Teaching Visual Arts: Discussion

Dear Tracey,

It is a real shame that visual arts in the Australian school system has largely been seen as less important than other subjects such as English and Mathematics (Dinham, 2014). It definitely wasn’t important in my schooling and I definitely didn’t learn any technical skills or how to analyse art in either primary or high school visual art classrooms. This can be due to the detrimental effect of laissez-faire art teaching, which can be great for experimentation but not very good at teaching art skills (Brown, Macintyre, & Watkins, 2012; Edwards, 2013).

To teach visual arts effectively, the teacher must provide a safe space for students to explore and to create, and also respond to the process of creating art and its finished product (Dinham, 2014). Art is about communication and without discussion and analysis of what it is that is being communicated, visual arts will continue to be written off as an easy, unimportant subject (Dinham, 2014; Edwards, 2012).

I was surprised by how cross-curricular drawing actually was when I drew my hand blind and also when I drew two images from two children’s books (Nick Bland’s ‘The Wrong Book’ and The Island’ by Armin Greder). For instance I struggled with proportions, which you would think belonged in the maths world but here it is propping up in art. It was also really fun creating the drawings and I can see that experimenting with other subject concepts within visual art might allow some students to gain a deeper understanding of topics that previously baffled them (Brown et al., 2012; Edwards, 2013).

Here are my drawings: first my hand drawn blind but then nails and wrinkles added in after and my drawings alongside the originals from the books. 'The Wrong Book’ is on top and ‘The Island’ is on the bottom:

Yours,

Kelda

References:

Bland, N. (2010). The Wrong Book. Australia: Scholastic.

Brown, R., Macintyre, P., & Watkins, M. (2012). Learning in and Through the Visual Arts. In C . Sinclair, N. Jeanneret & J O’Toole (Eds.), Education in the Arts (2^nd Ed) (pp. 111- 127). South Melbourne: Oxford University Press.

Dinham, J. (2014). Delivering authentic Arts education. South Melbourne: Cengage Learning Australia.

Edwards, J. (2013). Teaching primary art. United Kingdom: Pearson.

Greder, A. (2007). The Island. Australia: Allen & Unwin Australia.