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Previous studies (Lindström, 2009) have mapped research in the field of visual arts education in the Nordic countries and found that the countries differ somewhat in terms of focus and areas of interest. One of the aims of the development project is to similarly map both educational programmes and research at the participating higher education institutions in order to gain a picture of the current situation and to find possible entry points for increased collaboration. For example, the type of theories and methods used and the concepts emphasised in education and research. However, participating institutions come into the project from different angles and with different interests and needs. A potential challenge for the project is therefore to balance two objectives that may clash. How do we identify common denominators that can enable exchanges of various kinds in both research and education, while at the same time allowing for the differences that exist between the countries and educational programmes? Diversity, we think, needs to be embraced as it offers different perspectives that can enrich our respective practices. But how can we, as a large and heterogeneous group, reach consensus on certain issues and what we want to achieve?  Do we need to think and act alike? In order to collaborate we also need to adjust to formal educational requirements. A possible risk of collaboration is that programmes become more standardised to enable exchanges. Is there a risk that something will be lost? How can we recognise our differences in a way that offers us the opportunity to test and rethink our practices. In this presentation we share some reflections based on ongoing analysis of our research and study programmes at Umea university, as well as discussions from the project start-up meeting in Helsinki in August 2024.

Reference: 

Lindström, L. (Ed.) (2009). Nordic visual art education in transition. A research review. Swedish Research Council.

This article problematises the amendment of the Swedish Education Act using visual arts education as a case. In 2021, the Swedish government, on behalf of a Committé, released a report promoting publisher-produced teaching materials, e.g., to strengthen students’ access to publisher-produced teaching materials. Furthermore, equivalence is a central argument in the state report for using textbooks in all subjects. The state report has been analysed with policy analysis and the results show that teaching materials are promoted as an answer to declining school results, which is the problem represented to be. Traditionally, visual arts teachers produce their teaching materials. The authors agree that an image-based subject, such as visual arts, can benefit from using textbooks to a greater extent. However, the state report does not consider the unique characteristics of visual arts nor its deep-rooted traditions regarding image-making and art teachers’ professional autonomy.

Research topic/aim: Based on the concept of defamiliarization, this paper examines how artistic methods can be used in teaching to explore and challenge different topics and working practices in educational contexts. This is especially relevant in relation to the complexand changing world that schools need to equip students to face. The paper aims to answer the following questions: In what way can defamiliarization be understood as a pedagogical method? And how can defamiliarization be used as a critical perspective in education?

The paper is mainly based on an article about using artistic methods in compulsory school as a way to problematize an anthropocentric perspective (Marklund, 2022), with examples from visual arts in a lower secondary school in Sweden. The paper also includes an example of using art assignments in higher education to explore conceptual themes in visual arts, as well as unconventional methods for teaching.

Theoretical framework: The term defamiliarization derives from Russian formalism and describes when the artistic form, the embodiment or shape of something, is used to make us stop and be surprised, breaking our routines and habitual ways of seeing (Sklovskij, 1971). Here the concept is utilized to test its bearing on concrete situations when using artistic methods in teaching.

Methodological design: The data consists of observation notes, interviews and students' pictures from an art assignment in lower secondary school on the theme of human rights. The assignment concerned aspects of social sustainability with an aim to foster democratic values and ran over an entire semester. The pictures were exhibited in a library at the end of the semester.

Expected conclusions/findings: As a pedagogical method, defamiliarization can be used as an artistic device in production or when experiencing art. Artistic methods can also defamiliarize the forms of teaching in school. The degree of defamiliarization in students’ pictures vary, and using artistic methods does not necessarily mean that the theme or topic of the assignment becomes defamiliarized. In order to use defamiliarization as a critical perspective in education, students need support and guidance in order to ensure a problematization of the subject content. However, students experience defamiliarization in a different way than the teacher.

The result show that a strong formalized and goal-oriented school discourse can hamper defamiliarization, thus changingenvironment or simply providing a different work method can offer a possible change of perspective.

Relevance to Nordic educational research: The result is interesting in relation to several educational contexts, since it highlights the challenges of working in a goal oriented school, while encouraging students to dare to go beyond the expected and think outside the box. 

Sedan 2011 blir grundlärare mot fritidshem behöriga att undervisa i ett praktiskt-estetisktämne i grundskolan, vilket innebär att de förväntas hantera ett dubbelt kompetenskrav; dels skolans kursplanestyrda undervisning och dels fritidshemmets informella lärande (Berglund,Lager, Lundquist & Gustafsson Nyckel, 2019). Detta paper presenterar en pågående studie vars syfte är att granska hur bild konstrueras i en formell respektive informell lärmiljö, samt vilka pedagogiska värderingar som därigenom framträder. Hur uppfattar och hanterar lärarna sitt uppdrag inom respektive lärmiljö? Vilka likheter och skillnader framträder i lärarnas bildarbetei fritidshem och skola? Och vad i respektive lärmiljö framträder som betydelsefullt för hur bild konstrueras av lärarna?

Sex lärare har hittills intervjuats och deras egna fotografier av klassrum, material och bilduppgifter har samlats in. Studien använder ett bekvämlighetsurval, med kriteriet att grundlärarna mot fritidshem är behöriga i bild och har erfarenhet av arbete i fritidshem och skola. Utbildningssociologi i kombination med policyanalys används för att synliggöra kontextuella förutsättningar och värderingar bakom ämneskonstruktioner och hur det pedagogiska uppdraget uppfattas av lärarna.

This presentation discusses and problematizes the use of teaching materials in the subject of visual arts from a historical perspective and relation to the contemporary. In visual arts, teaching materials are disparate since visual art teachers use published teaching materials combined with self-produced dito, which potentially creates a problem regarding equivalence (SOU 2021:70). Also, a recurring challenge in art education is the visual arts teachers' ambivalence towards linguistics in relation to the visual, non-formulated aspects of the teaching (Karlsson Häikiö, 2021), which affects the use of teaching materials.

In traditional art education in the 19th century, images and models were used to describe and explain phenomena concerning the outside world. This demonstrative teaching through instructive materials continued through television and video tapes in the 1960s to today's multimedia programs and digital images (Eriksson, 2004). A paradigm shift from technical drawing at the beginning of the century to visual arts guided by artistic values in the 1930s led to a new era in teaching materials influencing the subject from a more aestheticized perspective (Åsén, 2006).

The subject of visual arts is today considered part of a broader research field, visual culture, using multimodal ways of knowing (Buhl, Flensborg & Illeris, 2003). Visual competence has formerly been highlighted as an aspect of knowledge connected to seeing in the syllabus for visual arts (Curriculum Lgr22; Wagner & Schönau, 2016). This is where teaching materials can play a role.

Until 1991, Sweden had state control of teaching materials to ensure their quality. After the abolition of state control, the professionalism of teachers and an open market in teaching materials would ensure the quality of the teaching materials (Långström, 1997).  At the same time, digitization took off, and teachers can use different sources in their teaching. It is now common for teachers to combine published teaching materials with open sources, free materials, and self-produced teaching materials. 

After nearly 20 years of no government control of teaching materials, the Swedish government released a report (SOU 2021:70) on teaching materials in schools. The report promotes teaching materials and highlights their benefits. Similar sentiments are heard from both teachers and politicians. The report (SOU 2021:70) has been analyzed in the research project with policy analysis based on Bacchi's What's the problem represented to be? (WPR) (2009), and the results will be presented at the conference.

Research topic/aim: This paper examines how students in an art teacher training program relate to and deal with transformations when moving between digital and analogue domains in creating basic 3D-objects in design workshops. The aim is to explore different affordances in digital and analogue techniques in a design process, especially regarding cooperation and social aspects of learning, in relation to art education. 

• What appear to be easy or difficult for students in each respected domain? 
• What is qualitatively highlighted in the creative process?

On the basis of these questions, we discuss which pedagogical insights that can be gained through 3D-transformations in regards to visual arts education and its relationship to new digital tools and perspectives. 

Theoretical framework: In order to analyze and discuss different pedagogical insights from the workshops, the paper draws on both Dewey (2005) and Schön (2003) and their thoughts on reflection in action and social learning systems, but also how different subject specific qualities can emerge in the situation of learning. In other words, the uniqueness of the subject at hand, and it ́s particular media specific affordances (Norman, 1988), that both enable and hinder certain ideas, thoughts and actions. 

Methodology/research design: The study was conducted as a two-part workshop together with second year students on an art teacher training program. The students were assigned to produce every day-objects in small groups. First, they designed digital 3D-models, which was then printed and transformed and re-interpreted through analogue materials in the second workshop. The empirical material consists of observation notes and photographs from the workshops, and collected reflections from the participants. 9 students participated in workshops during the fall of 2021, and 6 students participated during the fall of 2022. 

Expected results/findings: There is a difference in how different groups approach and use different strategies in the problem-solving situation. Some try to de-code expected outcomes, and try to solve the task at hand as fast and efficiently as possible, while others emphasize qualities of problem-solving that the workshop provides. Yet another approach is to take on a meta-perspective on the task itself, and focus on learning aspects in relation to teaching – thus highlighting democratic and collaborative methods in problem solving. 

Relevance to Nordic educational research: The result is interesting to discuss in relation to both learning and teaching in higher education, since it discusses both challenges and potentials of using digital tools in order to explore core concepts within a subject and a study program at large. 

References: Dewey. (2005). Art as experience (Perigree trade paperback ed.). Penguin books.Norman, D.A. (1998). The design of everyday things (New ed.). London: MIT.

Schön. (2003). The reflective practitioner: how professionals think in action (Repr.). Ashgate. 

Inom forskning som undersöker utbildning för hållbar utveckling efterfrågas kritiska perspektiv, liksom ett problematiserande av utbildningens grundantaganden och utgångspunkter. Utifrån detta syftar artikeln till att teoretiskt undersöka hur främmandegöring, ett konstnärligt grepp för att fördröja varseblivelsen, kan användas som metod för att erbjuda möjlighet till problematisering och kritisk granskning i undervisning. De frågor artikeln söker svar på är: På vilket vis kan främmandegöring förstås som en pedagogisk metod? Hur kan främmandegöring användas som ett kritiskt perspektiv i utbildning? Artikeln utgår från bildämnet och dess konstnärliga metoder. Ett skolprojekt från en empiriskt grundad forskningsstudie i grundskolan används som exempel för att pröva begreppets relevans och bäring i utbildningssammanhang. Det framkommer att främmandegöring kan användas som metod både i möten av verk och som alternativa undervisningsformer. Främmandegöring kan även vara ett verktyg för att kritiskt granska olika fenomen, men det kräver en medveten och genomtänkt iscensättning av undervisningen från lärarens sida.

This study revolves around visual storytelling and focuses on art education in lower secondary school, where visual storytelling is meant to give pupils the opportunity to express their experiences and opinions. The aim of the thesis is to acquire knowledge concerning norms and values that are constructed and reproduced while making storytelling pictures in art education in compulsory school, and how this creates conditions for pupils’ visual storytelling.

The study uses an ethnographic method. Two art teachers and 65 pupils in grades 8 and 9 at two different schools participate in the study, and art lessons were observed during the 2016/2017 school year following the work with four art assignments where pupils produced storytelling pictures. A total of 36 lessons were observed. The empirical material consists of observation notes, sound recordings, documents and photographs from the observed lessons, four interviews with teachers, 15 interviews with pupils and 65 pictures produced by the pupils. Using Bernstein’s (2000) theories of the school as a site for reproduction of societal values and pedagogic discourse as a principle that relocates and recontextualises other discourses into school subjects, this study examines the norms and values that underpin the educational practice when working with storytelling in art education. Terms and concepts from pictorial semiotics and narratology are also used for analysing the pictures.

The analysis reveals a progressive and invisible pedagogy in the subject. Art is considered to be fun, free, and creative and is positioned as being different compared to so-called theoretical school subjects. Both teachers and pupils reproduce traditional values in the subject, for example, the importance of technical skills and that art can promote personal development and personal expression. These ideas mainly derive from a technical/artisan tradition and art-psychology. Traditional techniques and materials are emphasised, which promotes two-dimensional and handcrafted pictures, as well as a Western art canon. Due to a neoliberal discourse in schools, pupils tend to focus on concrete and measurable learning goals rather than process-oriented or communicative goals which they find more abstract. As for the teachers, the emphasis on traditional techniques, materials and slow processes can be understood as a resistance towards a perceived pressure from the outside and as a way to protect what they believe to be the core of the subject. Picture production is also seen as a prerequisite for personal development. These traditions and values favours aspects of picture production rather than aspects of storytelling. The results show that pupils can refer to a wide range of topics in their pictures. They primarily express experiences on the content level through what is said in the picture rather than how it is told. An emphasis on traditional techniques makes it difficult for pupils to express their experiences of, for example, digital media. Some pupils also have a different understanding than the teachers of what constitutes an experience. They perceive it as something concrete, an everyday event that they have personally experienced, while teachers have a more complex understanding. The teachers regard experiences from visual culture, for example, fiction, to be as valid as real-life experiences. This calls for further problematization of the term.

In conclusion, the results are discussed in relation to the structuring of pedagogic discourse at different educational levels, thus deepening our understanding of how classroom practice relates to an overarching ideology concerning education and school.