years. Moreover, the rubric appears to be ‘gender neutral’ and the students' academic strength has no significant bearing on the way that they employ the rubric. A significant, one‐to‐one relationship (slope = 1.0) between the instructor's assessment and the students' rating is seen across all years using the rubric. A generalizability study yields estimates of inter‐rater reliability of moderate values across all years and allows for the estimation of variance components. Taken together, these data indicate that the general form and evaluative criteria of the rubric are clear and that the rubric is a useful assessment tool for peer‐group (and self‐) assessment by students. To our knowledge, these data provide the first statistical documentation of the validity and reliability of the rubric for student peer‐group assessment.     

The Contemporary Art of Collaboration

Predetermined assessment criteria and target levels threaten to constrain and limit teachers’ desire to provide a balanced and innovative curriculum for their pupils. Through the collaborative production of annual installations, the fine art department at Trinity Catholic School has attempted to confound the effects of a comprehensive school's limitations. These installations allow hundreds of participants of all ages to collaborate in a partnership ethos exploring contemporary issues and modes of practice and enable both pupils and teachers to engage with art as a creative process. The installation is used as a gallery resource centre both in‐house and by the local community. The recent installation entitled ‘Laboratories’, analysing links between art and science, becomes a case study to examine the avoidance of limitations imposed by exam‐driven targets. Instead an environment was fostered that actively promoted a ‘learning for all’ philosophy including teachers and mature students.     

Using Online Studio Groups to Improve Writing Competency: A Pilot Study in a Quality Improvement Methods Course

Communication skills are a significant contributor to an individual's success in the workplace. Unfortunately, students often have trouble expressing their ideas in written form and the poor quality of students’ written work often impedes the learning process. This pilot study investigates the use of online writing studios within a quality improvement methods course and the impact of this intervention on students’ writing competency and perceptions about the writing process. The impact of this approach on student performance is evaluated within and across semesters using comparative statistical analyses. Results show that students who participated in online writing studios performed better (i.e., at least one rubric level higher) on their final written assignments for the course compared to students who did not, and that this approach is associated with improved students’ perceptions about the writing process. This research suggests that the use of online writing studios within a content‐specific course can incrementally improve students’ writing competency over the course of one semester, and can positively affect the learning of written communication skills and change students’ perceptions about various aspects of the writing process.     

建构当代艺术的批评制度

当代艺术需要建立一个批评的制度,这个制度不仅仅指涉艺术理论家或艺术批评家,它还要指涉受众群体。这实际上是要求中国当代艺术承担起培养大众认知艺术的能力,这样才能构建一个公共领域的批评制度。公共批评制度的建立主要是辨别和防止艺术骗局的行为和事件。