Perceived (ir)relevance: resilience and Visual Arts

Abstract

ABSTRACT When thinking about choosing Visual Arts for the senior phase in secondary school, learners must consider a subject's ability to offer career skills as well as the meaning it has for them, personally. These considerations influence the subject's perceived relevance and consequently, its place in the curriculum. In guiding learners, art teachers may make one or both of the following claims: that art develops creativity or that it functions as a human meaning-making practice. For these claims to be true, they would need to be evident in Visual Arts learners' decision-making, within the process of making art. Further, these observations would need to be true at a subject level, and not merely within the art projects made at particular schools. This paper reports on a study using an app called SenseMaker, which maps learners' decision-making at a systemic level. Without commenting on learners' innate creativity, the study suggests that fixed notions of “art” within Visual Arts as a subject constrain learners' decisions and so undermine advocacy claims made for the subject. Framing this discussion through the lens of resilience offers a way for interested parties to reconsider the lines drawn around “art” and the subject's relevance, for all learners.