Revisiting the Conceptual Domain: Educational Knowledge and the Visual Arts

Abstract

In modern Western education, the visual arts have come to hold a problematic position in the school curriculum. Art is often classified by school leaders, students, parents and even teachers as different from other subjects; sometimes viewed as almost magical, enabling students to explore and develop an innate creativity; sometimes simply unimportant, a therapeutic respite from the more demanding academic subjects. In this article, I trace the problematic relationship between visual arts and educational knowledge. I propose that this dynamic prevents the function of robust assessment systems and constrains equal access. I investigate how my subject has been thus marginalised, with reference to curriculum and policy documents that influence my immediate situation, and turn to the work of educational sociologist Basil Bernstein and his followers, to define the problem and plot a possible future for art education. Bernstein’s model of the pedagogic device, his work on the recontextualisation of knowledge and his concept of pedagogic rights assist me in formulating a case for an articulated conceptual grammar in visual arts education.