European Art and Design Curriculum (Scandinavia and Nordic countries)

Transcription

1 1 European Art and Design Curriculum (Scandinavia and Nordic countries) Mira Kallio-Tavin Abstract This chapter provides an overview on art and design education in Scandinavian and Nordic countries: Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Iceland. The cultural, educational, political and historical similarities and differences, and their effects on art and design education in each country are discussed. These countries share some similar traditions and ideologies in art and design education, and the influence between the countries is discussed. These ideologies, for example, are on the one hand attached to ideas about social justice, democracy, and equality, and on the other hand, identification is tied to small countries with an art, architecture and design profiles. The first stems from the highly valued Nordic education systems, emphasizing democratic society, egalitarianism, socially just pedagogical skills and practices, and human rights and social, cultural and environmental sustainability. The latter is connected to Nordic values and products through the visual field, including learning about visual art, architecture, and design developed in the Nordic region. The discussion on ideologies includes a critique of the idealization of the Nordic life, focusing on myths and truths about social welfare, democracy, and economic competitiveness. In addition, the chapter describes how and why the change from a mono-cultural society to a relatively multicultural society has been slower in some of the Nordic countries than in many European countries. While the emphasis in the chapter is on curricular issues, and current and past situations in each country, Finnish art education and its response to artistic, social, cultural, design and educational conditions is discussed in depth.

2 2 Introduction The Nordic countries are a geographical and cultural region in Northern Europe consisting of five nations: Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Iceland, and their autonomous regions, such as Greenland and Faroe Islands. In 2015, Nordic countries included the population of 26,6 million people. Nordic visual arts and design education has developed from the close fields of art history, psychology and child studies. In this chapter the development of each Nordic country s curriculum is discussed together with the development of theoretical and conceptual impact. Art and design education curricula in Nordic countries has been developing in relationship to the larger educational philosophies, cultural movements, prevalent notions in the society, and the status and appreciation of art teaching in schools at each time. All Nordic countries follow their written national curricula. The national curricula are important political texts that describe the current notion of what is understood as important in teaching: What are currently actual and needed and what are the estimated future competences in all teaching. In addition it describes the contemporary values and societal focus areas for all schooling, and reflects the current political leadership and their values. Revisions of the comprehensive school curricula, including primary and secondary schools, and upper secondary school are carried out approximately every ten years in each Nordic countries. In the history, visual art curriculum have been given different tasks whether it has been on building the identity of a young independent country, such like Finland after 1917 or strengthen international competition with a task of educating new generation of creative design and economy.

3 3 Although the practices in schools might not have always exactly followed the written national curricula, the texts have given important direction and guidance to the teachers in schools. I explain the ethos in each country providing a short review to the past and current cultural, educational, political and philosophical perspectives and discuss how they have effected on curriculum development in art and design education, and how the written curriculum works in practice. I focus on art education curricula in the comprehensive schools, which includes primary school, grades 1 through 6 (students 7-13 years of age) and secondary school, grades 7 through 9 or 10 (students 13-15/16 years of age), and upper secondary school, which is three years voluntary education in all the five Nordic countries. There is an option of voluntary vocational education instead of upper secondary school in all Nordic countries. Although vocational schools have art educational curriculum as well, this article does not discuss them. There has been four influential concepts in all Nordic art and design curriculum development that have differently shaped the curricula in all Nordic countries: craftsmanship, child-centered education, subject as preparation for fine arts, and subject as visual communication. These were also the joint themes when mapping the beginning of Nordic visual art education collaboration in the 1990 s. In Denmark, Sweden and Finland there is a strong legacy and input by German education. Especially the concept bildung has effected the notion of art learning. Bildung refers to education as a holistic cultural formation of learning that include democratic and critical thinking, and ideas of responsible and meaningful life. Through bildung in teaching the students are pushed towards new insights and new ways of asking questions. Education is hence seen primarily a process of producing democratic and critical citizens. Although bildung is a concept of general education, it was adopted by Nordic art educators and connected to the concepts in visual art

4 4 teaching, such as forming, which was for example the name of visual art school subject in Norway Although visual art is an independent subject in all countries except from Norway, there is a historical relationship between visual art and handicrafts, textile and woodwork (sloyd/slöjd/sløyd). Sloyd is a special type of craft-based holistic education, started by Finnish Uno Cygnaeus in 1865, and promoted and further developed worldwide. Curricula in many Nordic countries include design and architecture education. These contents come on one hand as part of craft education and on the other hand as built environmental education in visual art. Environmental education also includes natural environment and has a strong tradition especially in Finland. In practice, maturity of the teaching includes quite traditional art classroom practices, such as artistic expression through drawing, painting and sculpturing. Art history, and occasionally contemporary art, is part of the curriculum in every country, though the making is always emphasized more than interpretation. The ambitious visions of art education researchers and professors have hence not always taken practice in classrooms. One of the long-term development areas of art educators has been the analysis of art and other visual culture images, and an effort to understand how to define and use visuality as a language of communication. The effort of the leading art educators in universities and university colleges since early 1970s was to develop pictorial language skills in Sweden, and later in Denmark and Finland. Visual communication, and even the contemporary visual culture education, in the Nordic countries have its roots in a critical study of mass media and in the 1970 s the societal activism. The method was called polarized method. This method was openly political and was linked on one hand to socialist revolution and on the other hand to an ambition of influencing the environmental issues. It was heavily influenced by critical study of mass communication

5 5 and on the idea of art education as social activism. The method itself was developed in Sweden and was spread especially in Denmark and Finland. Based on pragmatism and Dewey s thinking, the method aimed to dissolve the confrontation between theory and practice and school and society. It was offered as an alternative to the Bauhaus pedagogy and expressive art education movement. Students own experiences were valued and the societal criticism was emphasized. Societal power relations were analyzed through semiotics and the mass media was seen as an injurious tool of capitalism. The idea behind this method was to show that exploitation of both people and the nature really exists, and it was possible to expose and visualize through a critical study of mass media. Interestingly, visual literacy is part of the Finnish new national curriculum for 2014, and is one of the general core concepts, multiliteracy. In the contemporary Swedish curriculum visual communication has been connected more tightly to art and media education. Generally, art and design education has been given a great symbolic value in the curriculum. Art and design education have been understood as a part of national cultural capitalism and as a symbol of sophisticated nation. Nordic countries are often described as idealized nations where welfare, democracy, and more recently economic competitiveness are seen to be highly developed (Mulinari, Keskinen, Irni & Tuori, 2009, p. 1). The ideas of a democratic and equal society are so inherently valued that there has been little room for critical self-recognition on the national and traditional culture. Nordic countries never went through a period of critique of colonialism, as did other European countries in the aftermath of the dismantling of the colonial empires. While the former colonial countries have had to formulate and rebuild their relationship to postcolonial politics, the Nordic countries have represented themselves as outsiders in relation to colonial power relations. This pure and innocent bystander position has left room for the development of non-critical policies and practices. Although anti-racist

6 6 movements and academic discussion on diversity have been part of the Nordic societies since the 1970s, these countries have managed to retain an image of themselves as untouched by colonial legacies (Mulinari et al., 2009, p.2). The developments of visual art and design education curricula are attached to the general values of Nordic societies, such as democracy, egalitarianism, social just, human rights and social, cultural, economical and environmental sustainability. Simultaneously, there has not yet been enough recognition of different learners and students different cultural backgrounds. The Nordic democracy has not yet included everybody in the Nordic region. Even the local minority cultures are not very well represented in the national curricula. Norway s upper secondary school used to include course on Sami visual culture before, but that is not in the program anymore. In the future, Nordic countries will be much more culturally diversified than before. This change has already been happening during the past few decades and will keep on happening more than anybody could estimate just a decade ago. Next I will discuss past and current art and design curricula, and the main developments in research, philosophy and politics that has effected on their development, in each Nordic country. Finland There are too universities in Finland, which offer visual art teacher education: Aalto University and University of Lapland. The latter was developed from the first program couple decades ago. The 100 years old program in Aalto University has belonged to an art

7 7 and design university and that has brought some special characteristics into it. The context of applied arts has created a link between art education and design, and hence art teaching in schools has always had a connection to design and to a larger context of visual culture. Teacher education is highly valued in Finland all teachers in the Finnish school system hold a master degree, either in a subject or in general education and understood as a guarantee for high level schooling. In some universities master degree in classroom teaching offers visual art as a broad specialization. Teachers graduated with this emphasis are then specialized in art, but are not considered as art teachers. The doctoral studies in art education were developed in the 1990s, and the fist dissertation was defended in In Aalto there has been 34 doctoral dissertations defended in visual art education by the end of 2015, and 9 in Lapland, between 2005 and Northern American influence has been quite strong in the Finnish art education doctoral studies and research. Many doctoral students have partially studied in the US and many American scholars have spent time in Finland. Generally, visual art is being taught through the entire elementary school by classroom teachers, instead of art teachers. Although they have MA in education, their experience and knowledge in visual arts varies greatly. Educated art teachers teach form the seventh grade on. On the 8 th and 9 th grade art is an elective subject, as it is in the upper secondary school after the first mandatory course. As a non-academic subject, visual art is understood as a practical subject and given appreciation differs in different schools. Art teachers usually only teach art, although some have certification to teach another subject, such as textile crafts, or they have a classroom teacher certificate. Very rarely visual art teachers have combinations with other type of school subjects, such as and mathematics, or biology. These

8 8 types of combinations however guarantee work possibilities and enables insights to subject integration in a meaningful way, and might be popular in the future. The first national curriculum for comprehensive schools was written in 1970, when comprehensive schooling was first established in Finland. Prior that time the schools followed two different curricula. The comprehensive school curricula have been revised subsequently in 1985, 1993, 2004 and In the early 1970s the societal activism challenged art educators, art teachers and students to contemplate images as means of interpreting and influencing the society. Visual culture was analyzed with polarized method and the theoretical background game from semiotics and Marxism. The 1970 curriculum emphasized visual communication in different forms. The curriculum mentions eight areas in addition to visual communication: color teaching, art history, problem teaching, visual compositions, group work, creative crafts, space and camera arts. At 1980s, the emphasis moved on to concern art making and self-expression, art therapy, environmental art education and design education. The influence of those ideas are still quite significant in many classroom practices, especially in those schools whose teachers studies at that time. Theoretical thinking was not very popular, except for that which DBAE emphasized; aesthetics and art history. At 1980 s and 1990 s the contents that dealt with popular culture and media in art education were viewed with suspicion and they were thought to represent propagandist political views from 1970 s. The 1985 curriculum was about supporting creative expression, abandoning stereotypical expression, and practicing motor skills, techniques, testing out different materials, and developing personal way of expression. Practicing perception as a skill was a new idea, along with the idea of

9 9 developing students artists and visual attitudes and stances as competences. Painting, drawing, sculpturing and graphic printing were given a larger role than before. The 1993, Finnish curriculum was reduced into four content areas: image expression; artistic knowledge, visual communication; and environmental ethics. The aim was to combine perceptions, imagination and expression into artistic activity. The content areas from the 1990s were further developed in the 2004 curriculum: visual expression and thinking; artistic knowledge and cultural expertise; environmental aesthetics, architecture, and design; media and visual communication. The aim of the teaching was to support the development of student s visual thinking, and aesthetic and ethical awareness, and offer transferable skills to develop visual production. Emphasis was on understanding the modes of visual culture in the society: in art, media and environment, and in appreciation of the Finnish culture, students own cultures, and foreign cultures. Media communication and technology was valued, along with the more traditional perspectives, such as image as an instrument of expression and communication, knowledge on art and art history and skills on image interpretation. The core objectives emphasized personal relationship with art, material knowledge, enjoyment in making, understanding the distinctive nature of the artistic processes and learning to evaluate students own and other s visual expression. The upper secondary curriculum develops the same ideas and core contents that are included in the comprehensive school curriculum. The new Finnish national core curriculum was written in 2014, and it was deployed in schools in the fall Generally the entire document emphasizes phenomenon-based learning and subject integration, multi-literacy, cultural diversity and ethical, aesthetic and ecological justice. While the new curriculum is generally written based on the different

10 10 school subjects, it might be that the schooling would not be organized around different school subjects in the future. The idea is to serve students needs in the contemporary society better. Phenomenon-based learning challenges the idea that student s thinking needs to be organized around different school subjects, while the world seem to be much more complex that that. In phenomenon-based learning, teaching is organized round a real-life phenomenon and analysed and learned through an interdisciplinary approach. This type of working will require teachers collaboration and a student-led investigation, with students playing an important role in recognizing their own needs in filling the gaps in their knowledge. Perhaps the most important perspective to the phenomenon-based learning is the collaboration of teachers, integration of subjects, and the interdisciplinary approach to teaching. Multi-literacy penetrates the entire 2014 curriculum. While the notion of multi-literacy is recognized as tool for multicultural communication, it is understood as recognition for languages used in different academic fields and hence different languages with different school subjects. It also means multimodality, symbolic and communicational levels of literacy through different sensual competences: visual, verbal, kinesthesia, numeral, auditory. In the visual art education curriculum, all these aims are quite welcomed and inherent. Overall, the most important changes concern more diversified understandings of art and culture. In the new curriculum, it is possible to see the shift from modernism toward contemporary understanding in arts, as well as to recognize a shift from discipline-based art education toward visual culture education, and even beyond. The needs for national curriculum change in the visual arts stems mostly from Finnish cultural and societal changes. The 2014 revisions for visual art are targeted on several areas in the curriculum and I will next introduce three main ideological changes.

11 11 First, the curricular changes concern societal change: Finland has been generally understood as being a mono-cultural society until the late twentieth century. While there has been academic discussion on the more critical viewpoints on Finland as a changing society among cultural researchers the need for changes in education has still been a dormant topic. The new curriculum tries to provide room and space for problematizing and discussing societal topics, and emphasises students awareness of cultural differences and different kinds of skills and abilities. Just as contemporary art addresses societal and cultural questions, art teaching should critically ask questions about society and culture, on topics such as human rights and social justice. As contemporary art has evolved to address the widest range of important topics, art education should not remain limited to traditional themes or forms. Second, the new curriculum has a strong need to recognize students own visual subcultures. In practice, many art teachers work with students to support their interests and involvement with local and global visual phenomena, networks and youth culture, such as Manga, Cosplay, street arts, or, for example, different areas of digital gaming. And, on the other hand, many students are interested in working with traditional artistic media, such as painting or drawing. In addition, taking part in visual cultures and hyper-realities just by being a member of a culture that is overly visual brings with it involvements with visuals on different levels. While this might mean a passion for painting for one, for another it might be about watching movies, TV, using the Internet, seeing advertisements, comics, toys, fashion, or just entering and using virtual and physical spaces. The 2014 curriculum offers space and possibilities to teach with a recognition of students different and diversified

12 12 visual cultures and visual engagements, and encourages teachers to get interested and learn from student s visual culture practices. Third, the need for a radical change in the Finnish national core curriculum also comes from the perspectives of contemporary art, and thus the contemporary times and contemporary culture and society. Contemporary art deals with rich content and layers, exploring social, political and cultural issues, among other topics, using methods and strategies, and choosing materials, differently and from different reasons than art teaching in schools has traditionally often done. In an issue-based approach to art education, similarly to contemporary artists, students are guided to inquire and explore their topic from different perspectives, learn from the topic, and collect visual material. Contemporary artists often use strategies and tactics such as re-conceptualization, juxtaposition, and projection. Learning to review, recognize and problematize these visual contemporary artists strategies can be a key for students to review, re-conceptualize and problematize the entire visuality around them. While there seems to be a big gap between how students learn in schools and how the strategies of contemporary art function, the methods of learning, the methods of getting knowledge about this world, could be similar to contemporary art practices. The idea of diversified languages, multi literature, as a base for knowledge visual literature being one of them allows the student to approach the world and construct knowledge from it, hopefully, differently than before. Altough, the name of the subject is visual art, it is described to consist of visual art, the environment, and other forms of visual culture. Lived environment, social participation and student agency are emphasized. The goal is to work in manners characteristic of visual arts, and practice experiential and multisensory learning. The curriculum directs to work in

13 13 multidisciplinary learning modules in cooperation with other subjects and actors in and outside the school. The four main objectives of teaching are the same for each age group: Perception and visual thinking; Visual representation; Interpretation of visual culture; and Aesthetic, ecological and ethical assessment. In addition, the curriculum offers different sub-objectives for age groups 1-2 nd grades, 3-6 th grades and 7-9 th grades. The main content areas of studies are grouped under three titles: Own visual cultures; Visual cultures of environments; and the Art worlds. The idea is that the classroom teachers and the visual art teachers will plan their local curriculum based on these objectives and content areas. The curriculum includes four courses for upper secondary schools: Images and cultures; Designed and built environments; As a participant in the media; The art worlds. There are also thematic and collaborative courses with other subjects, such as By the means of contemporary arts, and Arts with many senses. In addition, schools can offer other courses as they wish. Most schools also offer the possibility to complete visual art diploma, which can be useful for further art studies, and which equals one course. Although design education is not explicitly written in the Finnish curriculum, it is quite clear that the new visual art curriculum emphasises design more than before. Design education has always been considered as a part of environmental art education similarly as architecture, as being part of built, formed, shaped and crafted environment. Natural environment art education has another strong tradition in the Finnish curriculum, being part of the Finnish national identity. Many Finns experience a strong connection to the nature, especially forest. At the same time as this is very much valued educational perspective, it also includes problematic cultural notions tied together with images of nostalgia and traditions, which are sometimes difficult for second or third generation Finns, who might define Finnish identity differently. Media education is another perspective, which is

14 14 typically written in-between the lines in the visual art curriculum. By nature, media education is considered as inter-subject and being taught in many subjects, such as Finnish language. The visual media perspectives are intrinsically part of visual art curriculum. In addition, the new curriculum has shifted from individual centred perspectives towards building community identities and towards more collaborative work practices. Sweden Swedish art education has developed in relationship to international movements, being influenced by German, Reggio Emilian and Northern-American scholars, for example. Historically, two research traditions have dominated the field: child psychology and picture analysis. The latter concentrated on visual communication and mass media analysis with forms from semiotics (Lindström, 2008). Particular to the Swedish development was an early awakening to associate visual art teaching to social studies from the late 19 th century. This combination was popular all the way to the 1950s, when the emphasis changed towards free creativity. Understanding art as a free creative activity emphasized child psychology as a main source of knowledge for art educators for over a decade. Art educators were to observe the unique personality and psychological development of each child and offer suitable artistic materials to fit the child s needs. Until the mid 1660s, children s drawings was one of the most published topics among Swedish professional writing on art education. The topic disappeared almost completely, until its return on the 1990s. As Lars Lindström (2008) has described, a young generation of art educators in the 1960s advocated a broader orientation towards new subjects, such as picture analysis, film and TV-

15 15 studies, and present-day cultural studies. They wanted to broaden the subject drawing, teckning, to include all forms of visual communication. Perhaps the most radical part of the reform was so called polarized method, developed in Konstfack in Stockholm. Some changes in the 1969 curriculum were made accordingly, mainly focusing in the secondary school reform. In the 1980 curriculum the subject was completely redefined on all levels of schooling along the lines drawn up in the late 1960s. The focus in curricula, teacher training and research changed completely towards visual communication, picture analysis and cultural studies. In the 1980 curriculum, the name of the school subject Drawing was changed to bild, which can be translated to pictorial studies or more freely, visual art. Bild was divided into five obligatory parts: visual production, picture analysis, visual communication, aesthetic orientation and image & environment. The emphasis was on critical, even negative toned analysis on those pictures students met in every day life. The aim was to learn to recognize and use pictures for different purposes such as to convey information and news, persuade and advertise. The emphasized media were photographs, film and video. In the 1980s curriculum art was mentioned only in one of the five areas, aesthetic orientation. The 1994 curriculum paid a little bit more attention to the visual art, however maintaining the focus on the visual communication, this time in much more complex ways. Gerd Z. Nordstöm was one of the major advocates in the 1970s and 19980s reform. He and his colleges work on visual communication in Konstfack effected art educators thinking largely in other Nordic countries, especially Finland and Denmark in the 1970s and 1980s, and in part explains why visual culture was more welcomed in Nordic than in most other European countries in the beginning of The later curricular changes (1994, 2003, 2011/2013) have offered more freedom for teachers, without such radical paradigm shift as the 1980s curricula.

16 16 Despite the radical curricular changes took place several decades ago, a majority of schools still follow rather traditional teaching. Research has shown (Marner, Örtegren & Segerholm, 2005) than in spite of new visual art curricula, Swedish classroom activities has not changed very much; Even though pictorial studies curriculum emphasizes image communication and analysis, almost half of the art teachers defined the subject as art-and-craft based aestheticpractical school subject, and minority defined it as a free creative expression. Manual production with different materials and techniques is still the most common classroom activity and artistic making and creation is still today the main goal in teaching, even though the curriculum has not emphasized it for 35 years. While interpreting images is an important part of teacher education, in schools emphasis is on personal development and learning varied visual methods and strategies that engage contemporary themes and contents. Democratic and ethical education are given a remarkable role and especially themes identity, ethnicity, sexuality and power are mentioned in the comprehensive school curriculum. In Sweden, visual art education is a mandatory subject from 1 st grade to the 9 th. Teachers in the secondary level (7-9 th grade) are usually educated art teachers in the lower grades they are usually classroom teachers with a minor in art education. Even though bild (pictorial studies / visual art) is an independent school subject, it has a strong relationship to slöjd (crafts). Both subjects include design, though in different ways. The role of visual communication and media studies keeps growing in classroom activities and in the curriculum. The quantity of available elective courses on visual media studies, especially in upper secondary schools is quite convincing. Upper secondary curriculum leads towards possibilities to specialize for further studies and studying becomes more career oriented. Students can choose from two different orientations: Aesthetics and media or Image and form. In addition, schools can offer Advanced orientation courses, for example:

17 17 Architecture, Image theory, Design, Aesthetical communication, Graphic illustration, Graphic design, Webb design, and so on. Advanced orientation is an important part of the curriculum but it varies in different schools largely. Often, media has a large emphasis. There was a specific teacher-training program for media teachers until These teachers often teach courses such as Animation, Media production, Film- and TV-production, and Photography rather than visual art teachers. Art education as a field is being taught in university colleagues, where art teachers are also being educated. Until the 1960s all art teachers were trained in the University College of Arts, Crafts and Design Stockholm, Konstfack. Although, Konstfack still educates most art teachers, there are many other universities and university colleges, which offer curriculum for art teacher education. Konstfack educates art teachers for comprehensive schools in visual art (bild) and crafts (slöjd) and for the upper secondary school in Art and Design or Art and Media. Most art teachers have another teaching subject as well. On the upper secondary level, the other subject can be media-oriented subjects, which are closely related to the visual art curriculum as well. The art teacher qualification is on a bachelor level, but further studies in master level have been available since MA studies offer possibilities for doctoral studies. The first doctoral dissertation in art education was defended in The thesis was defended in the Department of Art History at Uppsala University. The situation is still similar today. Art educational research topics are being defended in the departments of art history, aesthetics, educational sciences, didactics and early childhood, mostly in the following universities: Stockholm, Gothenburg, Lund, Linköping, Malmö and Umeå.

18 18 Denmark In Denmark, visual art has been a matter of learning a language. The integration of skills and methods with competences and contents, along with knowledge about art in a broader sense has been the focus of the development within the past 30 years. The idea is to learn through art activities and through relevant topics or themes, and make them capable of understanding new perspectives in life. Art is understood as a kind of sensitive-cognitive language one could express ideas, feelings and knowledge through. While art is seen as a particular way of world knowledge, since the 1970s there has also been development towards critical approach, thinking how images and art could be both perceived and produced. Kristian Pedersen and his colleagues aimed to work towards a so-called criticalconstructive approach, a solid foundation for curriculum development of visual art as a school subject, differently than before (Pedersen, 1998). In practice, this approach challenged the child-centered pedagogy, which dominated the Danish art teacher training and the entire field of Danish art education in the 1980 s. Visual art education curriculum and its development have been in the hands of a few people in Denmark. The field is small: There were only 82 MAs awarded in art education before the masters degree programs were closed between the years Visual art education was formally established as an institutionalized field in 1976 when Pedersen became the first professor in forming at the Royal Danish School of Educational studies. In the 1991curriculum the name of the school subject forming was changed to visual art, billedkunst. This was a result of the critical-constructivist approach. Research at the same time concentrated on curriculum studies, children s pictorial production and cognition in relation to perception and representation. Also, on those years, media education unit was established. It was emphasized

19 19 early on how visual art education is an interdisciplinary subject with its own structure and themes of knowledge, drawing upon knowledge from visual arts, psychology, sociology, pedagogics, didactics and history of the visual arts and history of general education. The importance of sufficient consideration of learner s reflections and personal interest areas and his or her cultural situation in ordinary life was emphasized. Anthropology, ethnography and sociology were early influential fields in Denmark. Influence from German educational Philosophy and ideas of bildung were palpable in the early development of the theory in Danish visual art education research and curriculum development. Coalition between contents, skills and methods was emphasized in the curriculum development. The influence of critical pedagogy and especially Frankfurt school was great already on the 1990s. On the other hand, emphasis on forms and material has not been very interesting for the Danes. Instead, critical educational approaches had been interesting, because they have offered communication between different positions and solutions to deal with important existential and democratic ideas and themes (Pedersen, 1998, p. 86). Following the Danish art pedagogy, through expressing oneself, one can achieve the skills, which are necessary for visual production. The principle is not to teach skills for skills sake. Visual art teaching is always a coalition of perceiving and practicing. Even with visual culture approach which has been a strong movement with some art educators in Denmark past 15 years the practice has played an important role. One could say that by practicing visual culture one can develop new knowledge and critical thinking by taking part and intervening the society. Visual culture is hence seen as a form of action and a social event combined to a practice of analysis. The visual culture approach was developed in the

20 20 beginning of 2000 in interaction with international movements. These ideas were displayed in the 2009 visual art curriculum. The Danish national visual culture discourse was developed from interdisciplinary perspective, in combination of scholars from art, art history, media studies, culture studies and art education. The connection between production and reflective practices brings aesthetic activity together with criticality from visual culture. Most art teachers in upper secondary schools hold a degree in art history or art theory, and just few in art education. The art educators (the 82 who hold master s degree) are mainly teaching in Teacher colleges, university colleges. Every now and then there is a discussion, without not yet sharing a common vision, how to implement more practice based art teaching in upper secondary school, since it has been mostly theoretical and verbal art teaching thus far. Teachers up to the 10 th grade are educated in teacher collages as classroom teachers. The students choose from 3 main subjects from all the range of school subjects. Visual art is one of the options. Too often, though, a teacher who did not choose to study visual art as one of the main subject ends up teaching visual art. However, according to the latest school reform, only the specialized subject educated teachers are allowed to teach each subject by The visual art as a school subject is given a smaller individual role in the new curriculum 2014 than before. Already, in 2006, visual art lost its status as a compulsory school subject. The learning outcomes of the new curriculum do no longer recognize visual art as an independent language, which forms and methods support its contents. Rather, the politics for educational development is followed by the needs of meeting with global labor markets and international educational standards. To gain efficient and competitive schooling goals requires curriculum reform that emphasizes on the core subjects such as Danish, mathematics, English and science and cut down subjects such as visual arts, music, crafts

21 21 and other languages. The idea is that the visual art among with other so-called practical subjects would support the core subjects by contributing to the development of academic standards and to the standards of other subjects. The emphasized subjects would hence better support global educational competition. From art education perspective this means that most students after the fifth grade (age of 11) do not receive visual art education at all. This has been the situation already in the 2006 curriculum. While the other practical subjects (music and crafts and design) gained more teaching hours in 2014, visual art did not. The curriculum 2014 has three major emphasis areas: visual production, visual analysis and visual communication. The significant of ICT, new media and technology are in an important role of Danish visual art education. Visual teaching is paying more attention to reflection and picture analysis than before. Connection between production and analysis is emphasized. Visual culture is understood as an event where interaction between visual phenomena and positioned perception needs to be analyzed and communicated through verbal language and visual technologies, such as ICT and other media. Students should express themselves in 2D, 3D and digital images. The language of the new curriculum has been wanted to keep in a concrete and measurable level. This makes the curriculum surprisingly discipline and technique based and hence traditional. More specific learning outcomes are described accordingly to the grade levels 1-2, 3-5, and 6-10, when it is offered as an optional subject is most schools. However, schools do not need to offer visual art after the fifth grade. In the upper secondary school visual art is completely optional. The 2014 curriculum includes some completely new school subjects. For example, what used to be handicrafts, wood and metalwork (sløyd) for boys and needlework for girls are

22 22 now formulated as subjects called, design and wood and metalwork. Design used to be a stronger part of the visual art curriculum, but in the new curriculum it belongs to the crafts and is approached from the material and practical points of view rather than from theoretical. Although, there is some interest towards design also in visual art, the small among of teaching hours limit the possibilities. In the new curriculum visual art remained an independent subject, separate from crafts and design, due to its nature to understand art as a particular language, and its close connections to media and visual communication. Perhaps the curriculum decisions rely on idea of investing in crafts rather than arts with better possibilities in responding the current and future prospective of the developing Danish fashion and architecture markets. Norway In Norway, art, design, architecture and crafts are merged into one school subject. The subject was first named forming in the 1960 curriculum guidelines, although drawing, textile and woodwork (sløyd) were introduced in the national curriculum for comprehensive school already in the late 1800s. After 1960, the curriculum has been revised 1974, 1987, 1997, and The guidelines for a new curriculum were in process of writing when this article was written. The emphasis in Forming was on individual expression. Forming also included basic knowledge and skills in two- and three-dimensional visual arts and crafts, meaning applied arts, design and handicrafts. For example, in the curriculum from the 1987, the guidelines were in art, design and present-day forms of visual expression. Practical skills and personal

23 23 development were emphasized. Applied art and understanding art education through artifacts has always been characteristic to Norwegian art education. Indeed, the extended idea of artifact as part of the social change in a central position of human lives has made art, design and architecture interesting for the general education. The subject s name was changed in 1997 from Forming to art and crafts. The content focus shifted from self-expression towards knowledge acquisition and competency, more explicitly towards visual communication, design, visual art and architecture, which became the four content areas of 2006 curriculum. The 1997 curriculum introduced art history and the model for classroom practice: impression, expression and reflection. At the same time subject matter vocabulary gained a greater importance than before. The grater curricular turn was from individual orientations and exploring identity towards a focus on democratic and societal participation. Architecture and design became subject categories in comprehensive schooling in the 2006 curriculum. The main objectives concern crafts, drawing, and formal-aesthetic principles. Perhaps the most descriptive trait of Norwegian art education is its unity with crafts. Art, design, architecture and crafts are merged into a one subject in the primary and the secondary schools. Art and crafts gives an interesting point of departure for developing the aspects and concepts of design in education. The coalition gives room for art and crafts to create innovative solutions and hence design education has been taken quite unique forms. In the comprehensive school, students work in studios, combining their practical work with reflection. Design and architecture, as part of art and crafts teaching ensures the social significance in teaching. As Liv Merete Nielsen (2008) has described, the goal is to build new insight in visual and material culture of personal, local and global sustainability. Among other aims, art and crafts aims to

24 24 participate students for democratic processes in their physical environment, in its development and planning. Spatial and visual literacy is hence understood as a required competency to fulfill the aims. The subject objectives are closely connected to local cultures, local environments and local communities. Sustainable development is cultural and environmental, concerning individuals and communities. For example critical consumerism is one important area of learning. Art and crafts is a mandatory school subject for all students through the comprehensive school from 1 st to the 10 th grade, and it is the fifth largest core subject in primary and lower secondary education. The idea of the upper secondary school is to prepare studies at university level. There are two core subjects in the art, crafts and design program: Visual art and formal Aesthetics, and Design and architecture. In addition, schools have the opportunity to offer and students can choose from four art related courses: Architecture and community; Design and sustainability; Photography and printmaking and Art and creation. Sustainability and democratic participation are the dominating elements of the Norwegian art and crafts curriculum contents. Democratic endeavor has been a significant input in the Norwegian discourse on art education since the end of the 1990s, and it has been especially related to the field of architecture and user participation. The main influences to the curricular development have come from the 1990s educational and cultural policy with the emphasis on architecture and design, and with domains, such as design and technology, and entrepreneurship. Craftsmanship and formal aesthetics has been in the focus of classroom practices, rather than for example fine art or contemporary art practices.

25 25 Norwegian art and crafts teacher training is organized in colleges and university colleges. There are alternative ways to qualify as certificated art teacher. First, one can get education as a classroom teacher in a college and specialize with art and crafts. Second option is the specialized teacher training in art, design and crafts in two university colleges: Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences (HiOA) and University College of Southeast Norway (USN). These two institutions also offer master s degree in art and crafts education; Master level education in art and crafts has been given since 1986, and before in forming, since In principle, primary level is often taught by classroom teachers, secondary level by art and crafts teachers, and upper secondary by art and crafts teachers or artist-teachers. However, there are many teachers in the entire Norwegian schooling without formal qualifications in the subjects they teach. In art and crafts as many as 44% do not have qualification in the subject. Although there has been master level studies offered for art and crafts teachers in the university colleges since mid 1970s, university colleges have for a long time not been able to offer doctoral studies doctoral studies belong to universities. The first universities to open their doctoral studies for art and design education were The Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO) and Bergen University in Possibilities for practitioners opened up and art education as an academic field was created. In 2012 a new doctoral program, Cultural studies, was developed at Telemark University college (now University College of southeast Norway). This program is constructed for the implementation for art and crafts teachers. The main idea has been to allow practice-based knowledge to enter to a source of knowing in research. However, when doctoral studies in art education begun, the field did not emerge from nowhere. The background for visual art education theory was in art history, psychology, sociology and education and the research done in these fields offered valuable contribution to the research in

26 26 art education. Early on, the young and still very much developing research attitude included practical parts, along with more traditional research methods. Similarly to the other Nordic art education doctoral research projects, phenomenological approaches were welcomed when looking at own experiences and subjective practices. Design education, along with children and youth art and visual culture education has been the main areas of research interests among the Norwegian art and crafts educators, in the context of cultural diversity, democratic participation, visual culture and the communicative role of artifacts in social and environmental development. Iceland The field of Icelandic art education is young and on an early stage. The first Icelandic master s degrees in visual arts were awarded in The first PhD was awarded in UBC, Vancouver, in 1997 to Guðrún Helgadóttir. Since then there has been one other thesis defended, but yet none in Iceland, although there are many on-going doctoral theses projects. Helgadóttir, who was also the former principle of the Iceland Academy of the Arts, played an important role when revising the national curriculum 1999 for visual art education. The 1999 curriculum changed art education greatly. Visual art became one of the art disciplines, together with music, drama and dance. At the same time, design was made as a special subject at the upper secondary. Visual art education was strongly influenced by Northern-American art education and especially by the spirit of DBAE. The special perspective to interpret DBAE for Icelandic purposes was to give a greater focus on the learning processes rather than emphasizing the