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

ART, DESIGN AND ENVIRONMENTAL PARTICIPATION
History is needed to understand the background and legacy of a field and
to define it with regard to other fields of knowledge. Theory is built on the
ongoing research in dialogue with other fields of knowledge, while criticism
follows what is regarded as quality standards in practice. However, the purpose
for building a new field of inquiry is to secure a critical mass of researchers
who are able to run a qualified discussion both at the ontological and
the epistemological level of the field in question. This is why the education
of doctoral candidates within the field of art and design education has a
high priority.
Doctorates at AHO – by practitioners in art and design education
The first practitioner in art and design education who got a doctoral degree
at the AHO-doctoral programme was Liv Merete Nielsen. The thesis
states that more and more decisions will be made on the base of visual
representations and consequently visual communication becomes a key
aspect of the general education (2000). Hilde Aga Ulvestad got her doctoral
degree in 2001 based on the studies of creativity in art making processes.
She built upon the theories of Vygotsky. Eirin Pedersen’s doctoral thesis
studies “drawing the nude”. She discusses the nude-drawing in a contextual,
discursive and paradigmatic perspective, including the gender perspective
(2004). Øystein Cruikshank should have finished his thesis in 2005, but he
passed away tragically in a car accident in 2004. Parts of his thesis were,
however, edited and published in 2006. He discussed taste and power in the
art through the studies of a worldwide known Norwegian art project, Skulpturlandskap
Nordland [Sculpture landscape in Nordland], where sculptures
by well-known international artists were placed in several municipalities
in the county of Nordland (Cruikshank, 2006). In her thesis, Marte Gulliksen
discusses how formbild is constructed in teacher training education,
with a base in empirical studies and discourse analysis (2006). In 2007 Janne
Beate Reitan defended her thesis on strategy for design learning. From her
studies of Inuit vernacular design she describes and discusses the concept of
“learning by watching”. Berit Ingebrethsen is expected to fulfil her disputations
at AHO in 2008. She has studied visual rhetoric’s in drawings based
on metaphor. Her research is based in semiotic theory. Bente Ytterstad, who
explores the potentials of the making process in the production of knowledge,
is expected to finish her thesis in 2009.
Several university colleges have acknowledged the importance of securing
a critical mass of researchers in order to build a field of knowledge in art and
design education, and consequently they have raised grants. These grants
are of great value as they are, as mentioned before, a precondition for being
134 NORDIC VISUAL ARTS EDUCATION IN TRANSITION