Who We Are
The following is intended as a foregrounding statement that broadly outlines how
the Faculty of Fine and Applied Arts Academic Planning Committee may contribute
to the spirit and vision of the new Cap. It employs terms of reference from the arts
but intends to show how we may generally fortify, enhance and define Cap’s unique
approach to higher education.
FAA: What’s In a Name?
The FAA APC has been discussing our name; Fine and Applied Arts. Questions about
our identity in relation to these have emerged. Most agree that the terms refer to
20th century perspectives and modes of practice. Another set of differentiating terms
might serve our identity better and position these disciplines more firmly in their
role in contemporary higher education.
Fine vs. Applied(?)
The terms ‘fine’ and ‘applied’ historically differentiate the arts based on their
relationship to intellectual expression and practical function. A fine art is abstract,
detached from everyday life and has no practical use; it is meant to be appreciated
solely for its intellectual or aesthetic content. An applied art is the application of
aesthetic practices to objects of use or to social situations of the everyday; these are
inherently multidisciplinary and practical. A similar comparison can be found in
natural sciences vs. social sciences. We propose that a change of name might
promote new definitions and ‘ways of seeing’ the interactions between arts
practices, between communities and cultures and between all disciplines across the
curriculum. It is possible to view the distinction between fine and applied arts as a
forced continuum. In practice, both interact with theory and the real world,
especially in light of the innovations of the 20th century.
The Legacy of the Avant-Garde(s) and the ‘Post’: A Parallel Evolution in Higher
Education
The 20th century can be broadly summed up as a time of reassessment and
redefinition. The historical avant-garde of the early to mid century sought to
contend elitism and the fixity of intellectual practices by re-attaching art to everyday
expression. The tropes of Romanticism modeled the artist as a person with a special
capacity to imagine and express. The reaction to this was to actively question the
meaning of art through conceptual experimentation. The neo avant-garde of the mid
to late 20th century employed similar methods but in the socio/political context.
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Postmodernism extended these motives with meta-concepts, deconstructing the
frameworks and master narratives of the modern world.
A Postindustrial Paradigm
The 21st century may be looked at as a time of reframing and reconsidering values in
the light of a postindustrial age. The same dialogues appear to be happening across
all disciplines and especially in the area of learning. As we accept learning as a selfdefining, experiential characteristic of higher education, we inevitably encounter
individual ways of seeing, being, reflecting, expressing and collaborating. These are
not specialised skills, but foundational knowledge; a type of literacy or numeracy.
Please see the attached table illustrating core concepts and values along the
continuum industrial/postindustrial education. The themes of seeing, being,
reflecting, expressing and collaborating can be found throughout. These can no
longer be considered skills for a special occupation, but as modes of education and a
form of cognition.
Creative, Contemporary, Expressive, Multi-Inter-Intra, Polyfocal
Any or all of these are candidates for a new name and a new way of conceiving the
creative disciplines in higher education. We, as instructors and students, are
constrained by our disciplines. In their incompleteness, they may be said to distort
our perceptions of the real world and prove inadequate to solve the problems facing
us in the future. Solutions may be found in the interstices of our knowledge
requiring new attitudes, cooperative methods and multi-dimensional frames.
Joseph Schwab, in Practical II *, explained what he calls the Practical Arts using the
following categories;
• arts of perception;
• arts of problemation;
• arts of weighing and choosing;
• arts for generating solutions;
• reflexive arts.
He places these in a context of Eclectic Arts in which the following principles are
expressed;
• mutual accommodation of theory and practice;
• recognition of the incompleteness of theory about a single subject; and
• selection, adjustment, and combination of incomplete views.
The context of accommodation and combination of incomplete views is described as
Polyfocal Conspectus.
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“There is conspectus (or “mere conspectus” as Schwab calls it) that
asks us to recognize and master multiple theories without really doing
much to compare one to another. And then there is polyfocal
conspectus that asks us to master multiple theories and think about
the fundamental differences between them. Polyfocal conspectus
helps us to see how one theory can complement another. It is one way
to avoid over commitment to single theories (Pereira, pars. 2-5) .”
*These summaries of Schwab are excerpted from Peter Pereira’s article, Some Key Concepts from
Practical II, attached. http://condor.depaul.edu/ppereira/courses/cs774/JJS11.P2.pdf.
The Big Picture: Addressing the Guiding Questions
Who will come to Cap?
The Students will be people who want to learn in a more intimate and enabling
environment than can be found in a traditional, large university setting. Our small
size means that our different faculties share physical, intellectual and social space.
Cap Students will find that their curiosity, creativity and desire are stimulated
through structured flexibility. Capilano will attract students who want to develop
specialised skills with the added edge of being flexible, knowledge-creating, engaged
life-long learners. Cap Students are looking for professional expertise but also see
themselves on a different path and see their education as a time to work on
themselves as much as their careers.
The Instructors who come to Cap will be like their students; multifaceted experts
with a capacity for interdisciplinary teaching; people who are motivated to improve
by learning from others and sharing their knowledge.
Why will they come to Cap?
Capilano embraces difference. The faculty is energetic. Instructors value education
intrinsically and promote the opportunities it presents for personal transformation.
Capilano offers opportunities to make a difference through engaging with realworld problems and local/global communities.
How will Cap prepare them?
Capilano prepares its students by being flexible enough to accommodate emerging
questions and project based learning. In the following section, several of the
strategic directions are expanded with vision statements addressing each category.
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One of the key features of the Capilano Experience will be the Makers’ Hub, a space
that supports knowledge creation by giving learners the skills, equipment and
mentorship to create and engage in rigourous practice, hands-on cognition and
frame reflection. It is a space of semi-structured, open interaction with the
resources to rapidly create course content to suit project-based learning in any
faculty or discipline.
How will they describe Cap to others?
Capilano will be described as a place of growth. Instead of a road or a stairway to
their future, Cap grads will see us as a footpath where they acquired as much selfknowledge as professional skills.
Some responses to the proposed strategic Directions:
At each campus, maintain a climate where students feel valued as individuals
and supported in their learning
• A Teaching and Learning Centre is essential to making a hub of crossdepartmental, inter-campus development and a supportive resource for our
work. The personal risks associated with change in teaching/learning will be
made less daunting or costly in a supportive environment where
professionals can ask the right questions of themselves and their methods.
Be a leader in university teaching and student learning
• Innovation and scholarship in teaching and learning are already happening
on campus in various faculties. This is largely self-motivated and can be
strengthened by re-establishing the structures that have supported this in
the past;
o PD and TLC with roles that are defined better than they had been in
the past
o the peer lecture series
• Provide opportunities for research and curriculum development through
team-teaching. These team-oriented teaching and learning structures will
allow instructors to be learners as well; comparing and reinforcing different
lenses. Instructors from different disciplines can help each other ‘see’ and
evaluate in an integrative, additive manner.
Be responsible
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•
•
Teach to the world the students are entering. Incorporate multiple lenses and
disciplines- the solutions to the problems of the next generation cannot be
found in one discipline.
Promote accountability for teaching in a supportive environment. Use
various modes of reflective teaching practice;
o participant/peer evaluation in group learning and team teaching
situations;
o a culture of summative peer reviews and teaching resources in a nonjudgmental environment;
o course development/re-design in a flexible/reflexive system, allowing
for responsive design that allows instructors to align quickly with
student needs, industry and research.
Eliminate barriers, create pathways, and foster access to learning
• Capilano University’s small size and tightly knit community of expert
practitioners provide an environment of access and cross-disciplinary
conversations. Our programs are strong, but the campus is made stronger
through our ‘small community of big ideas’ and our desire to understand
where each other is coming from.
Offer exemplary programs that provide opportunities for a broad range of
students
• Being open to working outside the ‘set menu’ of higher ed options. We can
create ‘structures for openness’, allowing students to design their learning
experience in upper level courses. Work within a series of multidisciplinary,
open-ended modules that may be brought out and ‘snapped together’ for
project-based course objectives.
Prepare students and employees to work in diverse, multicultural and
multinational environments
• We may achieve this by fostering cultural competence and diversity between
our different academic cultures; model this as well as teach it.
• Foster competence by working within flexible structures.
• As learning environments shift to mixed mode and team-based or projectbased learning modes, collaborative skills, and supportive work ethics will
help other disciplines form stronger, empathic, learning groups that share
objectives rather than compete against each other in the same class.
Values
A culture of inquiry and evidence-based decision making
• Incorporate structures of Design Thinking;
o Understand and Define;
o Observe and Research;
o Ideate and Cocreate;
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•
o Prototype and Test;
o Choose;
o Implement and Adapt.
Address the whole sphere of knowledge and value them as essential skills.
Create structures for - and model; (from Carper’s model for Reflective
Learning)
o Empirical Knowledge – evidence obtained through direct or indirect
observation/measurement
o Aesthetic Knowledge – the ‘how’ – intuition, interpretation,
understanding and valuing
o Personal Knowledge – the learner’s experience through
understanding, sympathy and empathy
o Ethical Knowledge – considered judgment based on quality
information and debate. Decisions occur within shared moral
structures and choices are made between competing, defensible
interventions.
Diversity, and the individuality of learners
• We want to create a culture that promotes the learner’s zone of proximal
development and supports learner autonomy;
o through situated, real-world learning activities;
o led/guided by people with expertise;
o designed to offer experiences that are challenging, transformative,
and self-revealing – learning as much about yourself as you do the
content and skills.
Up-to-date information gathering and research skills
• Practice-led, practice-based and reflective research techniques are
recognised, emergent methods. Unfortunately the student usually has to wait
until grad school to encounter these in a significant way and develop these
essential skills. Making these accessible to undergrad study will enable
students to be meta-thinkers.
• Cultural Competence
o Address identity, social constructs, assumptions, intention and values.
Enable students to see, interpret, participate in and create culture
more effectively.
• Multiple ‘intelligences’ and ‘literacies’
o Data takes many forms in our environment of rich media and access
to people. Our ability to notice, see, interpret and evaluate these data
are coloured by what we value as knowledge. Emotional, visual and
cultural intelligences are valued literacies.
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•
o Throw the doors wide open. Allow instructors from various
disciplines to help interpret, develop, evaluate within
interdisciplinary learning structures and projects.
Metaprocesses
o Embrace transformative learning; the practitioner embarks on a
lifelong dialogue between their life/sources, their discipline(s) and
form/content.
o Form a basis for self- analysis and open-ended enquiry. These
processes provide instruments to enter the unknown, the vague,
ambiguous and unpredictable with more confidence and purpose.
Cap Creates Immersive Environments Aligned with Industry and
Research
The ability to respond quickly to changeable conditions is universally seen as an
essential skill. Skills are taught effectively through deliberate effort in a systematic
manner with predetermined outcomes. Through the canon of artistic practices, the
ineffable nature of creativity has been made ‘teachable’. If adaptability is to remain a
high priority in education, transferring creative learning outcomes to other
disciplines will become the new ‘edge’. But creativity is situated in creative
environments that encourage risk-taking, active imagining and shared experiences.
In brief; making things.
Capilano is capable of blending our knowledge and supporting our students to;
• maintain Sustainable Value Creation in increasingly complex systems and;
• have intelligent, positive, creative reactions to globalization.
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Works Cited:
Pereira, Peter. Some Key Concepts from Practical II. DePaul University.
Web. 11 December 2013. < http://condor.depaul.edu/ppereira/courses/cs774>.
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