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

ART, DESIGN AND ENVIRONMENTAL PARTICIPATION
As mentioned earlier, the University of Bergen opened up their doctoral
programme for practitioners in art and design education with the public
defence by Jorunn Spord Borgen in 1998. Later, Nina Scott Frisch was accepted
at the doctoral programme at NTNU (Norwegian University of Science
and Technology in Trondheim) on the base of her M.A. in art and design
education from HiO. Frisch is expected to finish her thesis on children’s
strategy for drawing through the so-called “drawing crisis” in 2009. On the
same base Bjørg Tronshart has taken part of the doctoral programme in
Vasa, Finland. Her research topic is exhibition in a rhetoric perspective. Five
more candidatetes with a base as practitioners in art and design education
have during the last few years received grants for doctoral studies. Anniken
Randers-Pehrson, Kirstine Wiingaard Thrane, Birthe Brekketo, Torunn
Paulsen Dagsland and Lisbet Skregeli are connected to doctoral programmes
at the Universities of Oslo, Stavanger and Agder.
Research topics
It is difficult to delineate specific trends in the selection of topics in the
doctoral theses, books, book-chapters, articles and reports published over
the last years. Regarding the doctoral theses in art and design education, the
focus for research has taken its point of departure in either material and
functional experimentation, historical documents, studies of educational
practises or theory. Methodological approaches are chosen to match each
research project; it may be based in text, observations, interviews, narrations
or action research – used as a base for deconstruction, discourse analysis or
critical studies. Methods are carefully chosen tools – they are seldom goals
in themselves.
Material and functional experimentation and analyses for educational
contexts have from time to time been a popular choice at the M.A. level, but
not so often in the recent ten years. A historical background is also given
in the status questionis in almost all theses, but Steinar Kjosavik (1998) and
Bjørn Magne Aakre (2005) have a main focus on analysing historical curricula
and the political documents prior to them. Studies of educational practices
and outcomes of art and design processes are an often chosen point
of departure for doctoral theses within the making professions. This is also
often the case for researchers with a base in the traditional university disciplines.
Among the doctoral projects in progress, a majority of the studies
involve some kind of analyses of artefacts and educational practises. They
are analysed in relation to different theories and discussed in an epistemological
context.
136 NORDIC VISUAL ARTS EDUCATION IN TRANSITION