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

FROM PSYCHOLOGY TO SEMIOTICS
techniques, such as graphic arts, ceram ics, photography, and video production.
However, drawing, painting, and collage were still the dominant activities
while visual production by means of technical equipment was not very
common in the non-elective school programme.
Those art teachers who took part in the 1992 national evaluation estimated
that three fourths of their teaching time was used for the production of
pictures. The evaluating team of ex perts criticized the fact that only one
fourth of the teaching time was left to help stu dents analyse and interpret
pictures and give them an orientation about art and visual aspects of their
environment. With that small amount of time for looking at pictures and
talk ing about them, they argued, students will not achieve the visual literacy
demanded in the national cur riculum. Nor are they likely to “find an
interest in” and “come to appre ciate” the values inherent in art, as the curriculum
prescribed they should.
In a few evaluation tasks, for example, teachers and students were asked
to share their opinions about certain modern artworks, both figurative and
non-figurative. Teachers rated these works in highly positive terms. Students
in the lower secondary school, how ever, had a rather low opinion of
them, tending to rate them as “dull”, “disgusting”, and “making no sense”.
This tendency was most pronounced as regards the non-figurative artwork,
suggesting that the students shared some common stereotypes about what
art is about and what it should look like. These attitudes bring the art historian
Sven Sandström’s (1982) contention up-to-date that Swedish schools by
neglecting the world of art contributed to render it invis ible.
In summary, teachers in the lower secondary school were influenced by
the new para digm manifested in the Lgr 80, but there was still much to be
done in order to find a proper bal ance between theoretical and practical
aspects of the subject. I do not think, however, that this point of ba lance can
be expressed in a certain percentage. The principal question is rather how
different perspectives (in the Swedish Lpo 94 operationalized as four basic
goals to be achieved) can be brought to interact in a fruitful way.
References
Abbs, Peter (2003). Against the flow. London: Routledge/Falmer.
Almgren, Anders (1971). Die umgekehrte Perspektive und die Fluchtachsenperspektive [The inverted
perspective and the vanishing-axis perspective]. Uppsala University, Sw., Uppsala Studies in
the History of Art, Nova Series, No. 8, 1971.
48 NORDIC VISUAL ARTS EDUCATION IN TRANSITION