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

MEDIATED ACTION AND AESTHETIC LEARNING
[Perspectives on Aesthetic Learning Processes], Hohr and Pedersen (1996)
say that we do not simply express our personal experiences; we mediate
them by using, for example, a pictorial language. As a consequence, we learn
and develop simultaneously our capability as human beings. A comprehensive
education, accordingly, should include different languages, e.g. the verbal,
the musical, the embodied, the pictorial and the artifactual as well as
the everyday, the poetic and the scientific. Pedersen (1998, p. 26) defines
aesthetic learning as “knowing that comes out of mediating experience (…)
through an active speech act, where the medium transforms what is perceived
and construed through the form in which it is represented [Dan. gennem
sine formsproglige fremstillingsformer] (…) Thus in the learning process the
perception must be translated into sensuous forms of various kinds”.
In Sweden, the expression “aesthetic learning processes” was introduced
as a rhetoric innovation rather than as a paradigm shift. For some teachers it
referred to nothing more than what they already are, or should be, monitoring.
Claes Ericsson and Monica Lindgren (2007) identify at least seven fairly
articulated uses of the concept. Aulin-Gråhamn and Thavenius (2003) prefer
to talk about a set of aesthetic “perspectives” on learning. In a review of
research on “learning through art”, Lindström (2002a) makes a distinction
between learning about, in, with and through art. From an arts advocacy
point of view, Marner (2006) cautions that an unspecified, medium-neutral
talk about aesthetics, can make decision makers neglect the medium-specific
qualifications needed for integrating art, craft or music with academic subjects.
However, in aesthetic domains without a long tradition within separate
subjects, such as drama (Austring & Sørensen, 2006), film and ICT,
teachers seem to be more inclined to initiate interdisciplinary projects and
elective activities under the banner of aesthetic learning processes. Helena
Danielsson’s (1998) licentiate thesis reports on film making in the compulsory
school. She found that qualities of the process, such as group work and
the use of language, were more important for these students than making a
product. Fredrik Lindstrand’s (2006) doctoral thesis describes and analyses
teenagers’ interaction and learning while making a film. The study shows
in great detail how they reflect and make choices at different stages of the
filmmaking process. In her licentiate thesis, Lisa Öhman-Gullberg’s (2006)
studies how students in grade 6 (12 years) of the compulsory school use film
to represent and communicate ideas in an interdisciplinary project on the
EMU (European Monetary Union) referendum 2003. In her doctoral thesis,
Laddade bilder [Ambiguous Images], Öhman-Gullberg (2008) studies representation
and meaning-making in young girls’ film-making. Here, as well
as in her previous study, learners are portrayed as producers of knowledge
through a process of selection, adaptation and transformation.
62 NORDIC VISUAL ARTS EDUCATION IN TRANSITION