Research in Visual Arts Education - Bilderlernen.at

MEDIATED ACTION AND AESTHETIC LEARNINGThemes in Swedish studies 1995–2008Lars LindströmIntroductionContemporary education of visual arts teachers in Sweden can be characterizedin terms of two trends: decentralisation and academisation. In the 1960s,when the shift from an art-based conception of the subject to visual communicationtook place, all art teachers were trained at the University Collegeof Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm (Konstfack) (Nordström 1994).In 1976 Umeå University in Northern Sweden began to train art teachers aswell (Eklund, 2002). Since 1994, however, each institution of higher educationcan decide which courses they want to teach. As a consequence, todayat least nine universities and university colleges offer curricula designed fortraining art teachers . Since 1988, training in art educationhas to be combined with preparation for teaching another schoolsubject as well. Therefore, a degree of bachelor of education in the visualarts (Sw. bildlärarexamen) no longer exists.Only Konstfack includes work samples as a requirement for being acceptedinto the programme. At other schools for education, the artistic training ofstudents before entering the programme varies a lot. The decentralisationof art teacher training has consequences for the identity formation of artteachers. As with music teachers (Alexandersson, 2007), teaching art tendedto be a way of life rather than a profession. Art teachers accepted or evenappreciated being defined as “outsiders” in the school community. The presentgeneration, trained in pictorial studies combined with another schoolsubject at institutes all over the country, increasingly look upon themselvesas any other category of teachers (Marner, 2008).As a result of more than half a century of reforms, teacher educationhas step by step been integrated into the university. The latest step in thatdirection was taken in 2007 when the Stockholm Institute of Education,preparing one fifth of all teachers in the country for their profession, wasclosed down as an autonomous authority and absorbed by eight departmentsof educational sciences erected at Stockholm University. A Department of52 NORDIC VISUAL ARTS EDUCATION IN TRANSITION