Teaching and Artistic Practice

This subject has the following teaching availabilities in 2015:

170 hours

For the purposes of considering request for Reasonable Adjustments under the Disability Standards for Education (Cwth 2005), and Students Experiencing Academic Disadvantage Policy, academic requirements for this subject are articulated in the Subject Overview, Learning Outcomes and Assessment Requirements of this entry.

The University is dedicated to provide support to those with special requirements. Further details on the disability support scheme can be found at the Disability Liaison website: http://www.services.unimelb.edu.au/disability

This subject examines through practice, discussion and associated reading, participating students’ beliefs concerning the relationship and associated tensions of being an artist and being a teacher. As a key outcome of this subject, students will engage in a personal artistic exercise, resulting in produced work or work-in-progress, as a method for exploring this issue.While this subject is designed to accommodate all art forms, it is intended that this process be supported by an arts-specific cohort of students within this subject.Students’ artistic endeavours, and associated dialogue, will be documented and analysed through an action-research/reflective practice process, with students’ art or performance making analysed within the class and through regular contributions to an on-line discussion forum generating a community of practice.

Students will exhibit or present live their artwork/s or performance/s as a finished work or work-in-progress, with an accompanying exegesis. The exegesis is intended to extrapolate the educational implications of this personal process, which could include its impact on participants’ teaching, how their artistic practice influences the learning of their own students, or the role of personal artistic processes on a participant’s well-being as an educator.

The students will:

• develop an understanding of the processes and skills involved in art-making and articulate that understanding using the principles of reflective practice;
• produce an art-work (visual or performance based) or work-in-progress, together with a coherent analysis of its creation;
• understand the relationship including the tensions between art-making and teaching, and be able to form the beginnings of an artistic pedagogy;
• have a basic understanding of the aesthetics of teaching and how to create an aesthetic, dialogic and performative educational context.

• Project Proposal – prepare and present an outline of proposed art or performance project, with rationale: 10-15 mins, equivalent to 1000 words 20%
• Review of Literature – identify and discuss literature informing artistic production and aesthetic pedagogies (artform specific) 1000 words 20%
• Exhibition or performance of the art work or work-in-progress, with an exegesis, which reflects on the artistic processes and their implication for: either

1. the developing artistry of students in educational contexts; or

2. on the creation and sustainment of an aesthetic educational context (3000 words: 60 per cent)

Attendance at all classes (tutorial/seminars/practical classes/lectures/labs) is obligatory. Failure to attend 80% of classes will normally result in failure in the subject.

A prescribed reader will be available.

This subject is not available as a breadth subject.

• Creative and critical observational and thinking skills;
• Presentational and performative dialogic and written communication skills;
• Ability to synthesise personal experience with reading and critical analysis into other contexts eg pedagogy, design, aesthetics or principles of artistic production.