29. Research on Arts Education
Paper
How Climate Change Changed the Art Class
Dragana Radanović1,2, Nancy Vansieleghem1,2, Judith Vanistendael2
1KU Leuven, Belgium; 2LUCA School of Arts, Belgium
Presenting Author: Radanović, Dragana
In his nonfiction novel The Great Derangement (2016), Amitav Ghosh investigates the current generation's incapacity to comprehend the scope of climate change in literature, history, and politics. The primary concept of this nonfiction work is based on the assumption that literature will be accused of involvement in the big derangement and blind acceptance of the climate crisis. This paper follows the preparation for an art class that will engage with the topic of climate change and the transformation of the art classroom caused by engagement with this topic. We question in which ways engaging with the topics of climate change, social justice, and storytelling transforms the art class itself. By addressing the challenges of creating graphic narratives (drawn stories) about climate change, we will show how climate change highlights the need to move away from dealing with aesthetics in educational contexts in a purely instrumental manner: promoting arts for their potential to strengthen the acquisition of predefined learning outcomes more efficiently and effectively (Biesta 2017). Following The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction (Le Guin, 1986), we draw comparisons with the traditional creation of what Le Guin calls the Story of the Ascent of Man the Hero and its impossibility of doing justice to the narratives of climate change. To engage with the narratives about climate change, we need to step away from traditional visual storytelling and engage in the drawing activity in a different manner. This will enable us to understand the significance of visual storytelling about climate change not as a cognitive or sensory experience but as a new gesture that allows the topic to become an object of thought. Building on Vansieleghem (2021), we seek to understand the act of visual storytelling as a mode of grammatisation in and of itself: i.e. a particular response to an event that allows us to visualize what confronts us. We are interested in the suspension of the usual ways of visual storytelling and in the act of drawing that facilitates the ability to imagine and create new relationships with the world.
In this contribution, we follow a visual storytelling class at the LUCA School of Arts in Brussels, which comprises students from all over the world. What became apparent very early in the class is that the significance of the topic is visible from European (and the world) contexts. Some of the works produced by this class are concerned with recent fires in Portugal, the environmental impact of the war in Ukraine, Belgian environmental legislation, deforestation in India, and the global impact of fashion. Furthermore, the results were made accessible in a variety of forms. Some students opted to create political banners calling for action, while others offered visual narratives of good practices in their immediate communities. Some performed innovative plays and reinterpretations of the world's most well-known stories. Working in groups, they were subjected to democratic processes of discussing, questioning, debating and eventually producing works that corresponded both collectively and individually. Despite the large amount of artwork produced during this class, we hope not to elaborate on the outputs art generated but on the specific conditions for self-reflection that this class provided. We seek to shed light on how the specificity of the topic within traditional art classroom challenged the norm and allowed space to shape oneself and the world that was being revealed by making.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedIn this article, we look back at the Brussels pedagogue Pierre Temple's (1865) argument that drawing should be the foundation of education and question how drawing is employed in the contemporary educational context. From there, we discuss the contemporary roles that artistic competencies play in the neoliberal economy based on innovation and creativity (Harris, 2014) and the current interest in the arts in education that recognize the value of art only in its service to external purposes, resulting in the arts' independent worth being restricted and neutralized (Vansieleghem, 2021). Next, we contrast traditional visual storytelling practices sensitive to commercial imperatives and their inadequacy in addressing a vast topic such as climate change. By reflecting on the difficulties of telling stories about climate change, and the impossibility of implementing the theme in traditional narrative structures (e.g. Freytag's Pyramid), we look at the particular course of visual storytelling and preparation for the Working with Literature assignment. Finally, we reflect on the protocol offered to the students that enabled them to develop shared and individual methods of engaging with the world. Students are divided into groups and asked to examine their connections to the poem "Di Baladna" by Sudanese-American poet Emtithal Mahmoud. Reflecting on the poem in groups and establishing shared perspectives amongst themselves serves as the basis for imposing a set of group constraints. A group conversation regarding shared perspectives aids in understanding the collective linked to the poem, from which they may investigate the individual. Then, using drawing as an exploration tool, groups explored personal understanding while working with self-imposed constraints in visual storytelling. We turn to Ingold's (2007) notions of threads, surfaces, and traces to study the material, marks, and gestures through which students engaged with their environment and try to uncover different types of lines that the world is composed of.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsThe paper provides suggestions for art-based participatory methodologies for art education. We demonstrate how art may be detached from its instrumental role and utilized as a tool to disrupt linear thinking and allow for more nuanced perspectives of the world. Our practice-based project uses narrative creation as a technique of engaging with critical theory, which opens up room for visual storytelling as a practice of engaging with the world. Traditional narrative approaches are abandoned in favour of drawing as a means of analysis in and of itself to foster non-linear thinking (Kuttner, Sousanis, & Weaver-Hightower, 2017). This method allowed for perceptual interactions between the authors and their own drawings, which fostered attention shifts and allowed for a more in-depth analysis of the topics under investigation (Suwa & Tversky, 1997). Drawing is used as a tool for thinking. The project's collaborative structure allows for debate, questioning, and confrontation of views, stimulating intercultural interchange and leading to more diverse narratives of the subject at hand. Furthermore, the project encourages personal connections to the issue and methods for investigating our lived experiences to understand better how society and our environment influence our identities.
ReferencesBiesta, Gert. 2017. Letting art teach. Art Education after Joseph Beuys. Arnhem: ArtEZ Press.
Harris, Anne. 2014. The creative turn. Toward an aesthetic imaginery. Rotterdam: Sense.
Ingold, T. (2007). Lines: a brief history. Routledge.
Kuttner, P. J., Sousanis, N., & Weaver-Hightower, M. B. (2017). How to draw comics the scholarly way. Handbook of arts-based research, 396–422.
Le Guin, U. K. (1996). The carrier bag theory of fiction. The ecocriticism reader: Landmarks in literary ecology, 149-154.
Suwa, M., & Tversky, B. (1997). What do architects and students perceive in their design sketches? A protocol analysis. Design studies, 18, 385–403.
Taussig, M. (2011). I swear I saw this: Drawings in fieldwork notebooks, namely my own. University of Chicago Press.
Temples, Pierre. 1865. L’instruction du people. Bruxelles: A. Lacroix, Verboeckhoven & CieEditeurs.
Vansieleghem, N. (2021). Tracing Lines: On the Educational Significance of Drawing. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 40(3), 275-285.
29. Research on Arts Education
Paper
Arts and Cultural Practices in France's Higher Education, a Pathway to Democracy?
Lihan YU
ENS de Lyon, France
Presenting Author: YU, Lihan
Context
In France, the national policy programme named EAC “Education artistique et culturelle” (Arts and cultural education) aims at encouraging the participation of all students between K3 and K16 in the artistic and cultural life, through acquisition of knowledge, live encounters with artworks in art places, meeting with artists and professionals, and an initiation to the practice of different arts[1]. Following the official Charter for EAC, the student's curriculum in EAC is based on ten principles. Principles 3 and 4 aim at education in and through art; we see that arts and cultural education is designed as a close intertwining of an aesthetic education, an intellectual education, and finally an education by doing[2]. This triple folded experience is specifically constitutive of arts and cultural education: aesthetic, artistic, reflexive and critical (Marie-Christine Bordeaux & Alain Kerlan, 2016).
Originally, EAC is not part of higher education curricula: however, many French universities have developed “Arts and Culture” programmes that could fall under the same concept: “Bringing art and culture to life at university means pursuing the ambitious project of arts and cultural education that began at school”[3]. We can observe the same goals in all education levels: arts and cultural democratization is the shared concern of the Ministry of Higher Education and the Ministry of Culture in France: promoting access for as many people as possible to culture, artworks, and artistic practices[4]. How and how far these arts and cultural practices and programmes developed in higher education promote democracy? In this paper, I will present a part of my thesis project that aims to study the forms that arts and cultural education take in higher education in France.
Research question
What are the forms and characteristics of arts and cultural practices in France's higher education “Arts and Culture” programmes? And how far these practices of arts and culture could be constitutive of education for democracy?
Objective
In this communication, I will present the first steps of my PhD research: a comparison between official texts defining “Arts and Culture” programmes involving students in higher education, and I will analyze their declared goals and potential effects on education for democracy.
Theoretical framework
If we give a definition for democracy: “Democratizing does not mean making the same good available to an increasing number of people. It means ensuring the social distribution of goods so that everyone's individuality is respected and encouraged. A democratic society is one in which each person can benefit from the resources which progressively constitute him as a person, from birth to death, and even in the memory of those who follow him” (Zask, 2003). Out of the cultural democratization manifested by access to heritage and places of culture, and to artistic practices, the aesthetic experience which is singular and thus the most individual experience is the basis and the foundation for this democracy, because individuality is a result of a certain quality of experience. (Dewey, 2005; Kerlan, 2021). Referring to (Schaeffer, 2015), aesthetic experience is experiencing a certain quality of attention to the world, which is a modality of cognitive activity; the aesthetic dimension is experienced by the individual and not a property of the artifact itself (Kerlan, 2021). Aesthetic conduct dwells in the experiences of ordinary life, and its characteristic is the pleasure of being fully absorbed in mental or bodily activity (Dewey, 2005; Kerlan, 2021). Besides, the distinction between formal/non-formal/informal education provides us with the first typology to categorize Arts and Cultural programmes in higher education. (Conseil de l’Europe, 2000).
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedMethodology: a qualitative approach.
The first part of the work is based on the analysis of texts: EAC (Arts and Cultural education) policy and programme texts; Arts and Culture French political texts and statements in higher education such as the agreement “Université, lieu de culture” (University, a place of culture) , which indicates the central place of the university in fostering training, production, creation and cultural dissemination and his ambition to facilitate access to culture for all. This first step of analysis contributes to an initial outline of arts and cultural practices in French higher education and their differences with EAC programmes in French primary and secondary education. A second set of data will be provided by the transcription of semi-structured interviews with officers in several cultural offices of the University of Lyon. The sample size will be between 5 and 10. Most cultural offices are administrative components of comprehensive universities such as Lyon 1, Lyon 2, and Lyon 3, while others are part of the applied science and engineering schools such as INSA Lyon and École central de Lyon (ECL).
Qualitative data analysis will be carried out using NVivo software and is anchored in an inductive and descriptive approach; the main logic consists in aggregating, in a progressive and iterative way, units around a small number of attractors which are chosen as nuclei of the typology (Demazière, 2013).
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsThis work contributes to a descriptive perspective regarding arts and cultural practices in France's higher education system. We want to give a structured description of educational goals, participants’ intensions, and practical organization of actions. A study of partnerships between university and cultural institutions is also at stake. Furthermore, we’d like to explore how far “the taste of the first time” (Kerlan, 2021) through authentic aesthetic experiences could build a pathway to democracy.
For future research, it is also important to question the impacts and challenges of arts and cultural practices at the university. The benefits of them at the university are multiple either for the student or for the establishment. For students, it is related to democratizing knowledge, preserving cultural heritage, and promoting creation, revealing talents, training citizenship, sustaining academic success and professional integration; for institutions, Arts and Culture programmes are supposed to improve attractiveness, developing partnerships between universities, local authorities and cultural institutions. Plus, we can also question the development of competence of students through arts and cultural education, following: (Winner et al.'s 2013) meta-analysis EAC impact on “innovation-related skills”: technical skills, thinking and creativity-related skills, and, behavioral and social skills.
References[1] Ministère de la culture. Arts and cultural education. Retrieved from: https://www.culture.gouv.fr/en/Thematic/Arts-and-cultural-education
[2] Ministère de la culture. Charte pour l’éducation artistique et culturelle [Charter for arts and cultural education]. 2017. Retrieved from: https://www.culture.gouv.fr/en/Thematic/Arts-and-cultural-education/News/Charte-pour-l-education-artistique-et-culturelle
[3] Ministère de la culture. Signature de la convention cadre « Université, lieu de culture » [Signing of the agreement "University, a place of culture"]. 2013. Retrieved from: https://www.culture.gouv.fr/Presse/Archives-Presse/Archives-Communiques-de-presse-2012-2018/Annee-2013/Signature-de-la-convention-cadre-Universite-lieu-de-culture
[4] Ministère de la culture. L’université, un lieu de culture [University, a place of culture]. Retrieved from: https://www.culture.gouv.fr/Regions/DAC-Mayotte/Education-artistique-et-culturelle/L-education-artistique-et-culturelle/L-universite-un-lieu-de-culture
Conseil de l’Europe. (2000). Définitions. Fonds Européen pour la Jeunesse. https://www.coe.int/fr/web/european-youth-foundation/definitions
Demazière, D. (2013). Typologie et description. À propos de l’intelligibilité des expériences vécues. Sociologie, 4(3), 333–347. https://doi.org/10.3917/socio.043.0333
Dewey, J. (2005). Art as experience. Penguin.
Dewey, J. (2005). L’art comme expérience. Farrago.
Kerlan, A. (2021). Éducation esthétique et émancipation: La leçon de l’art, malgré tout. Hermann.
Marie-Christine Bordeaux & Alain Kerlan. (2016). L’évaluation des «effets» de l éducation artistique et culturelle Étude méthodologique et épistémologique. https://docplayer.fr/137175520-L-evaluation-des-effets-de-l-education-artistique-et-culturelle-etude-methodologique-et-epistemologique.html
Ministère de l’enseignement supérieur et de la recherche. (n.d.). L’action culturelle et artistique dans l’enseignement supérieur. https://www.culture.gouv.fr/Media/Thematiques/Education-artistique-et-culturelle/Files/Contributeurs-auditionnes/Contributions-ministeres/Ministere-de-l-enseignement-superieur-et-de-la-recherche
Schaeffer, J.-M. (2015). L’expérience esthétique. Gallimard Paris.
Winner, E., Goldstein, T. R., & Vincent-Lancrin, S. (2013). Art for Art’s Sake?: The Impact of Arts Education. OECD. https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264180789-en
Zask, J. (2003). Chapitre II. Enseigner la liberté. In Art et démocratie (pp. 55–87). Presses Universitaires de France. https://www.cairn.info/art-et-democratie--9782130536437-p-55.htm
29. Research on Arts Education
Paper
Where do I Stand? Reflections on the Process of Researching ‘in-between’ the Lines
Sofia Ré
University of Lisbon, Faculty of Fine Arts, Centre of Research and Studies in Fine Arts, Portugal
Presenting Author: Ré, Sofia
Working with collective identities has taught me that sameness, along with the ruthless logic of binary opposites, are their basic underpinnings. To address this concern, it is convenient to know from where I stand, which in English language relates to my positioning, the framework that is given to me, the way I see and feel things, in short, my perspective. This condition of visuality is in fact an epistemological constraint (Heidegger, 1999): a limited horizon, just like a pair of eye-glasses that produce naturalized views of the world (Mitchell, 2002).
I tried to overcome these logics, both in the understanding of my topic and in the research process itself, conducted in coherence with my positioning.
This paper intends to be a reflexive account on my research’s development by taking the argumentation ‘from where I stand’ to the point of questioning: ‘where do I stand?’ In relation with the topic of democracy of the special call, the issue here is not to take sides, giving way to binary logics, but to acknowledge how our (mis)perceptions and (mis)conceptions can shape our reality, and how it can affect our contribution to strive for a just and equitative society. Furthermore, and countering the logics above-mentioned, I try to develop coherent research practices that explore rhizomatic strategies, through crossing and in-between fields.
Where do I stand, then? In research it is a legitimate, necessary and even productive question to ask systematically, that I take here as my research compass in order to fulfil the following objectives:
a) To acknowledge the view ‘from where I stand’ and how my everyday experiences influence my positioning in respect to my core values and my research (Douglass & Moustakas, 1985).
b) To define ‘where do I stand?’, as my positioning towards research, in epistemological, methodological, ontological and ethical terms (Hernández-Hernández, 2019).
c) To present several strategies that allow to value the process of becoming for the researcher, the research and the thesis.
d) To identify 'what do I stand for' when pointing the logic of sameness and binary thinking as outdated and inadequate to the challenges of the present.
Dividing is an increasing phenomenon in our times, as we can witness by the number of walls that have been growing since the World War II, with an exponential growth since the 9/11 (Vallet & David, 2012). Dividing, as a categorizing strategy, helps to clarify and untangle concepts but we have to keep in mind, whether in social reality or in our research procedures, not to make the mistake of hierarchizing the elements that we have placed apart. For that we must make the subsequent effort of re-entangle, and sustain in tension, all the binaries that are formed before our eyes.
This exercise of reflexivity on the research process, as well as the process of becoming a researcher, relates to my topic of collective identities but also to “academic identities, including identities as researchers,[which] are forged, rehearsed and remade in local sites of practice” (Lee & Boud, 2003, p. 188). While connecting with the flowing aspects of my identity, defined by my perspective, I reckon the positioning that I am requested to perform (Guerin, 2013), to face the challenges of my social-political-academical environment.
With this reflexivity gesture I intend to demonstrate my attempt to democratise ways and forms of knowledge, nurturing the “need to be aware of the personal, social and cultural contexts in which we live and work and to understand how these impact on the ways we interpret our world” (Etherington, 2004a, p. 19).
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThis paper takes reflexivity as the main research method since it calls upon self-awareness and the process of interaction between what, or whom, or how, we are researching, as well as the frameworks of our values and, consequently, our orientations and interpretations (Etherington, 2004a; Etherington, 2004b). It consists on an exercise of transparency that “enables us to provide information on what is known as well as how it is known” (Etherington, 2004b).
The first phase of my argumentation will present the positioning ‘from where I stand’, focusing on being a mother, the interest in ceramics, the love for dance and music, the journaling practice, the participation in different collectives - dance class, parents association and academic group of studies. Simultaneously, I will present the strategies, informed by a heuristic approach (Moustakas, 1990; Douglass & Moustakas, 1985), through which I came to understand, or visualize, ideas or concepts that I was working with. These strategies include images, metaphors, diagrams, and writing in the form of fiction or journaling.
In a second moment, the question ‘where do I stand?’ will be addressed taking the apprenticeships of the previous phase. Misconceptions like the childish tendency to perceive solidity in what is fluid and ever changing, or the drive to categorize, if not polarize, ideas and concepts, to name a few, will feed my positioning and the core values that I try to impregnate in all aspects of my research. So I stand for bottom-up when not horizontal logics, and therefore democratic, non-hierarchical, and collaborative participation; as well as the rejection of sameness and binaries in its various forms.
For this reason, and noting that ‘crossing’ is the watchword of my thesis, this must be reflected at all levels: reality, and with it identities, in permanent change (ontology); from which we can only know the narratives, the discourses, unable to capture essences (epistemology); the multiplicity and rhizomatic intertwining of research methods, as well as the crossing of the empirical field itself which is assumed by heterogeneity (methodology); and finally, the awareness that, as a researcher, I am a being in transit, who paradoxically must remain that way, alerted to the transformations that my perspectives (and all external contributions) can produce in my worldview and the research account itself (ethical).
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsIt is evident that the concerns and the effort to democratize cultural concepts goes way beyond my reflections, indicating the need and urgency for cross perspectives with equal relations of power, as suggested by the question posed by Anna-Catharina Gebbers, curator of the exhibition ‘Nation, Narration, Narcosis’ (Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, 2022) integrated in the curatorial project ‘Collecting Entanglements and Embodied Histories’: “How can the linear narratives associated with nation and state be supplemented by other forms of community, by plural narratives and by the simultaneity and equivalence of different ways of thinking?” (Goethe-Institut, 2021).
The time of the grand narratives of sameness that opposed a fictionalized Other as long gone. Even though the walls keep being built, it is easy to read between the lines the call for another paradigm. Attempting to support it I share my process of research ‘in-between the lines’, that first requests to acknowledge the dividing lines that keep rising in our daily life and the involuntary easiness of binary thinking (Elbow, 1993) in our research projects. Secondly it calls for another ground, what in Klein (2019) words translates to “moving toward third space” (p.72), pointing “strategies for relational thinking” (p. 77-78) where intuition (hunches) and wisdom (reflexive knowledge over experience) are valued along with other strategies like journaling, or visualization through sketches and concept maps. This kind of thinking embraces “difference, uncertainty, ambiguity, and middle spaces” (p. 78) responding in line with the challenges of our times.
Finally it has to be acknowledge that writing itself brings awareness, like reflexivity, and research also develops ‘in-between the lines’ of what we write, where life, fiction, artistry and all the belittled sources of knowledge can be voiced.
ReferencesDouglass, B. G., & Moustakas, C. (1985). Heuristic inquiry: The Internal Search to Know. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 25(3), 39-55–55. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022167885253004
Elbow, P. (1993). The uses of binary thinking. Journal of Advanced Composition, 14. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/eng_faculty_pubs/14
Etherington, K. (2004a). Becoming a Reflexive Researcher - Using Our Selves in Research. Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Etherington, K. (2004b). Research methods: reflexivities -- roots, meanings, dilemmas. Counselling & Psychotherapy Research, 4(2), 46-46-47. doi: 10.1080/14733140412331383963
Goethe-Institut (2021). Goethe-Institut Initiates Dialogue between Collections of Galeri Nasional Indonesia, MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum, Nationalgalerie – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, and Singapore Art Museum [press release]. https://www.goethe.de/resources/files/pdf234/press-release_collecting-entanglements-and-embodied-histories_en.pdf
Guerin, C. (2013). Rhizomatic Research Cultures, Writing Groups and Academic Researcher Identities. International Journal of Doctoral Studies, 8, 137-137-150. doi: 10.28945/1897
Heidegger, M. (1999). Plato's Doctrine of Truth. In Pathmarks. Cambridge University Press.
Hernández-Hernández, F. (2019). Presentación: La perspectiva postcualitativa y la posibilidad de pensar en ‘otra’ investigación educativa. Educatio Siglo XXI, 37(2 Jul-Oct), 11-20. doi: 10.6018/educatio.386981
Klein, S. R. (2019). Moving Toward Third Space: Reflections on the Tensions with/in Qualitative Research. Canadian Review of Art Education, 46(1), 72-84.
Lee, A., & Boud, D. (2003). Writing Groups, Change and Academic Identity: research development as local practice. Studies in Higher Education, 28(2), 187-187-200. doi: 10.1080/0307507032000058109
Mitchell, W. J. T. (2002). Showing seeing: a critique of visual culture. journal of visual culture, 1(2), 165-181.
Moustakas, C. E. (1990). Heuristic research: Design, methodology, and applications. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Vallet, É., & David, C.-P. (2012). Introduction: The (Re)Building of the Wall in International Relations. Journal of Borderlands Studies, 27(2), 111-119. doi: 10.1080/08865655.2012.687211
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