Handbook

As a pre-service teacher, this course provides you with fundamental knowledge of The Arts in education. You will examine the basis on which learning in the visual and performing arts is grounded and the nature of students’ learning progression in the primary years of schooling. As a means for exploring and researching the disciplines of Visual Arts (including Media Arts), Music, Dance and Drama this course introduces you to a conceptual framework comprising the core and essential concepts of arts practitioner, artwork, audience and subject matter. You will learn to apply this framework in your own research of instances of arts practice and draw links to ways arts practices can be explained and interpreted. Through this research you will examine the different artforms in each discipline, how artists make artworks, how works are consumed and valued by different audiences on personal, community, symbolic and critical levels, and what artworks represent about our local, national and global societies, including Australian, Indigenous Aboriginal, Asian and international artists from historical and contemporary contexts. This course also develops your skills in critical interpretation when examining and interpreting different forms of art.