Criticality and connoisseurship in arts education: pedagogy, practice and ‘Pinterest^©’

ABSTRACT

In time-poor and pressured teaching environments, some classroom teachers look for immediate and simple solutions to resourcing their arts teaching. Online platforms, such as Pinterest, seem to offer ready-made answers for these teachers, however, a lack of criticality can underscore the unexamined ‘advantages’ of such accessible resources. Accessibility and lack of confidence for time poor teachers are two key issues in understanding why teachers prefer online platforms for the sourcing of arts teaching resources rather than curriculum documents written for them by ‘curriculum experts’. Critically competent curriculum decisions require informed knowing about value and how the decision impacts on practice and student learning and in this way criticality and connoisseurship are important capabilities that constantly need to be strengthened in a digitally mediated world. Combined in an arts context and drawing on interviews with 16 classroom teachers, criticality and connoisseurship are two key concepts used to highlight the systemic issues of context, value and pedagogy that impact on teacher’s practice. Suggestions for increasing teachers’ criticality and connoisseurship are explored as important pathways for improving arts learning for young people.

KEYWORDS:

• Connoisseurship
• criticality
• pedagogy
• arts education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Sian Chapman http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7474-0277

Peter Wright http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6433-3889

Robin Pascoe http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9650-892X

Notes

1 Languages, as the eighth area, are offered where possible when there is access to a language teacher, commencing with Year 3 in 2018.

2 Pinterest is a visual discovery, collection and storage tool self-described as a ‘catalogue of ideas’ that inspires uses to ‘go out and do that thing’ appealing in this way to teachers’ pragmatic nature (Nusca 2015).

3 The School, Curriculum and Standards Authority is responsible for Kindergarten to Year 12 curriculum, assessment, standards and reporting for all Western Australian Schools.