Call for paper 5th issue JREA : Plastic/visual arts and drama/performing arts in teaching and reseach : What approaches and what prospects for tomorrow's school ?
Plastic/visual arts and drama/performing arts in teaching and research : What approaches and what prospects for tomorrow's school ?
Coordination
Sandrine Eschenauer (AMU and CNRS, LPL), Raphaël Brunner (HEP-VS, Didactiques romandes, EDHEA - HES-SO), Stefan Bodea (IUFE University of Geneva), Laurence Espinassy (AMU, ADEF-GCAF)
Keywords : visual arts – theatre – teaching – didactics – movements – spaces – sensitive body – scriptwriting – performativity – performance
Background
This 5e issue of the Journal of Research in Arts Education / Journal de recherche en éducations artistiques is part of an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary dynamic that needs to be documented, invented or reinvented. The aim here is to explore the place of sensibility in education as a foundation for cross-disciplinary skills linked to the teaching and learning process. This link is constitutive of the 'between' (Jullien, 2011) from which can emerge a 'relational aesthetic' (Bourriaud, 1998) between the teacher and the pupil, the participants and the researcher, the creator and the environment, the different arts, the arts and other disciplines, between the intelligible and the sensible, etc. At the crossroads of the visual arts and theatre, the fine arts and the performing arts, the complex relationship between self, other(s) and environment(s) shapes methodological approaches in teaching and research, just as it plays a part in cognitive processes. What sensitive educational models are being proposed around the world ? In what way do these new performative models invite us to reconsider the place given to scholarly knowledge, expert knowledge, academic models, social reference practices or socially topical issues in the various education systems ?
While there is no 'didactics of drama' or performative practice in education as such in France (Eschenauer et al., 2023), it is more prevalent in other countries such as Great Britain, Germany, Ireland, Canada and many others (Schewe, 2013). Research into the didactics of drama or performance in education is consequently more developed in these cultural contexts (Bähr et al., 2019 ; Crutchfield and Schewe, 2017 ; Irwin et al., 2017). Even so, with regards for example to the didactics of visual arts in both France and Switzerland, work carried out over some fifty years has led to a shift in professional practices and curriculum content from the teaching of drawing to that of the visual arts (Espinassy, 2008, 2018 ; Espinassy & Claverie, 2023 ; Gaillot, 1997). It should be noted that research in this field is rare, yet this teaching is present in the school curriculum from nursery school to university, defined by school programmes from primary school to 12th grade, designed around a limited number of notions that are deepened, in a progressive and spiral fashion, by the increasingly complex study of fundamental questions. These questions arise, particularly in relation to theatre, to the relationship of the body to artistic production and to the sensitive workspace. In Switzerland, art teaching in state schools is evolving towards an inter-cantonal curriculum (the PER-Plan d'études romand) that is interdisciplinary in nature and prioritizes the discovery, perception and development of "modes of artistic expression and their languages, with a view to identity, communication and culture". Practical activities involving the exploration of different "languages" (visual, plastic and sound) are seen as likely to "contribute to stimulating pupils' creative “potential". The visual arts include performance art, a traditionally interdisciplinary field encompassing "a wide range of artistic concerns, (...) disciplines and techniques", and tackling "essential themes of today's culture, such as sexual identity, the definition of the body or multiculturalism, by linking the psychological to the perceptive, the conceptual to the practical, thought to action" (Goldberg, 1999). For the teaching of the visual arts, this field opens new prospects for the development of modes of artistic expression involving the body/bodyhood, which are also beginning to encourage research into the didactics of artistic disciplines. This is particularly true in the Lake Geneva region, where this branch of didactics has been developing more since the 2000s, in tandem with institutional changes and the tertiarization of teacher training (Brunner, 2019 ; Mili & Rickenmann, 2018). As far as the history of the didactics of artistic disciplines is concerned, as Rickenmann (2018) points out, it "primarily concerns compulsory schooling, but also the institutions responsible for the professional training of specialist teachers, those responsible for the training of generalist teachers, as well as institutions such as museums or concert halls, insofar as educational and cultural policies also legislate on their links with school" (p. 46). What developments are we seeing internationally ?
In fact, the two art forms – theatre/performance and visual arts/art – share common objectives that are reflected in the logic of the Cycle 4 curriculum in the visual arts in France. These art forms are at the heart of the learning process, the creative, reflective and productive approach of the student as they perceive and act in relation to themselves, others and spaces. The objects of knowledge circulate between the perception and representation of reality and fiction, the relationship between the author or actor/performer (Boal, 1978) and space(s), and the creative process, which is in itself inseparable from materiality. This brings us to the idea of performativity (in the general sense of a performative turn) (Sting, 2012) and a renewal of the idea of making (Ingold, 2017). A similar shift can be seen in aesthetics, towards 'relational' or 'encounter' aesthetics, or even a 'pedagogy of resonance' (Brunner, 2022 ; Rosa & Endres, 2016).
Thus, the relationship between the body and artistic production (the involvement of the artist's body; the effects of gesture, the visual effects obtained; the legibility of the production process and its deployment in time and space: traces, performance, theatricalization, events, ephemeral works, recordings, etc.) is at the heart of the questions raised by the didactics of both visual arts and theatre. The special relationship between bodily activities and artistic practices leads us to consider the close link that "is forged between the mediating functions of artistic works/practices (...) and a physicality that is both a means (...) and an end (...)" (Mili et al., 2013, p. 87).
As a result, the sensitive experience of the workspace (the relationship between the space perceived, felt and the space represented or constructed; space and time as materials of the work, the mobilisation of the senses; the point of view of the author and the spectator in their relationship to space, to the time of the work, to the inscription of their body in the relationship to the work or in the finished work) is at the crossroad of the two artistic disciplines. The situation, in the general sense, is that the space of interaction is at the heart of where learning takes place, where artistic practice corresponds not only to production but also to interaction, which epistemologically orients the questioning of the sensitive body towards an extension and a 'localisation' of the idea of (re)presentation and sharing of experiences.
Axis 1 – Learning objectives and the means used to make them accessible
The aim of this axis is to explore the relationship between art, nature and culture.
In the 21ste century, the place of the teacher's body as the primary pedagogical tool and of the pupil's body as a support for learning, is being re-emphasised. Yet students' bodies are usually seated and subject to norms that exclude movement, which is considered disruptive.
However, numerous studies show the role of sensorimotricity (Pulvermüller et al., 2014) and that of invisible movements such as emotions (Damasio, 2023 ; Fuchs & Koch, 2014 ; Immordino-Yang, 2016), in the dynamics of cognitive processes. With the mind/body dichotomy out of the way, research into embodied cognition (Varela, 2017) has brought to light several questions. What tools (as anticipated and/or mobilised in the economy of their didactic device) do teachers have at their disposal to promote learning ? What are their aims (declared/potential/implicit) ? What are their actual or potential effects on the pupil's actions and on the knowledge being built up ?
If we now turn our attention to the pupil, to what extent are the different meanings offered by pupils considered or ignored, sorted out ? How, if at all, do they contribute to shaping the objects of knowledge ? With the help of what tools, or what working methods are constrained by the practice environments ? To what extent can performative art practices, which include an aesthetic relationship with learning objects, recreate the desire to learn?
Axis 2 – Evaluation issues
Numerous questions relating to evaluation arise for teachers and researchers in the didactics of visual arts and theatrical performance. If we refer to Félix Gaffiot's Latin-French dictionary (1934, p. 1644), we should remember that to evaluate refers to valeo : "to be strong, powerful ; to have value ; to be well off". Valuation is therefore a matter of subjectivity, of the perception of a value. Dewey's theory of valuation aligns with this perception, since for the author, all value is relative to the relationship between the subject and the subject or between the subject and the object. What has value is worth something to someone, depending on their tastes, their experience, their cultural environment, and so on. Dewey suggests an understanding the process of valuation as "a product of intelligent activity open to the education of the eye and of judgment" (Dewey quoted by Prairat, 2014, p. 169).
This definition leads us to take a fresh look at self-assessment and to accept the point of view of the learner and creator on their own skills developed in artistic practice.
How can the assessment of artistic productions and the value of practices in the visual arts or theatre-performance be articulated ? To avoid the temptation to focus on results, how can we consider different processes ? How can we keep track of the ephemeral so as not to reduce production to a palpable object ? What importance should be attached to experimentation and to observing the plastic and semantic effects of the presence of the artist's body in the work (affirmation or minimisation of gestures, traces, movements, displacements, etc.), or, for example, the inclusion of elements from the artist's real or fictional life ? How have the viewer's senses been stimulated (temporal and spatial experience, use of the work or participation in its production) ?
In addition to knowledge and skills in the visual arts, art and culture, practice and theory, methodology and behaviour, this teaching underpins reflective and open-minded skills, stemming from the student's relationship with his or her own artistic production and, as a result, with him or herself, others and the world (Espinassy, 2021).
How, then, can we suspend the teacher's judgement of the student and leave room for the learner's subjective perception, i.e. the experience he or she has had ?
Axis 3 – Research into teaching and didactics in the visual arts and the performing arts
The didactic questions posed above necessarily have an impact on research. Conversely, the purpose of research is to provide input for teaching practices and the questions asked by teachers and trainers in the field, whose main objective is to restore pupils' ability to act (in the sense of enabling them to tackle a problem without necessarily solving it), an ability which inevitably involves creative knowledge and know-how, but which should not be subjected to the validation of models.
What research methodologies could then be used to answer the didactic questions specific to the visual arts and theatre ? How do artistic expressions portray similar shifts in their history and recent developments ?
Finally, given the complexity of the epistemologies involved, what role can inter- or trans-disciplinarity play in research methodologies, and what form can it take ?
Research-creation or arts-based research (ABR ; Leavy, 2018 ; Morris & Paris, 2021) could, for example, be the subject of publication proposals in this issue.
The contributions may come from research into the didactics of the visual and/or plastic arts or into the didactics of theatre, drama and/or theatrical performance, or even be at the crossroads of the arts presented in this issue.
Submission documents must meet JREA/JRAE standards to bo accepted vor evaluation.
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