Professional Documents
Culture Documents
You are a valued member of the Visual Arts Consortium. Your acknowledged expertise in the
arts and interest in the future of art education is integral to working at a national level to inform
the process for developing a quality curriculum for Visual Arts for all Australian students. We
hope that you can respond to the consultation on the ‘Draft Shape Paper’. This will be most
valuable in achieving a quality Visual Arts curriculum for students in schools across Australia. It
is still possible to influence decisions about this important area of the national curriculum. The
information that follows may help you to make an informed response to the consultation on this
draft document. Consultation closes on 17 December 2011.
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Keeping you in the picture
The Visual Arts Consortium supports the concept of an Australian Curriculum for the Arts
because it honours the Arts, acknowledging their unique contribution to the vitality of Australian
culture, and the significant role played by the arts in the education of children and young
Australians.
The difficulty for the Visual Arts Consortium is not with the broad aim of a national arts
curriculum but with the document, the Draft Shape Paper – The Australian Curriculum: The Arts,
recently released by the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA).
The Draft Shape Paper is the preliminary document to the Arts Curriculum itself and covers the
five subjects that come under the umbrella of the Arts - Visual Arts, Music, Dance, Drama and
Media.
• represent Visual Arts as a distinct field of practice that can be taught and learnt,
representing it instead as process-based, participatory and merely ‘experiential’.
• acknowledge significant Visual Arts content and academic rigour that sustain high quality
and deep learning throughout an educational continuum, from years K to years 12.
• equal or exceed the best existing curricula in Visual Arts education in Australia.
The Consortium therefore rejects the Draft Shape Paper and will be presenting a formal
response to ACARA by 17 December 2010. We will email you in the near future seeking your
endorsement for the VAC submission to ACARA. In the meantime we urge you to respond to
the ACARA survey – see pages 2-6 for support in doing this.
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Tips for answering the ACARA Survey
The Rationale for the Australian Curriculum: The Arts clearly expresses the important
contribution of the Arts curriculum to students' education.
Strongly Disagree because the Rationale:
• Does not define the learning area as Visual and Performing Arts.
• Does not clearly articulate the value of Visual Arts and the other artforms in ensuring that
students meaningfully contribute to and participate in Australian culture beyond schooling
• Incorrectly assumes that the artforms are tools to assist learning in other areas. This
assumption diminishes the importance of each artform as a distinct and valued
curriculum subject.
All students should experience and study each of the five art forms from Kindergarten to
Year 8.
Strongly Disagree because:
• this approach is likely to result in the arts being offered in a token or poorly resourced
manner. A preferred position would be to ensure every student has the opportunity for
sustained study in at least one Visual and one Performing artform from Kindergarten to
Year 8.
• Schools within states and systems should be able to make realistic choices relative to the
needs of students, resources, the availability of suitably qualified teachers and
community expectations. This would enable them to build on existing strengths in arts
education.
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The definitions of the Art forms provide the basis for curriculum development.
Strongly Disagree because:
• The definition of Visual Arts is extremely poor. Visual Arts should be defined as a subject
in which students develop knowledge, understandings and skills within practice and
artworld concepts. This statement should also acknowledge the range of beliefs and
attitudes students will need to understand in developing their intentions and representing
ideas as makers of art, as critics and as art historians.
The development of the Arts curriculum from an integrated approach at K-2, to the study
of individual art forms in Years 7 and 8, is logical (4.1).
Strongly Disagree because the description:
• Fails to acknowledge that children develop understandings and theories of each domain.
These domains within the Arts are discretely acquired. They are not integrated in the
minds of children, so there would appear to be no basis for this assumption in the
proposed curriculum.
• The description should identify how each artform individually contributes to children’s
learning within the k-12 continuum of development. This needs to be structured
according to concepts and practices that will be taught and learnt at different stages of
their education.
• Whilst the Shape Paper acknowledges that students should experience the individual art
forms in later years of primary school and in Years 7 and 8, it fails to address the issue of
inadequate time available within the broader curriculum for each artform, which is likely
to be the result of a requirement that all students experience all 5 artforms in each year
of schooling.
• Students should have a minimum of 100 hours curriculum time allocated to Visual Arts in
Years 7 and 8 (as is currently the requirement in NSW) – no Australian student should
have a lesser quality of art education as a result of a national curriculum.
From Year 9 through to Year 12 it is important that students have the opportunity to
specialise in one or more art forms (4.1).
Strongly Disagree because:
• Specialisation assumes that a solid foundation of knowledge in Visual Arts will have been
established prior to year 9. Under the current proposal this is not the case nor possible.
• While specialization is supported and necessary, the integrated approach favouring
‘connectivity’ between artforms and with other learning areas diminishes the individual
importance and significance of the selected artforms.
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• Visual Arts needs to be offered as a discrete subject from K-8 to ensure students are
adequately prepared to specialise and maintain current standards of achievement.
The description and sequence of Arts learning (section 4.2-4.6) is clear and appropriate in
Years 3-8.
Strongly Disagree because the Description and Sequence:
• Fails to articulate a coherent continuum of learning from Years K-8. The description does
not show how and what students will be learning in Visual Arts in order to be supported in
moving from naïve to more sophisticated understandings of the subject.
• The document needs to identify Visual Arts content as concepts and practices that are
clearly defined within stages of development to assist teachers in selecting content
appropriate to level.
• The notion of play-centred ‘arts learning’ is inadequate as an explanation providing a
significant arts curriculum for young children in Years K – 2. This is disrespectful of what
students can do at various ages both conceptually and practically in Visual Arts.
• The years of schooling between Years 3 and 8 represent a significant development of
cognition and capacity that is not acknowledged in the Shape Paper. Students appear to
learn through creating, making, experiencing or communicating but what they learn about
and to do is unclear.
• The field of Visual Arts as a ’body of knowledge’ is not defined
The description and sequence of Arts learning (section 4.2-4.6) is clear and appropriate in
Years 9-10.
Strongly Disagree because:
• The description does not identify the Visual Arts content as practices and concepts
students would be learning.
• Fails to describe what and how students will be learning at this stage as a more complex
advance on what has been taught and learnt in Years K-8
The description and sequence of Arts learning (section 4.2-4.6) is clear and appropriate in
Years 11-12.
Strongly Disagree because:
• In comparison with existing Visual Arts syllabus documents in all states, this represents
an intellectually impoverished and inadequate basis for the development of a national
curriculum which should equip and empower students with knowledge, skills and
understanding in the practices of art making, art history and art criticism, and with
knowledge and understanding about the artworld and arts industries.
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history, providing further evidence that the approach represented by the Shape Paper is
a purely ‘participatory’, shallow and experiential approach to artmaking.
The Arts industry and community can augment the provision of Arts education provided
by schools.
Strongly Disagree because:
• Whilst it is important to recognise the significant role played by professionals and groups
from the arts and arts industries to learning within the arts, it should also be emphasised
that this ‘augmentation’ should not be seen as a way of ameliorating a lack of teachers
within schools with specific training in specific artforms. Specialist teachers within
schools are the key to providing students with rich, sustained, rigorous learning in each
discrete and unique artform.
I agree with the overall intention of the Draft Shape of the Australian Curriculum: The Arts
paper.
Strongly Disagree because:
As a member of the Visual Arts Consortium I reject the Draft Shape Paper as the curriculum it
proposes fails to match or better the quality of the existing Visual Arts curriculum in NSW and in
other Australian states and territories. In what is proposed in this document the identity of Visual
Arts as a significant area of learning is sacrificed to a participatory approach to the arts that
undermines and limits students’ learning. This proposal has serious implications for the
sustainable future of Visual Arts Education at all levels and therefore for the wider professional
field. This is unacceptable.
General comments you could draw on for an extended response letter to ACARA
General Concerns
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• Significant content areas such art history, art criticism, artistic traditions and forms are
barely mentioned
• It does not acknowledge the significance of the extraordinary legacy of art, architecture
and other forms of visual expression from ancient to modern worlds, that help to shape
our understanding of art in our contemporary world.
• It does not specifically address the study of Australian art and Aboriginal art,
• It does not acknowledge the study of significant artists and their practices.
• It ignores the wider relationship between what is taught in the classroom and the art
world; the role of art in society and how artists, filmmakers, designers, architects,
photographers, collectors, gallery and museum curators, art writers, art teachers and
academics contribute to the field and interact.
• It ignores theoretical perspectives that enable students to develop understanding of how
meaning is constructed in the artworld. Simply experiencing and responding to artworks
is not a sufficient basis for these understandings, particularly in relation to contemporary
art. No other subject would accept such assumptions about knowledge.
These, and others, are legitimate areas of investigation in a serious subject, and are currently
taught in Visual Arts in several states.