Research in Visual Arts Education - The National Society for ...

ART, DESIGN AND ENVIRONMENTAL PARTICIPATION
for preparing them to writing their doctoral theses. To be accepted at such
a doctoral programme, a doctoral grant is required. Consequently the “hunting”
for grants has become a part of building up research within a field.
Since the two existing M.A. programmes in art and design education are
situated at university colleges without the right to confer a doctoral degree
and thus without own doctoral programmes, M.A. students with ambitions
for further research training have been referred to doctoral programmes at
the universities. The problem is however, that universities usually exclude
alumni from other fields of knowledge than their own disciplines. This has,
for some years, been a predicament for the doctoral candidates who graduated
from the art and design education colleges.
The first educational practitioner with a M.A. degree in Art and design
education, who was successful in entering a doctoral programme at a university,
was Jorunn Spord Borgen. She received her doctoral degree at the
Faculty of Art History at the University of Bergen. In her thesis she discusses
the aspects of knowledge and quality related to design made by professional
designers compared to design by amateurs (Borgen, 1998). The same year
Steinar Kjosavik got his doctoral degree at the Faculty of Education at the
University of Oslo. His thesis gives a historical overview over the national
curriculum development in Norway from the time when the subject area
named drawing, textiles for girls and woodwork for boys entered the curriculum
in primary school until the three subjects were merged into Forming
in 1960. In this period the philosophical base of the subjects changed
from training skills for house and home to the subject Forming where the
ideal was influenced by self-expression (Kjosavik, 1998). Both Borgen and
Kjosavik had their master’s degrees from M.A. programmes in art and design
education.
Researchers with a base in university disciplines have from time to time
shown interest in art education and especially for self-expression through
drawing. As far in the past as in 1918 the psychologist Helga Eng published
her book Kunstpedagogik [Art education]. She was critical to the paradigm
of her time with formal training and imitation in drawing education, and
in her writing she was inspired by, among others, John Ruskin. She is well
known for her longitudinal study of the drawing development of her niece,
Margaret (Eng, 1931, 1957). Her books are translated into English, and later
also to German and Japanese. Anders Lysne and Gunnar Danbolt have, seen
from the point of view of their disciplines of education and art history, given
valuable contributions to the field of art and design education. Else Marie
Halvorsen got her doctoral degree in education at the University of Oslo
in 1996. She writes in her thesis about the cultural legacy and the aesthetic
dimensions in the Norwegian educational practise (Halvorsen, 1996).
132 NORDIC VISUAL ARTS EDUCATION IN TRANSITION