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

FROM PSYCHOLOGY TO SEMIOTICS
Swedish Studies and Curricula until 1994
Lars Lindström
Introduction
More than other subjects, art education in Sweden has experienced farreaching
changes and con flicts. The discourse has gone through a series of
pa ra digm shifts. Things that once were regarded as the core of the subject
have been relegated to the edge of it or have been erased completely. More
than once, patterns of thought, aims, subject matter, and meth ods have been
radically transformed. This is true not only of educational philosophies but
of ap proa ches to art educational research as well. Never theless, a spirit of
continuity, with frag ments of different and often conflicting tradi tions existing
side by side, seems to have characterized the teaching of art in most classrooms.
Here I will focus on art education in the primary school, grades 1 through
6 (students 7–13 years of age), and the lower se con dary school, grades 7
through 9 (students 13–16 years of age). I will relate art educational studies
to educational philosophies, curricula, and practice of art education in Swedish
schools. 5 Since my focus is on the interaction be tween theory and practice,
the outline is organized as a chronological analysis of the de velopment
of art edu cation interspersed with sections on research and other studies.
Historical studies of art education
Before starting my presentation of educational paradigm shifts, however, I
should men tion a few studies available for anyone who has acquired an interest
in the history of art educa tion in Sweden. For example, in 1980 Stig Eklund at
Umeå University pub lished a book let with a great deal of quota tions from
official documents (Eklund, 1980). And in their doc toral thesis on art education,
Sten Pettersson and Gun nar Åsén wrote an extensive chapter on the
develop ment of the subject in Sweden, analysing the literature from the
mid-19th century until the 1980 school curriculum (Pettersson & Åsén,
5 The study of Swedish art education until 1994 is presented at greater length in Arts Education Policy
Review, May 1997.
36 NORDIC VISUAL ARTS EDUCATION IN TRANSITION