DOES ONE SIZE REALLY FIT ALL?

HOW DOES VISUAL ARTS

FAIR AS A KNOWLEDGE DOMAIN IN PROPOSALS FOR AN
AUSTRALIAN CURRICULUM FOR THE ARTS?
Karen Maras
Australian Catholic University 
Abstract
Recent research in art education asserts that learning concerns critical reasoning as a means
for theory construction and knowledge acquisition. This approach credits children with
conceptual capacity to advance understandings of intentionality and representational
relationships as they develop increasing intellectual autonomy. Learning in Visual Arts can
then be indisputably positioned as a cognitive enterprise. Discussion compares the general
orientation to cognition in Visual Arts presented in the proposed Australian Curriculum for the
Arts with empirical findings from art educational research. Analysis illustrates the extent to
which draft proposals respect the nature of children’s learning in Visual Arts providing a
means for assessing the validity of these proposals as a suitably robust and respectful
articulation of learning in the Visual Arts.

Current context of curriculum change in Australia

The Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians (MCEEDCDYA,
2008) presents the Federal Government’s policy for the establishment of a national curriculum
in Australia. The aim is to ensure that the needs of students in the 21 st century are met in a
federated curriculum that sees state educational jurisdictions incorporated within a
standardised curriculum framework. Claims for equity, inclusion and raising of educational
standards underpin the rationale for this shift to a national curriculum. The Australian
Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), a Federal agency chartered
specifically to design and implement this policy, and has appointed reference groups,
advisory panels and writers to prepare initial advice papers and draft shape papers to guide
the writing and implementation of curricular in a range of learning areas.

The Melbourne Declaration nominates the Visual and Performing Arts as fields of study in the
new Australian Curriculum. Differing state-based professional associations each with their
own histories, precedents and relationships with national advocacy bodies, stakeholder
groups including industry, generalist arts educators and specialist educators within the
various fields of the arts are assumed to be willing participants in finding consensus on the
design of the curriculum. Necessarily, high levels of politicised campaigning and territorial
claims have ensued in the ‘debate’ about how the curriculum should be structured. This has
not been an open debate with traditional state stakeholders marginalised in favour of a
national approach which does not admit researchers conversant with the expertise in the
articulation of the artforms into curriculum terms. The result, to date, sees a position that
plays neatly into the hands of the economic rationalist agendas driven by mandates for testing
in literacy and numeracy working to manage what appears to be inclusive participatory
curriculum within the visual and performing arts. The Visual and Performing Arts
nomenclature has been disbanded in favour of the ‘The Arts’ (ACARA, 2010). Where
subjects such as Visual Arts and Music have previously been identified as discrete learning
areas ‘The Arts’ now claims identity as a learning area in its own right. Included are the
artforms of Dance, Drama, Music, Media Arts and Visual Arts. Underlying this representation
of the subjects is a mandate for integration in the arts rather than acknowledgement of the
discrete and different contributions each artform makes to the education of young Australians.
The shift to integration is achieved through the universal application of a knowledge
framework and manages the distinctive artforms in a one size fits all paradigm.

Discussion will now turn to an evaluation of some of the assumptions underlying the
proposals which impact negatively on the representation of knowledge and understanding in
Visual Arts. Inconsistencies and misconceptions apparent in the proposed knowledge
structures, organisation of learning and content will be framed using realist philosophical
principles to assert alternatives that may more suitably represent the field of the Visual Arts
education (Maras, 2008a). Discussion of findings of recent research on conceptual
development as the basis for learning in the Visual Arts will be used to highlight disjunctions
in the ACARA proposals for Visual Arts.

Misconceptions of knowing in Visual Arts education

Writers of the curriculum proposals contend that knowledge in the Arts is structured according
to cognitive, sensory and affective domains (Bloom, 1984). Derived from Piagetian theory,
these are inherently determinist assumptions that invoke a hierarchy of kinds of knowledge
within a learning area (Piaget, 1929). The articulation of this structure into the learning
processes and content sees subjectivity as sensory and affective domains conflated at the
expense of the cognitive in these proposals. It is assumed that these kinds of knowing are
discrete. This in itself reveals something of the inadequacy of this structure as the basis for
knowledge in the proposals. The ubiquitous use of this determinist framework across the
curriculum has remained unquestioned for too long and has served to relegate the arts
learning areas to a second level of curriculum standing. In relation to the proposals for Visual
Arts this framework favours affective knowing in the form of subjectivity as a basis for
knowing. This matches common-sense assumptions about art held by non-specialist arbiters
of curriculum design in the ACARA curriculum development process. It appears to be
unproblematic, will remain unquestioned and will be assumed to fit neatly and naturally into
traditional lay conceptions of Visual Arts curriculum and pedagogy. The following explanation
presents an alternative conception of the structure of knowing in art that fits with what we
know of the nature of knowledge acquisition in the field of art educational research. This
includes critique of some assumptions inherent in the ACARA proposals and some
suggestions of other ways of conceiving the cognitive bases in Visual Arts curriculum.

Recent research in Visual Arts proffers a coherent and viable account of knowing in real
terms. Maras (2008a), drawing on the work on philosophical realism as a basis for
knowledge by Brown (2005, 1993, 1989) and Searle (1999, 1995, 1983), provides an
explanation of the cognitive bases of knowing in Visual Arts. Realists assert that a domain
such as the artworld is a social reality structured according to the exchanges social agents
make on the basis of their consensual beliefs and theories. How things are known to exist in
a social reality is according to the facts we ascribe things according to our explanatory beliefs.
Knowledge is constructed, represented and renovated through the function of collective
agreements and intentional practices including speech acts and the production of artefacts
which occupy our attention. In relation to Visual Arts it becomes apparent that artworld
values, theories and beliefs are exchanged through the various discourses among social
agents such as critics, artists and other consumers of artworks as artefacts.

A realist framework of knowing in art situates artworks as artefacts. Artefacts are produced
through the practices of social agents, are invested with intentional properties, and granted
meaning by audiences on the basis of the explanatory beliefs they possess. Artefacts are
intentional entities, the properties of which cause thoughts in the minds of viewers as they
recognise and identify properties they see in artworks. The function of recognition and
identification is tractable to recursions to beliefs ameliorating the kinds of facts that can be
ascribed to works (Freeman, 2001; Keil, 1989). In other words, facts about the work, or
knowledge-based meanings, are conditioned by the nature of the beliefs a person has at their
disposal which in turn condition their thoughts about what they see in the work (Wollheim,
2001, 1987). This is fundamentally a cognitive enterprise and accommodates a variety of
belief systems operating in the artworld to be acknowledged over and above that of the
subjective. It is feasible that some properties of artefacts may trigger bodily or emotional
kinds of thoughts in the minds of viewers, however it is not viable to imagine that the thoughts
a viewer has upon recognising such properties are anything but cognitive in kind. They are of
the mind and represented as thoughts which are representative of concepts, can be
converted to speech acts or other kinds of intentional acts as objective forms of knowledge
derived from explanatory theories or one’s ‘cognitive stock’ (Wollheim, 1987).

A subjective conception of knowing in art such as that proposed by ACARA (2010) does not
respect the real nature of knowledge in a practice-based domain such as Visual Arts. The
splitting of knowledge into three domains divorces cognitive knowing from sensory and/or
affective knowing and undermines the logical bases on which art can function. Under such an
explanation it is assumed that understandings gained via sensory of emotive dispositions are
divorced from cognitive function, yet in Visual Arts it has been argued that the subjective is
but one of many frames of reference we can use to make meaning and gain understanding of
practices (Brown, 1993). For example, do children explain the significance of artworks using
this subjective paradigm? Do they separate understandings of the elements of the work from
their physical responses to the work and keep these discrete from their emotional reactions to
such a picture when this is the very issue the artist was interested in representing to
audiences? Empirical evidence suggests they do none of these things when explaining art.
A study by Maras (2008a) examining how children understand the meaning of artworks
reveals that they do not structure their knowledge in this way.

Maras (2008a, 2008b, 2009) found that when children aged 12 talk about artworks they infer
ideas about properties they recognise in the picture and in so doing identify the function of the
properties. They may recognise properties of colour, shape and some of these may variously
have personal significance, however they do so in terms of how these properties are the
result of decisions and choices artists have made in producing the work. This reveals that
they operate on intentional terms rather than subjective orientations to art. Understanding
intentionality is concerned with the development of theories of mind and is thus a cognitive
enterprise and emerges with age and is something that is part of our intuitive disposition
toward artefacts such as artworks (Freeman, 2001, 1995). Bloom (2005) and Bloom and
Markson (1998) show that even very young children aged 2 years demonstrate intentional
orientations to explaining what artworks are. This orientation to identifying intentional
properties shows children even from very young ages are on the road to understanding the
representational function of artworks such as paintings. They do not assert their ideas in
subjective terms, but rather in terms of developing theoretical dispositions about how artworks
function in the domain of the artworld. It can be assumed from this that a subjective
orientation is something acquired over and above a realist framework theory of art (Brown,
1993).

The research findings outlined above show that dividing up the various domains severely
distorts the relational way we conceive of art and its representational function. Such claims
represent outdated and limited conceptions of knowledge as experience and contribute to the
conceptual confusion inherent in this curriculum proposal (Francini, in press). We do not
intuitively conceive of art in purely structural or subjective terms. Instead our orientation is
towards reasoning through ideas in practical and critical terms which take into account the
relationships of mind, language and artworks as artefacts of practice (Maras, 2008a & 2008b).
The issue of the organisation of learning will now be addressed.

Misconceptions of learning in Visual Arts education

The difficulties writers have had in marrying a determinist conception of knowledge based on
the cognitive, affective and sensory domains produces other conceptual and structural
inconsistencies within the proposals for Visual Arts. The underlying assumption that emerges
is that learning is organised by purely instrumental means designed to reflect the inherent
subjectivity of art knowing assumed in these proposals. Three ‘strands’ - generating, realising
and responding – serve to represent the nature of learning. Learning in Visual Arts is
represented as a linear process. The means-end assumption in play fails to acknowledge the
deep and very complex conceptual factors operating in the minds of artists as they make and
interpret their practices and artefacts. This does not cater for the unpredictable, serendipitous
events occurring in the classroom causing changes of direction, reconceptualisation, and
revision of intention or points of view to occur. The relational significance of thinking and
acting with reasonable intentional purpose is avoided and thus credits the student with no
mindful status in the field of practice.

Limited consultation with researchers in art education was conducted regarding the viability of
the strands of ‘generating’, ‘realising’ and ‘responding’ as appropriate organisers of Visual
Arts learning. Had this occurred ACARA writers may have avoided this problematic approach
that was disbanded in Visual Arts in New South Wales during the late 1980s. In the context
of the curriculum evaluation conducted prior to the implementation of the Stage 6 Visual Arts
Syllabus (Board of Studies,1999) instrumental descriptions of learning grounded in overt
subjectivity similar to those in the ACARA proposals were shown to fall short as practical and
assessable components of curriculum that respect the conceptually rich and rigorous nature
of learning in the learning area we now recognise and informs the K-12 curriculum continuum
in Visual Arts (Board of Studies, 1998). Above all, these strands do not reflect the centrality
of practical and critical reasoning to conceptual development and learning in Visual Arts.

Recent research provides empirical support for the centrality of reasoning to theory
construction in practical and critical forms of learning in the Visual Arts (Freeman, 1995;
Maras, 2008a). Reasoning is the means by which knowledge is constructed, acquired,
renovated. Reasoning is a recursive process by which theories are built enabling new points
of view or beliefs to be represented as explanations of things such as artworks in the world
(Feldman, 1987). Networks of ideas stabilised through renovating clusters of ideas as
comments to form increasingly abstract propositions as new topics characterises the function
of recursion. Reasoning is necessarily cyclic in form with development registering in the
qualitatively richer construals about concepts students make as they grow older and become
more dexterous reflexive thinkers in command of metacognitive processes (Flavell, 1987;
Kuhn, 2000; Yussen, 1985). Reasoning is not a linear process, nor is it conclusive. Rather, it
is iterative in nature as representational redescription is mastered and applied to new
situations within learning contexts (Karmiloff-Smith, 1992). In art we learn to represent points
of view about artefacts and practices of artworld agencies by gradually constructing more
complex explanatory theories by reasoning through new and unfamiliar ideas and integrating
them into existing theoretical structures (Maras, 2008b, 2009, in press 1).

The findings of a study by Maras (2008a) show how reasoning performances as forms of
learning and knowledge construction in art do not adhere to linear structures, nor are they
framed according to subjective orientations as the ACARA description of learning assumes.
Maras (2008a) invited children aged 6, 9 and 12 years to select portraits they deemed would
be ‘good’ for an exhibition. The exhibitions curated by individual children and reasons for
choices of portraits were recorded. Analysis focussed on patterns of reasoning children of
different ages used to construct a point of view or framework of value used to justify their
choices of particular portraits. The findings of the study, framed according to realist
conceptions of knowing in art, showed that typically children initially framed judgements of
good pictures as pictures they liked. Significantly, typically the rule of ‘liking’ pictures was not
articulated in subjective terms, nor were explanations within reasoning performances linear in
form. The older the children the more confident they were in forging patterns of stable ideas
as organisers used moderate curatorial choices. Analysis revealed that they recursively built
initials ideas associated with liking pictures into new topics, which were then adopted,
renovated to form more complex ideas, or sometimes discarded in favour of other more
persuasive categories. Subsequent selection criteria constructed within judgements of value
to produce an exhibition enabled them to achieve a sustainable representative selection of
portraits based on their value systems or beliefs about art.

Rather than favouring subjective rationales for picture choices curators in the study worked on
building value systems characterised by increasing intentional power acknowledging the
significance of representation. The older children built threads of ideas ranging from cultural,
social and aesthetic conceptions of value into complex judgements of what are good portraits
as representations of artistic intentions. Analysis of the critical reasoning from a range of age
groups provided a view of how their value systems advanced gradually as intentional
descriptions of meaning and value were acquired by the age of 9 years and consolidated by
12 years of age. It was apparent that novice critics learning to hone their reasoning as they
were learning to command some conceptual organisation used a vast array of ideas they
were caused to think about as they looked at different portraits. On this evidence it is
apparent that children are not naturally subjective learners, but adopt a range of theoretical
stances and draw in these to construct a relational value system (Maras, 2008a).

Children’s development of critical reasoning, whether in dealing with the function of artworks
as they make them or interpreting those of others, is grounded in construals that are formed
by webs of connected concepts and threads of ideas (Maras, 2009). It is not simply an act of
generation, realisation or response but the development of practices that involves strategic
formulation and intentional fortitude powered according to highly developed belief systems
about art. They are also dexterous in working with these relationally – hopping from one
stance to another to reflexively explore speculations and test assumptions, then integrating
when they can make ideas fit together. This is about developing the conceptual disposition
which enables a person to engage in a domain either as a practitioner or as an agent
explaining the intentional and representational nature of the practices of others within the
domain (Freeman, 1995). This knowledge is acquired with age with the support and
interventions of teachers in assisting students to make links between new and old
conceptions within developing belief systems. This brings to light the absence of any domain-
specific acknowledgement of the nature of knowledge in Visual Arts within the ACARA
proposals.

So far the inappropriateness of descriptions of knowing and the strands as means by which
learning or knowledge acquisition occurs have been addressed and found to be deficient in a
suitable representation of Visual Arts as a knowledge domain in which conceptual
development underpins learning. These descriptions do not represent a domain of practice in
Visual Arts. In fact they could be applied to any other area of study. That students think in
domain specific terms seems to have been overlooked even though this is sustained in
empirical research that has been well documented in the history and traditions of Visual Arts
education both nationally and internationally (Freeman, 2001; Maras, 2009, in press 2).
Herein lies another disjunction between what is assumed by the ACARA writers about the
nature of Visual Arts content and how students actually conceptualise the domain of Visual
Arts.

Misconceptions of what is Visual Arts content

Children are domain specific thinkers (Freeman, 1995, Freeman & Parsons, 2001). They
build explanatory theories about domains enabling them to make sense of and understand
the organisation of things in the world. For Freeman (1995) domain specificity applies to
artworks and how they fit into the domain of the artworld. Freeman’s research specifically
targets the developmental shifts children demonstrate in domain specific reasoning in art
according to age. By asking younger and older children to consider the nature of
relationships between agents within a domain and the artefacts (pictures) that are produced,
function and are consumed in the domain Freeman and Sanger (1995) ascertained that
children graduate from naïve realist theories of art towards real theories which take into
account how artworks are ascribed representational function. The key to this gradual shift is
a focus on how they learn to distribute their reasoning over a network of concepts: artist,
artworks, beholder and subject matter. These concepts are fixtures within the domain of art
which remain stable within children’s thinking. As they learn and acquire more complex
theories of art they learn to integrate the functional relationships within and between these
agencies of domain functions. For example, very young children infer things about the
subject matter of pictures and then gradually start to acknowledge the relationship of this as
part of the picture function. This naturalistic conception waivers as they become more
dexterous and begin to implicate the artists as having a role in the formation or production of
the picture. At about 12 years they are equipped to make artefactual inferences about
pictures as serving a purpose for audiences as something an artist takes into account as they
make a representation of something in the world in pictorial form (Brown & Freeman, 1993).
This is all about learning to distribute intentional inferences within a domain and thus
consolidating representational understanding (Carey & Spelke, 1994; Freeman & Sanger,
1995).

The findings of Freeman (1995, 2001) are also confirmed by Maras (2008a, 2008b) wherein
children applied their domain specific theories to explanations of artworks in a curatorial
scenario. Similar shifts in the patterns of their construals were identified as children invoked
increasingly more intentional values into their explanation with age. The structures students
use to conceptualise art as a domain are not honoured in the nomination of ‘elements of art’
as content for Visual Arts proposed by ACARA. ‘Elements of art’ refer to the formal features
of artworks and are nominated in an attempt to lock down something determinant as content
in a framework favouring the subjective experience as the means by which content is learned.
This is another anomaly. ‘Elements of art’ are incommensurate with the variety of kinds of
artworks existing in contemporary and historical art practice. Danto (1981), for example,
showed how futile it is to attempt formal analysis of the qualities of conceptual works such
Duchamp’s Urinal. An analysis of the issues associated with ‘responding’ and the nomination
of ‘elements of art’ as Visual Arts content has shown that the assumption that children
orientate themselves subjectively and then deal with structural aesthetics as a means to
secure understanding is inaccurate (Maras, in press 2). These assumptions about art content
actually work against the very theories children have and use as the basis for their learning.
Children work on talking about artists and how they make artworks with intentions to
represent ideas to audiences. How is it logical to then prescribe content wherein we teach
them the elements of art?

The nomination of elements of art as content obfuscates the centrality of reasoning about the
intentional value of art from a range of theoretical perspectives. This singular approach
denies opportunities to talk with students on their terms about art and reduces the importance
of understanding how talking through representational relationships in reasoned ways
contributes to theory building and therefore learning. As the ACARA proposals show there is
no acknowledgement of intention as a factor in art content and nor is representational
understanding admitted. Instead the ‘elements of art’ reduces knowing in art to another set of
supposedly determinant outcomes, but in fact misrepresents the field of the Visual Arts in so
doing. Students are not innate formalists who concern themselves with elements and
principles of art. Nor do they respond emotively and just intuit new ideas through experience.
Rather they rely on logically related intentional structures to represent their views about art
(Maras, in press 2; Freeman, 2001).

Real content please

Recent research on children’s developing theories of critical meaning in art involved analysis
of the concepts children of different ages use to talk about portrait paintings (Maras, 2008a).
The kinds of concepts they use and construct as they reason about art reveals something of
the kinds of theories of art they have developed at certain ages. The kind of theory children
have about art is constrained by particular ontological assumptions that bear out in the ways
they manage the construction of inferential meaning and concepts within the formation of
critical judgements as representations of art understanding framed according to a variety of
sustainable theoretical perspectives (Freeman, 2001; Maras, 2009). By the time a child
reaches 12 years of age they are typically in command of a reasonably well-defined
commonsense theory of art (Freeman, 2001; Maras, in press 2). Artworks are conceived as
artefacts of artistic practice. This realist conception of art involves explaining the intentional
relationships between artworld concepts as a means for interpreting the representational
significance of artworks and their meanings. On this basis, the adoption of realist theoretical
underpinnings in the development of the Visual Arts curriculum within the Australian
Curriculum offers substantial benefit to the development of an aspirational curriculum to better
support learning and teaching in sustainable bases. Realist frameworks of knowing situate
the cognitive basis for knowing in art in logically structured objective terms. Taking into
account how understanding in art can be represented in factually along a continuum of
development, this framework respects the structure of students’ intuitive theories of art and
how they develop increasingly intentional explanations of the representational value of
artworks. A realist account of knowing provides a means for bridging the theoretical gaps
with students as we work them through the nexus of relationships between mind, language
and artworks. After all, these are the terms we have at our disposal in classrooms and use to
develop students’ capacities to reason, conceptualise and represent their understandings of
art content in order that they develop greater intellectual autonomy as artists and critics.

Concluding remarks
On this assessment, the Visual Arts as a knowledge domain does not fair well. It is evident
that the framework for knowledge, the deterministic and generic subjective statements used
to organise knowledge acquisition and description of what is content are at odds with the
purpose of designing a viable, appropriate and robust curriculum for Visual Arts education.
The determinist formulation of Visual Arts content set with a subjective framework is
incommensurate with the ways students structure their thinking about art. Structural
aesthetics and experiential instrumentalities are at odds with children’s developing framework
theories and therefore are unsustainable as the basis for curriculum content.
This evaluation has highlighted that an appropriate, coherent and legitimate proposal for
Visual Arts curriculum lies in an account of knowing which reflects realist bases for knowing in
Visual Arts. A real conception of knowing acknowledges the centrality of critical reasoning as
a form of knowledge acquisition within Visual Arts and specifically illustrates the nature of
knowledge acquisition within a field of social practice. In turn this field of practice can be
structured in objective terms which represent the core concepts and relationships between
these as the basis for art understanding and developmental advance.

In conclusion, the proposals as they currently stand, for the shape of The Arts in the
Australian Curriculum avoid the relational and complex forms of knowing educators in the
visual arts adhere to as the basis for their teaching promoting sustainable learning and
authentic assessment in the subject. Rather than embrace the opportunity to move to an
aspirational conception of learning in which relational practice-based knowledge grounded in
conceptual structures is possible for each of the artforms, a position that has proven results in
curriculum practice in New South Wales for over a decade, writers have retreated to a
common-sense description of the structure of knowledge. Should these proposal proceed it
will be left for good teachers to do what they do best – implement a surrogate curriculum
which addresses the deficiencies of a short-sighted and poorly conceived representation of
Visual Arts and the other arts learning areas. The best practice principles described in this
paper offer the ACARA writers viable constraints to consider using in the re-conceptualisation
of the shape of the curriculum for Visual Arts. Indeed if they were creative they may see how
this framework could address how learning and knowing and content may be conceived within
all learning areas within the Visual and Performing Arts.

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This paper will be published in the Journal of Australian Education: Special Edition in conjunction
with the 2010 InSEA Congress, Values, Views and Visions, Melbourne, Oct 14-16 2010.