Art Education: Curriculum & Pedagogy, Secondary Level

An Art Educator’s Critical Questions on Academic Writing

The Introduction to British Columbia’s Redesigned Curriculum is certainly refreshing for an art teacher like myself who was born in the 1980’s because it explains that the new curriculum model not only incorporates the “Do” and the “Know” of education, but the “Understand” is an important component as well. As a child I recall many times seeking to understand the deeper level of a concept and asking my teacher “why?”, only to be told, “just because”, or to be brushed off because we had to move on to the next set of facts to be memorized. My only question is, could the author have illustrated a brief example of how the curriculum works in a real life classroom scenario? While I understand that this is an official government document– it does read somewhat like stereo instructions. It would be helpful for a visual learner such as myself to see some examples and images of what this new curriculum looks like in action.

Visual Culture Art Education: Why, What & How, by Paul Duncan is an interesting study of what visual culture is from the perspective of post-modern imagery, pop culture, art history, “self-referential, depthless images”, and as a topic for dialogical pedagogy. While the author explores many ideas in Chapter 11, could he have perhaps narrowed his focus to what is truly essential to teach within the subject of visual culture? While he concludes that we must “take up visual culture as an urgent matter to consider”, he does not explain why or how this can be achieved in a practical way within a class lesson. Also, it may have been helpful if some images were included to describe the wide range of what this elusive visual culture might look like. If images were included here, what images could describe the idea visual culture in order to help us understand what this means?