International Journal of Education Through Art - Volume 4, Issue 3, 2008

Realms of learning for art education in a post-digital world are identified through autoethnography, a qualitative research methodology congruent with an emerging paradigm shift beyond the digital culture of the Information Age to a post-digital Conceptual Age that honours the ability to create aesthetic significance, to discern patterns, to craft a meaningful narrative and to combine seemingly unrelated ideas into a novel creation. Realms of learning are brought to light through a narrative that highlights episodes in the life of an artist/ researcher/teacher that have special significance for art education. This autoethnographic enquiry, at the intersections of art, science, technology and culture, identifies interweaving realms that create a colourful fabric of lifelong learning: from awesome immersion, playful exploration, aesthetic creativity and morphological analysis, to interdisciplinary imagination, cybersomatic (computerbody) interactivity, polycultural collaboration, and holistic integration.

The influence of critical theory in art education has become commonplace, but its use in addressing students' popular culture in kindergarten to Year 12 classrooms is problematic. The now numerous reports by art teachers of their successfully inculcating critical consciousness towards popular visual culture appears to have more to do with a reforming zeal or advocacy than evidence. Moreover, in echoing the modernist origins of critical theory, their attempts to facilitate critical thinking often take the form of unproblematic and authoritarian pedagogy. Lessons learned from media education in the United Kingdom are employed to recommend that art teachers reject prima facie evidence of critical thinking among their students and learn to appreciate the complexity of student negotiations with popular culture. Taking their cue from media educators, it is proposed that art educators adopt a post-critical pedagogy based on Bhaktin's notions of dialogue.

The rapid development of the World Wide Web has redefined the information age as one of participation and authorship. Among other developments, the global occurrence of blogging, originating at grassroots level then embraced by the establishment, has virtually created a new medium. In the museum field, in which marketing has become a dominant concern, curators are considering whether or not online communities such as blog can be deployed and how their use can help to attract and open up new markets. This article focuses on their concerns from the perspective of an online community and investigates ways of applying blogging to transform potential visitors into museum-goers, as well as for visitor studies. Three community websites are examined in detail and provide reference points for studying ways in which museums apply this new medium. The conclusions are that museums can use online communities to engage potential visitors and create a virtuous circle between virtual and physical visits. When they are used creatively, online communities can also serve as visitor study tools by enabling them to participate in cultural debates and construct personal and meaningful learning experiences.

It is common to introduce works of art into lessons in primary and secondary schools in order to mediate ideas and theories about subjective realities. Pictures, sculptures, installations are understood to represent insights and imagination, or illustrate shared realities. In this paper we interpret art works as translations of subjective intentions, even theories, in particular experiential settings. An art-work or artistic action that emphasizes its object character as a central theme is especially open to this kind of interpretation. It can serve to generate theories revealed through the senses. In principle, art could be used in schools whenever interdependencies and contexts are the learning focus. In order to show this approach is not dependent on the age range of pupils, this paper offers two practical examples. One took place in the eighth grade of a secondary school, one in the third grade of a primary school.

The educational activity discussed in this article came about as the result of an invitation to the Instituto de Estudos da Criana (Institute of Children's Studies) at Minho University to take part in some celebrations for International Children's Day. The choice of Bigheads as a topic was determined by the fact that small-scale interdisciplinary projects had already been set up in the different arts departments and they shared an interest in local cultural patrimony. Grotesque Bighead figures are strongly rooted in the Portuguese popular imagination and, over time, have come to represent stereotypical social types that have remained constant formally and symbolically, and have resisted innovation. The Visual Education, Drama and Music course teams at the Instituto worked together and deconstructed the tradition by taking the Bigheads out of their local, plastic dimension into a global, multicultural space. The deconstruction of the Bighead figure by teachers and students went through three stages: first, discussing and planning curriculum content; second, planning and making; and third, taking part in and sharing this event with the local community.

This paper reports on student learning outcomes of a Visual Art curriculum in a secondary school context in New South Wales. The case study presented was informed by longitudinal research carried out between 19992001. The research established that students continue to be preoccupied with the question Who am I? as it informs their humanity and subjectivity. However, a significant number elected to deepen understanding of self through studying the narratives of others. The research also identified a shift away from traditional self-portraits to socio-cultural narrative portraits. Tangential visibility was defined as the ability to find new, creative insights about self at intersections between self and other. This orientation offers students opportunities to relocate their voices in representing others. From this position they can explore spaces between individual and collective subjectivities and relocate their identities in a wider, socio-cultural performative narrative.

Two educational researchers heed the responsibility to face their own traumatic pasts in working with women's experiential texts in the present. Using the notion of individual as both artist and image illustrated in the art of body biography, they come together to embody their own intrapersonal stories of gynaecological and obstetrical traumas as auto-ethnographic texts. Using a palette of photographs, found objects, ink, fabric and more, they portray their past on the present canvas of life-size paper placed across the office floor. Pin pricks on the abdomen. The next slice and stitch. Laproscopic cameras. The leg that lurched and twitched. With each expression of meaning, they delve into multiple layers of consciousness, connecting their recurring past to intrapersonal possibilities of women's education in the present. The art of embodiment plays a leading role.

Thinking Through Art: Reflections on Art as Research, Katy Macleod and Lin Holdridge (eds), (2006) London and New York: Routledge, 256 pp., ISBN 0415364779 (hbk), US$120

Hornsey 1968: The Art School Revolution, Lisa Tickner, (2008) London: Francis Lincoln, 203 pp., ISBN 139780711228740 (pbk), 12.99