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The Arts

Introduction

The Arts are unique, expressive, creative and communicative forms that engage students in critical and creative thinking and help them understand themselves and the world. In every society the Arts play a pivotal role socially, economically and culturally. The Arts encourage the development of skills and the exploration of technologies, forms and processes through single and multimodal forms. They fuel the exploration of ideas that cross the gamut of human emotions and moods through holistic learning using cognitive, emotional, sensory, aesthetic, kinaesthetic and physical fields.

The Arts domain encompasses a diverse and ever-changing range of disciplines and forms that can be used to structure teaching and learning programs. The domain allows students to create and critically explore visual culture, performances in contemporary and traditional genres, and works that involve the fusion of traditional forms with digital media. Schools use the arts disciplines of Art, Dance, Drama, Media, Music and Visual Communication to plan programs. These programs reflect the cultural diversity of students and school communities and the vast growth in information and communications technology that has made arts forms increasingly visible. They recognise the multicultural world saturated with imagery, sounds and performances that students inhabit. Engagement in the Arts involves the inspired and passionate exploration of ideas and the resultant products and performances. By their very nature, the Arts nurture cultural understanding, invention, new directions and new technology. Imagination and creativity, pivotal to the Arts, are essential to our wellbeing because we create much of our world in order to enhance our experiences and understandings of the diverse perspectives that constitute our cultural heritage. For students, interaction through the Arts brings contact with the Indigenous cultures of Australia and the cultures of our nearest neighbours.

Learning in the Arts allows students to communicate their perceptions, observations and understanding of structures, functions and concepts drawn from other areas of the curriculum. The Arts are a vehicle for confronting and exploring new ideas. Through learning in the Arts, students prepare for their roles in a post-industrial economy that depends on innovative ideas, creative use of technologies and the development of new and blended forms. Arts learning expects ethical conduct in the creating, making, presenting and responding to arts works; for example, adherence to agreed approaches by individuals in a collaborative performance or acknowledgment of the use of other artists’ products.

Learning in the Arts is sequential and students should have continuous experience in the different arts disciplines they undertake at a particular level. At Levels 1, 2 and 3 all students should experience learning in Performing Arts (Dance, Drama and Music) and Visual Arts (Art, including two-dimensional and three-dimensional, and Media) disciplines and forms. The arts disciplines may be offered by schools individually and/or in combination; for example, in a cross-disciplinary manner or using new arts forms that combine traditional arts disciplines. At Levels 4 and 5, the study of a range of arts disciplines broadens and deepens students’ understanding of the Arts as an area of human activity and provides increased opportunities for personal expression and communication. All students should have continuous experience in at least two arts disciplines at each of these levels. At Level 6, learning programs should provide opportunities for students to continue sequential development of learning in the arts disciplines they have undertaken at Levels 4 and 5. Opportunities should also be provided for students to explore personal interests and develop skills, knowledge and understanding relevant to specific arts forms and disciplines in increasingly sophisticated ways.

At all levels, learning programs in the arts disciplines should provide opportunities for students to experience a range of traditional, contemporary (including digital) and new media/multi-disciplinary forms and genres.


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Structure of the domain

The Arts domain is organised into six sections, one for each level of achievement from Level 1 to Level 6. Each level includes a learning focus statement and a set of standards. A glossary is included which provides definitions of or information about underlined terms.

Learning focus

Learning focus statements are written for each level. These outline the learning that students need to focus on if they are to progress in the domain and achieve the standards at the levels where they apply. They suggest appropriate learning experiences from which teachers can draw to develop relevant teaching and learning activities. Advice regarding the range of arts disciplines that students should experience is included as an introduction to each learning focus statement.

Standards

Standards define what students should know and be able to do at different levels and are written for each dimension. In the Arts, standards for assessing and reporting on student achievement apply from Level 1.

Dimensions

Standards in the Arts domain are organised in two dimensions:

Standards for the Exploring and responding dimension are introduced from Level 3.

The frames of reference – interpreting, responding, performing, presenting, ideas, skills, techniques, processes, context, aesthetics and criticism – are integral to both dimensions as Exploring and responding draws on students’ experiences as creators, makers, performers and/or audience.

Advice will be published for each arts discipline to accompany the standards.

Creating and making

The Creating and making dimension focuses on ideas, skills, techniques, processes, performances and presentations. It includes engagement in concepts that emerge from a range of starting points and stimuli. Students explore experiences, ideas, feelings and understandings through making, interpreting, performing, creating and presenting. Creating and making arts works involves imagination and experimentation; planning; the application of arts elements, principles and/or conventions; skills, techniques and processes; media, materials, equipment and technologies; reflection; and refinement. Individually and collaboratively, students explore their own works and works by other artists working in different historic and cultural contexts.

Exploring and responding

The Exploring and responding dimension focuses on context, interpreting and responding, criticism and aesthetics. It involves students analysing and developing understanding about their own and other people’s work and expressing personal and informed judgments of arts works. Involvement in evaluating meaning, ideas and/or content in finished products is integral to engagement in the Arts.

Exploration of, and response to, expressive qualities of arts works is informed by critical analysis of the use of elements, content and techniques and discussion about the nature, content, and formal, aesthetic and/or kinaesthetic qualities of arts works. Exploring the qualities of arts works involves use of arts language and also draws on research into the purposes and functions for which the works are created and audiences to whom they are presented. This involves students developing an understanding of social, cultural, political, economic and historic contexts and constructs, and developing a consideration of ways that arts works reflect, construct, reinforce and challenge personal, societal and cultural values and beliefs.


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Stages of learning

The VELS take account of the developmental stages of learning young people experience at school. While student learning is a continuum and different students develop at different rates, they broadly progress through three stages of learning. General statements about characteristics of learners in these three stages are available at Stages of learning.

The following statements describe ways in which these characteristics relate to learning experiences and standards in each of the three stages of learning in the Arts domain.

Essential learning in the arts involves sequential and in-depth learning. During their schooling students develop knowledge and skills in arts disciplines and forms, increase their ability to explore, manipulate and apply these skills in different combinations and contexts in order to realise their own ideas and better understand the techniques, products and performances of others.

Today’s students see images, products and performances that have been created by artists working both independently and in collaboration with other practitioners. ‘New media’ arts and arts works in multidisciplinary forms require new ways of thinking in and about the arts. Inquiry models in which students examine cultural, social and conceptual meanings provide the learning elements necessary for exploring the multiplicity of interpretative frames.

Across Years Prep to 10, students should have access to arts learning that stimulates, develops and refines cognitive, affective, creative, technical, aesthetic and kinaesthetic skills. This has been shown to aid the development of flexible thinkers who can examine and manipulate ideas, products, concepts and possibilities.

Years Prep to 4 – Laying the foundations

From Prep to Year 4, students begin to explore content and contexts relating to specific arts disciplines as well as creative, aesthetic and kinaesthetic perspectives. In these years they focus on making and inquiring. New multimedia approaches to the arts offer a model for cross- and interdisciplinary practical activities suited to these years.

At this stage, students’ observations are primarily concrete and students use their perceptions and realities as their inquiry framework. It is important to offer opportunities for students to reflect on, monitor and plan their thinking and making. Arts learning, where good thinking dispositions are modelled, valued and supported, assists the bridging of thinking from the concrete to abstract dimensions. Students should be able to explain something new after a discussion or practical exploratory session, and talk about changes in their own thinking, performance or making, giving reasons for their actions and explaining and demonstrating their organisation of ideas. Students begin to recognise, appreciate and value ways that others think, act and solve problems differently.

Students use a broad range of traditional, ‘new media’ and multidisciplinary forms and materials to improvise, design and make works in many two-dimensional, three-dimensional, digital and performance forms. Through making works that select and combine arts elements, principles and conventions, students develop a range of cognitive, motor, cross-discipline and discipline-specific techniques and understandings.

Years 5 to 8 – Building breadth and depth

During Years 5 to 8 students broaden and deepen their understanding of arts disciplines as an area of human activity across cultural, historical, and technical traditions. They are usually engaged by, and respond with enthusiasm to, social and experiential learning that provides opportunities to explore aesthetic qualities. Such engagement fosters personal expression, critical and creative thinking, and communication skills.

As they progress through this stage of learning, students increasingly understand the advantages of using a range of problem-solving strategies when considering options to make considered choices about arts ideas and ways of communicating meanings and messages. They develop awareness of the role that emotions, motivation, technical skills and beliefs play in exploration and production, and can describe how others in their society and other cultures have different perspectives, values and solutions to problems. Arts learning at this stage should provide opportunities for students to plan, monitor, analyse and evaluate their perceptions, ideas and solutions through reflecting on the effectiveness of their thinking strategies and output, and how they might make productive changes.

Students are beginning to adopt a critical and analytic stance. They can make connections between traditional, experimental, technological and contemporary arts forms – developing an understanding of the elements, principles, conventions and processes that may be applied in a range of contexts. Classroom activities should be creatively and cognitively demanding and build on the intensity of student interest in experiences.

Years 9 to 10 – Developing pathways

In these years students increasingly specialise in arts forms and disciplines of interest to them. They are aware that ‘new media’, multidisciplinary and multimodal forms, with their notions of appropriation and connectivity, exist alongside traditional forms whose techniques need to be mastered.

Students develop independent ways of learning in and through the arts. Their involvement in arts learning may have a vocational focus or may involve developing understanding of ways arts forms and concepts impact on industries and other situations where visual, sonic and electronic cues form the basis of human interaction with machines. They explore and analyse the aesthetic qualities and contexts of other arts works and are able to explain the role of the arts in their own and other social, historical and cultural contexts. They become aware of the need to adopt a critical and analytic approach to meaning and message. Their emotional reactions to images, products and performances are enhanced by critical skills as insights and comparisons are explored, and social and universal concerns are combined with the exploration of individual and personal values.

Arts learning at this stage should involve student reflection on the processes they undertake and making judgments about both quality and use of relevant criteria for exploring and manipulating media, technologies, material and personal space. Students select and manipulate skills, tools, techniques and processes from across the curriculum and within specific arts disciplines to communicate ideas, concepts and feelings.

Students are involved in every aspect of the making and presentation of arts images, products and performances, working both individually and collaboratively. They model the practices of professional artists, experiencing and experimenting with innovative ways of using arts elements, principles and processes. This might involve developing creative ways of using vision and sound, experimenting with arts forms that combine traditional and digital media, and reflecting the transitory nature of contemporary arts performances and products.

At this stage, students should be making informed personal choices by applying thinking strategies, aesthetic awareness, meaningful use of language, ‘possibility’ thinking and the use of knowledge to arrive at original ideas by linking unrelated ideas and concepts.


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National Statements of Learning

The Victorian Essential Learning Standards (VELS) incorporate the opportunities to learn covered in the national Statements of Learning (www.mceetya.edu.au/mceetya/statements_of_learning,22835.html). The Statements of Learning describe essential skills, knowledge, understandings and capacities that all young Australians should have the opportunity to learn by the end of Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 in English, Mathematics, Science, Civics and Citizenship and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT).

The Statements of Learning were developed as a means of achieving greater national consistency in curriculum outcomes across the eight Australian states and territories. It was proposed that they be used by state and territory departments or curriculum authorities (their primary audience) to guide the future development of relevant curriculum documents. They were agreed to by all states and territories in August 2006.

During 2007, the VCAA prepared a detailed map to show how the Statements of Learning are addressed and incorporated in the VELS. In the majority of cases, the VELS learning focus statements incorporate the Statements of Learning. Some Statements of Learning are covered in more than one domain. In some cases, VELS learning focus statements have been elaborated to address elements of the Statements of Learning not previously specified. These elaborations are noted at the end of each learning focus statement.


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Pathways to VCE, VCE VET and VCAL

As students approach the end of the compulsory years of schooling they begin to make choices about their preferred areas of and pathways for learning. Students choose studies from the Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) or recognised vocational training through either Vocational Education Training (VET) or the Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning (VCAL).

The Arts domain provides a foundation which Years 9 and 10 students can use as a basis for further education and training involving arts learning. The Arts domain provides opportunities for students to create and critically explore visual culture, individual arts disciplines including art, dance, drama, media, music and visual communication as well as performances in contemporary and traditional genres, and arts works that involve the fusion of traditional techniques and forms with digital media. These studies can lead to a range of tertiary and vocational studies, such as those associated with multimedia, fine art, graphic and fashion design, the music industry, film and television, theatre and advertising.

The Arts domain provides Years 9 and 10 students with a range of effective pathways to post-compulsory education and training and employment, which include:

The Arts VELS and the VCE

At Level 6, learning in the Arts draws on the arts disciplines of Art, Dance, Drama, Media, Music, and Visual Communication and Design. In Level 6 students explore personal interests and further develop skills, knowledge and understanding relevant to specific arts forms and disciplines in increasingly sophisticated ways.

There is both a clear connection between the use of language and an articulation in teaching and learning from the Level 6 Arts standards to each of the VCE Arts studies – Art, Dance, Drama, Media, Music (including Unit 3-4 sequences in Group Performance, Solo Performance and Music Styles), Studio Arts, Theatre Studies and Visual Communication and Design.

The focus on areas of specialisation, development of a personal style, justification and refinement of the content and aesthetic qualities of students’ own works in the Creating and making standard at Level 6 links with the ‘making’, ‘presenting’ and ‘performing’ areas of study in each of the VCE Arts studies. In the Exploring and responding dimension students focus on critical analysis, interpretation and description of the stylistic, technical, expressive and aesthetic features of their own works and works created by a range of other artists. The knowledge, skills and behaviours that students develop through learning in this dimension inform the theoretical aspects of the work they undertake in VCE units. The interdependent nature of the two dimensions in Level 6 is reflected in each of the VCE Arts studies where personal practice is informed by study of the works and practice/working methods of other artists.

More information about The Arts Level 6.

More information about VCE (www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/vce)

More information about VET (www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/vet)

More information about VCAL (www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/vcal)


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Downloads


The Arts: Level 1 2 3 4 5 6


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