‘Over the next decade
Australia should aspire
to improve outcomes
for all young
Australians to become
second to none
amongst the world’s
best school systems’.
– A world class
curriculum
– Competing in the
global economy
on knowledge
and innovation
Shape of the Australian Curriculum
1
Shape of the Australian Curriculum
The Arts: draft Shape Paper
2
Rationale/definition
for the Arts
• Sensory, cognitive, affective: to
perceive, imagine, creative, feel
• To be ‘taught distinctly’ with a
recognition of their ‘connectedness’
• Introduction of the stands of
generating, realising and responding
that purportedly lead to ‘aesthetic
knowledge’
3
Rationale
for The Arts
• A psychologistic view of the arts that
reduces the value of the arts to the
psychology and feeling of the student
• Reductive – retreats to an outdated
modernist view of creativity in the
arts
• Shows no interest in the outcomes of
practice–ie art objects and how these
create mental demands on students
4
The Artforms/Definitions:
• Core
Dance
• Extension
Drama
• Specialised learning
Music
(from Year 9-12 in one
Visual Arts
or more of the
artforms).
Media Arts
5
Definitions of the artforms
Incoherent
Inconsistent
Are not sufficient to function as a
basis for artistic practice and
development in the visual arts
(with the strands)
6
Organisation of the
Arts Curriculum
The Strands
Generating
Realizing
Responding
Are intended to
regulate commonality
and comparability in
language and structure
across the Arts
‘primary organisers’
‘experiences’
‘interconnected
processes’
‘may occur
simultaneously’
7
The Strands
• Generating: an impulse… using the
elements of the artforms,
imagining, designing
• Realizing: managing the materials,
instruments and media to
communicate to an audience
• Responding: apprehending and
comprehending
• THESE STRANDS CANNOT
ACCOUNT FOR DEVELOPMENT N
THE
8
The Strands
• Provide NO
answer to the
concept of
development in
the visual
arts/other
artforms
9
Arts learning K-12
• The strands (purportedly) provide
the organisational principles from
which to identify development in
each of the artforms in each stage
of schooling
– K-2
– Years 3-8
– Years 9-10
– Years 11-12
10
Visual Arts Learning
• Is not sufficient to function as a basis for
practice in artmaking and critical/historical
studies
• Provides no account of how understanding,
actions and judgement are developed and
intentionally employed in the visual arts
• Provides no basis for conceptual
development, relational thinking or the
development of artistic understanding at any
stage of schooling
• Belies the importance of knowledge of the
domains of art in education
11
Visual Arts Learning
• Does not assist in how content could be
selected at any stage of schooling: no sense
of a developmental sequence
• Does not anticipate how assessment could
be negotiated, except in the most
superficial or banal of ways
• Makes it difficult for teachers to intervene
because psychology and ‘processes’ are
disengaged from a social context
12
Cognitive development
• Learning is not simply a matter of
more ‘experience’
• Learning can be explained as a shift
towards an increase in reflective
autonomy as students develop an
increasingly coherent point of view
about art in artmaking, art
criticism and art history
13
Time
• Proposal of 2 hours per week for
the Arts K-8 (omitted from the
Shape Paper)
• Thus, for Visual Arts roughly:
–
–
–
–
25 minutes per week K-8
13.5 hours per year K-8
Or 150 hours over K-8
No provision for maintaining the
Mandatory Visual Arts 100 hour course is
Years 7-8
14
What would you and your students
miss out on were this proposal
accepted?
What is missing from ACARAs draft
Shape Paper?
15
16
17
18
• The draft Shape Paper should be
rejected
– on the grounds that it fails ACARAs own principles
and guidelines for the development of the
(Australian Curriculum Shape of the Australian
Curriculum, p.8).
19
The draft Shape Paper does not:
• Make clear what is to be taught, what students should learn and
offers no direction on knowledge, understanding, skills and
values that can be expected as a consequence of learning
• Assume high standards of students
• Identify a concept of development in the visual arts or other
artforms. Thus it is unable to propose meaningful learning at
each developmental stage of schooling – from foundational
learning to how expertise is developed
• Provide understanding of the traditions/histories/practices in
the Visual Arts/other arts or future trajectories in the Visual
Arts that are likely to be part of students’ futures.
20
The draft Shape Paper does not:
• Capitalise on current time arrangements or
acknowledge the time required for deep learning to
take place in a practice (time is not declared in the final
document)
• Account for the complexity of ideas that form the body of
knowledge in the visual arts (due to its preoccupation with
process)
• Provide consistency with other learning areas
• Value professional subject knowledge
• Provide a base from which teachers can systematically analyse
and reflect on their teaching practice.
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