The Arts in the New Zealand Curriculum: a Background Paper

April 1999

Prepared for the New Zealand Ministry of Education

All rights reserved. This publication is entitled to the full protection given by the Copyright Act 1994 to the Ministry of Education. All applications for reproduction in any form should be made to the Ministry of Education.

Introduction

This paper has been prepared at the request of the Ministry of Education to identify and elaborate upon the theoretical and practical bases which have informed the initial draft developed by the co-ordinating writers for the draft document, The Arts in the New Zealand Curriculum. In developing this paper, the writers have addressed the specific terms of reference as defined by the Ministry of Education.

The current process of curriculum development in The Arts has been underway since March of 1998. This process has been informed by international academic sources, research studies and current New Zealand national syllabus and course statements. Development has also been informed by existing best practice in each of the ëarts disciplinesí at both classroom and professional levels in order to reflect the diverse specialist traditions, innovations and technologies of the disciplines that make up the arts in the New Zealand curriculum. Writing and reference groups have advised on content and structural issues in relation to their specialist disciplines, and in the case of music and the visual arts, comparable relationships with the 1989 New Zealand syllabus statements in these disciplines have been identified.

This paper is structured into nine areas:

• Background to the Arts
• Trends and Factors Affecting the Arts in Contemporary Society
• Culture within the Postmodern Paradigm
• The Postmodern Curriculum
• The Arts: Conceptual Framework
• The Achievement Objectives
• The Strands
• Building on Existing Syllabus Statements
• Statement Rationales: Dance and Drama
• also
• Conclusion, Bibliography and References

Each of these areas will be elaborated briefly in order to provide an overview of the contributing ideas and conditions which shape the conceptualisation and practice of the arts in the New Zealand educational setting.

1. Background to the arts in education

A number of global and historical perspectives are detailed which have had a significant effect on arts education, arts theory and curriculum development both in New Zealand and internationally. The following summary outlines some of the key arts education movements which have influenced and affected arts education in this country. These include:

• Progressivism
• Modernism
• Discipline-based Art Education
• Postmodernism
• The Arts and Cognition

This section briefly discusses their contributions to the development of The Arts in the New Zealand Curriculum.

1.1 Progressivism

'Child art' became a legitimate subject of scholarly discussion during the child study movement of more than a century ago (Bresler 1998). Its philosophical foundations can be traced to Rousseau's notion of non-interventionist self-expression. Key child art protagonists this century have included Read, Lowenfeld, Lismer, and Dengler in the visual arts; Laban in dance; Way and Cook in drama. In New Zealand in the 1950s, Tovey, under the direction of Beeby, introduced concepts of child art to teaching through his work with the Advisory Service (see Henderson 1998). He proposed three objectives for learning in the arts, including movement, music and the visual arts. These concerned the development of self-expression, the appreciation of beauty and the growth of practical skills. Each of these objectives were to be acquired by the child without significant adult intervention.

With its focus on the innate and spontaneous expressive abilities of the child, however, Progressivism neglected to develop knowledge about the techniques and traditions of art making. Bresler (1998) has pointed out that expression and interpretation are complex processes and involve more than permission to be spontaneous and creative.

Expression requires knowledge about feeling as well as sophisticated knowledge of intellectual, technical and formal skills. Without knowledge and personal investment, self-expression can become trivial, in Langer's words, symptomatic rather than artistic (Bresler 1998).

1.2. Modernism

Modernism tends to see the value of art in terms of its originality. The modernist approach to art making hinged on experimentalism and the aesthetic experiences associated with the formal and expressive properties of art works. The principal reason for analysing art works was to reveal their underlying design, composition, and expressive qualities. School syllabi from the 1960's in music and the visual arts have reflected both the formalist and the expressive aspects of the modernist ideal.

1.3. Discipline based art education

Discipline-based art education (DBAE) adopted the ideas of arts educators who, since the mid-60's had called for a more holistic, comprehensive, and multifaceted approach to art education. DBAE is an approach based on a set of principles surrounding the study of art, which integrates content and skills from four areas: art making, art history, art criticism, art aesthetics, that contribute to the creation and understanding, and appreciation of art. Using the DBAE approach, children develop their ability to grasp the various cultural and historical contexts of art and examine the powerful ideas communicated through art works. DBAE enables children to develop increasingly sophisticated abilities to produce, describe, interpret, and analyse art works. Philosophically, the ideas which underpin DBAE have been an evolving feature of pedagogical practice in the arts since the 1970's.

1.4. Postmodernism

In contrast to modernism with its focus upon formalism and expressionism, postmodern conceptions of art value the political and ideological character of art works within the context in which they emerge. The postmodern approach is to interpret, judge and question art works in light of their social context. Concepts of originality are questioned in the light of changing technological, and cultural arts practice. The aesthetic experience, although recognised by the postmodernist, does not by itself provide sufficient reason for the inclusion of art in education. Value is placed on the outcomes that result when works of art are created and interpreted from social, historical, and iconographic perspectives. Postmodernism places art works in the context of their social, cultural, political, philosophical and historical settings and locates them as texts to be interrogated.

1.5. The Arts and cognition

In developing sensory perceptions of the world, children respond to gesture and movements before they react to spoken word. They understand and explore sound before they learn to speak. They draw pictures before they form letters. They dance and act out stories before they learn to read. Gestures, movement, sound and pictures are codes or symbols which allow people to formulate and store ideas, observations and understandings about the self and about the world. The arts are therefore cognitive enterprises.
Symbol systems identify forms of thinking in the different arts disciplines as these arts are processed and expressed. They also establish them as unique because each arts discipline is a different symbol system. Each symbol system therefore requires a unique kind of thinking.

The use of symbol systems to create meanings establishes sets of rules which are mostly intuitive and natural, but are also partly conventional. "Artistic thinking is the perception of the terms of the symbol systems, creating significance and following the appropriate rules; and aesthetic thinking is the perception of that significance in the arrangement of those terms" (Parsons 1988: 108).

Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences (Gardner 1983; 1993), affirms thinking in the arts as ways of knowing and as forms of intelligence. Gardner defines intelligence as 'the ability to find and solve problems and create products of value in one's culture'. He points out that the concept of intelligent behaviours varies from culture to culture. The seven intelligences he identifies are: Linguistic, Logical/Mathematical, Spatial or Visual, Musical, Kinesthetic and what he calls the Personal Intelligences - Interpersonal and Intrapersonal.

2. Policy framework for arts in the New Zealand curriculum

The Arts in the New Zealand Curriculum draft statement was developed in an education climate which recognises the significance of social, political and economic change and the enormous effect these changes have had and will continue to have on education and the nature of curriculum. In this section we examine those trends under the following two broad headings:

• Modernity
• Postmodernism and Postmodernity

The Arts in the New Zealand Curriculum draft statement builds on the best arts in education practice, and positions this practice in the light of the changing world of the twenty-first century. It has been developed with a view to addressing the needs of learners and the changing nature of schools and education in the next century.

In 1996, UNESCO identified some of the key issues central to the problems facing people and governments in this 'new age'. These include the need for people to:

• become members of a global society, while not losing their identities and allegiances to their own communities;
• adapt to a new information age while retaining their cultural and historic traditions;
• critically analyse and select information in an age where information is both ephemeral and instantaneous;
• nurture and maintain oneís sense of place and relationship both spiritually and materially.

An OECD (1994) study, also anticipating education in the twenty-first century, argues that:

In individual and intellectual development it is important to realise that human intelligence is multi-faceted and that conventional academic education tends to ignore this. There are other equally important modes of intelligence according to the nature of experience and the forms of understanding at hand.

The education of feeling is generally ignored in education, despite the fact that all curriculum work affects the pupil's view of the world and his/her life. Work in the arts has a role in giving status to personal feelings and values, enabling a direct consideration of values and of feelings to which they relate, and in giving forms to such feeling.

Aesthetic development is concerned with deepening young people's sensitivities to the qualities of art, and therefore the pleasures and meanings. This process extends the range and depth of their aesthetic sensibilities and judgements.

The arts are deeply concerned with questions of value; in general with social and moral values, and in particular, with aesthetic and artistic values. This exploration of values by the arts offer positive and immediate ways of raising questions of value and of exploring the cultural perceptions to which they relate.

The arts are among the keenest processes by which individuals and communities forge and express their identities, and shape their ways of being together, and form the basis of a cultural education. The study and practice of the arts can be central strategies in helping young people to understand, interpret and question the values and conventions of their own and other cultures.

The Arts in the New Zealand Curriculum draft statement reflects and builds on a range of educational positions informed by aspects of modern and postmodern theories.

2.1. Modernity

Modernist ideals have influenced and shaped much of art practice and theory during the twentieth century. Educators and theorists as diverse as Dewey (1934), Tyler (1949) and Carnoy (Carnoy & Levin 1985), express concern for an emphasis on the individual, the nature of social responsibility, the fundamentals of an agreed universal truth with the ultimate goal of achieving reason, rationality and individual freedom. For most modernist theorists, modernism is "synonymous with the continual progress of the sciences and of techniques, the rational division of industrial work and the intensification of human labour and of domination of nature" (Giroux 1988a). Such beliefs were born of what has become known as the "Enlightenment Project".

Modernity seeks to create the rational person through the humanising process of education. To this end, Bauman (1992: 2) claims that becoming human in modernist terms:

• is a process where an inherent incompleteness is made good through immersion and participation in culture;
• is a learning process where knowledge ëtamesí natural instincts and replaces them with reason;
• means learning must imply teaching since it must be deliberate, systematic and controlled and purveyed by those ëin the knowí.

2.2. Postmodernism and postmodernity

Lyotard (1979) positions postmodernism in relation to the changing conditions of knowledge and technology. He maintains it is the information revolution which in a basic sense, marks postmodernity off from modernity. Jameson (1984) sees postmodernism as a new 'cultural logic', and believes it represents a new form of social and cultural fragmentation. He argues for "new cognitive maps" and "different forms of representation that provide a systematic reading of the new age".

Postmodernism is represented in all the arts disciplines as a global movement. It espouses the idea of plurality, the necessity of crossing boundaries and the mixing of genres in a wide variety of fields including music, fiction, film, drama, criticism, dance, sociology and the visual arts. Post-modernisation implies the electronic civilisation, its related economy and implosion of time and space. Post-modernism defines the movement(s), while postmodernity defines the social condition of consumerism and hyperreality.

While it may be suggested that postmodernism is simply a new code word for a new theoretical fashion, Giroux maintains that it is important "because it directs our attention to a number of changes and challenges that are part of the contemporary age" (Giroux 1988a: 11). Its ill-defined parameters, and often contradictory definitions within contemporary social and cultural discourse, provide a referent for understanding the cultural conditions of contemporary times. More liberal postmodern commentators, including Habermas and Rorty, regard the postmodern condition as a new cultural dominant which redefines social space and creates new social formations (Giroux 1988a: 10).

3. Culture within the postmodern paradigm

In this section we examine the importance of culture, suggesting that there have been cultural shifts as a result of changes within local, national and global communities. Culture is defined here as the distinctive ways in which a social group lives out and makes sense of its 'given' circumstances and conditions of life. These may or may not be 'unconscious'; certainly they are the product of collective historical processes and not merely personal intention. In fact, individuals form their purposes and intentions within frameworks provided by their cultural repertoire (Giroux & Simon 1984: 226-238).

Begler (1998) identifies key understandings about culture which include the following concepts:

• Culture is learned rather than genetically inherited.
• Culture is adhered to by members of a group.
• Societal knowledge is not shared equally among members.
• Individuals have varying levels of familiarity and expertise with different aspects of their own culture.
• Culture is dynamic rather than static.
• All cultures exist within an historic context that has shaped the development of the cultural forms and functional systems in operation today.
• All cultural behaviour is framed by underlying systems of values and beliefs.

We elaborate upon the following aspects of culture(s) - the way it is lived and understood - because of their importance within the postmodern paradigm that currently structure and shape educational practices in New Zealand:

• Consumer Culture
• Popular Culture
• Multicultural Contexts
• Inclusive Practice and the Arts
• Semiotics
• Social and Cultural Text(s)

3.1. Consumer culture

The closing decades of the twentieth century have seen the dynamics of globalisation bring to the fore a conflict between conformity and cultural and social diversity as some products take on a universal appearance, flavour and need (Thwaites 1998: 10). Choice becomes a credo and the desire to 'experience' collapses into consumption as consumers exercise that choice. Consumers of the arts, for example, are differentiated by desires, tastes and styles. The consequent changes in everyday practices and experiences have resulted in changes in the modes of production, consumption and circulation of 'symbolic goods' (Featherstone 1991: 11). Consumption is an "active, creative and productive process, concerned with pleasure, identity and the production of meaning" (Storey 1996: 98).

3.2. Popular culture

A major concern of postmodernism is that of "popular culture as a serious object of aesthetic and cultural criticism" (Giroux 1988a: 19). In so doing, postmodernism promotes and affirms minority cultures and the diversity of cultural production. Mass culture, the popular media and mediums of mass communication have been anathema in the modernist context. The reality of daily life and the connectedness of education to popular culture, challenges modernist conceptions of high art, elite art or 'serious' taste. This has resulted in the development of new forms of expression including new forms of art, film and writing, and different types of aesthetic and social criticism.

The 'effacement' of the essentially high-modernist 'frontier' between high culture and so-called mass or commercial culture, and the emergence of new kinds of texts infused with the forms, categories and contents of that very Culture Industry so passionately denounced by all the ideologues of the modern, is discussed in depth by Jameson (1984). While accepting that such aesthetic 'effacement' may well offend some purists, Jameson reminds us that the shift from 'high modernism', with its emphasis on the 'cultured' and the 'tasteful', is more than a cultural occurrence. It is, he maintains, a political and economic stance based on the nature of multinational capitalism today.

What has happened is that aesthetic production today has become integrated into commodity production generally: the frantic economic urgency of producing fresh waves of ever more novel-seeming goods (from clothing to airplanes) at ever greater rates of turnover, now assigns an increasingly essential structural function and position to aesthetic innovation and experimentation (Jameson 1984).

According to Giroux (1988a: 19), popular culture has brought into focus the three following issues:

• It has pointed to the ways the electronic media 'mediate' our perceptions and experience of the world;
• It has raised questions about the domain and definition of culture, challenging assumptions that the universal models of civilisation and culture reside in Europe and America;
• It has opened the way for an awareness of 'other' - the acknowledgement and inclusiveness of those vast territories of 'otherness' which include gender, race, culture and socio-economic position.

3.3. Multicultural contexts

One of the major paradigm shifts in arts education has concerned the acknowledgement of multiculturalism as an issue for consideration in education policy, curriculum design and school practice. Issues including pluralism, cultural identity, nationhood and the global community, have during the last two decades impacted in particular on the arts and social sciences in curriculum. Smith (1989) asserts that:

...the art of Western European derivation is culturally specific (and) the art education systems based on such models reflect the same particularity... Recent shifts in art education which have questioned child-centred approaches and favoured sociological and epistemological models have still failed to deal with substantive matters of the interpretation and recognition of cultural differences in form and function in art. (Smith 1989: 14)

Smith discusses the cultural foci of learning in the arts and its associations with the objects, images and events that define and give identity to particular cultures times and individuals. He questions the ways we regard and define 'art', the ways we acknowledge the work of others as art, and questions aspects of context such as the production, materials, function, value(s) and intent of art production.

These questions have become the subject of a range of international and locally based discourse, where defining issues of culture is central to discussions about education. Current curriculum discourse promotes the representation of all cultural groups within societies, their recognition, legitimation and validation through curriculum.

Discourse on the notion of multiculturalism in the arts has rightly located art making within social and cultural contexts and has identified questions such as: "What is art?", "What does it do?", "Who is it for?" and "Who are the art makers?" Dorn (1996: 18-23) states that "thinking about culture actually begins with thinking about thinking itself". Dorn asserts that "what we think is actually shaped by who we are, our experiences with objects and events in the real world and by our state of mind when we experience them". Such assertions are consistent with the view that "knowledge of the self and knowledge of the external world that exists outside our personal knowledge must be considered" (ibid). In this context, knowledge of both objects and events can only be known through "self knowledge", that is, through one's own cultural experiences.

In reflecting postmodern thinking, The Arts in the New Zealand Curriculum draft statement promotes the concept of cultural democracy and social equity in education. In practice this democracy encourages pedagogical pluralism and a critical pedagogical approach whereby students are encouraged to take a variety of perspectives on an issue and to ask questions about and analyse art works, art objects and events from a range of cultural perspectives. Education in the arts which prioritises the consideration of the dynamics of race, gender, class and difference, within a cultural context, has the potential to promote critical thinkers who will inform, enrich and contribute to the broad multi-cultural nature of New Zealand society.

3.4. Inclusive practice and the arts

Traditional western arts education and practice has a history of marginalising and stereotyping both women and minority groups in the arts. The arts works of marginalised groups have been documented, appraised and categorised within a hierarchy of male art practice.

The art world is a constructed world, and therefore we must remember to view it as contingent and always open to critique. We must regard it as always open to expansion and revision. The canon, once defined by a certain number of men in time past, must always be skeptically conceived and kept open so that we no longer ignore the new and the different as they appear ...Today, we must allow the voices we realise were long silenced to sound: the voices of women, of ethnic minorities, of poets and musicians recognized outside the Western world, and we must make way for the untried and the unexpected (Greene 1995: 136).

This draft curriculum statement seeks to encourage approaches to teaching and learning in the arts which are more inclusive of the art making and arts works of all people. Challenges facing curriculum practitioners include the analysis of how to understand self, gender, knowledge, culture and relationships in ways that do not involve hierarchical, linear or binary ways of thinking.

3.5. Semiotics - reading cultural forms

Early in the twentieth century Wittgentstein, Russell and Heidegger shifted the focus of analysis away from ideas in the mind to the language in which thinking is expressed. The subsequent concentration on language informed postmodern theory.

Postmodernism has...offered powerful modes of criticism in which various cultural objects can be read textually in the manner of a socially constructed language. In effect, by constituting cultural objects as languages, it has become possible to question radically the hegemonic view of representation which argues that knowledge truth and reason are governed by linguistic codes and regulations that are essentially neutral and apolitical. (Giroux 1988a: 24)

The meaning of (arts) language lies in its function as a system and in the subsequent systems of language usages (the synchronic - the conditions for existence of any language, and the diachronic - the changes which take place in a language over time). (Saussure, in Harris 1983). A collection of signs within a given art form might be ordered as, for example, phrases, themes and motifs. The elements involved form in their synthesis, syntagmatic relations with each other, and in turn may be represented and interpreted.

How they are interpreted, and by whom, is crucial in terms of the communication of meaning. The meaning of a dance, drama, music or visual art work is constructed, through signs and symbols, according to the social and cultural context through which the work is interpreted. For example, in particular social or cultural contexts a plagal cadence could communicate religious intent, and a carved container or vessel could evoke concepts of memory, containment, or protection.

To make meaning of the various symbols in the arts we must:

• look for the underlying rules and conventions that enable the language to function within particular arts forms;
• analyse the social, cultural and collective dimensions of arts language rather than specific data;
• explore the infrastructure of arts languages which are constructed according to cultural or social norms. These are the underlying or 'deep' structures which underpin individual meaning making.

3.6. Social and cultural text(s)

A text is a combination of signs. It is produced by, and reproduces, cultural attitudes. Treating the arts as a form of social text enables us to better understand the structures, symbols, and the various constituent characteristics that implicate visual, kinesthetic and aural texts with the beliefs and value systems at work within a social context. Signs and codes (for example, music notation, choreography, gesture, iconography) are produced by, and reproduce, cultural meanings and values. By unpacking the formal qualities of arts texts we are led to the discovery of new meanings which have remained hidden under the limited lens of traditional scientific models.

Texts provide a context in which other texts are understood and read, heard or seen. They reveal the processes of negotiation as genres interact and different groups of people understand a text in different ways at different times. Texts may have multiple 'readings' and a multiplicity of interpretations. Texts are rarely as they seem and often contain messages which run counter to their author's intentions. Bracey (1988) discusses the locus of meaning, in terms of the 'art work' as a 'repository of meaning'.

... meaning may be enhanced by reference to data located elsewhere - in other artworks or in the world at large - but, insofar as artworks are required to function as repositories of meaning 'in their own right', data external to them is always contingent.

and:

... meaning is not seen in artworks but assigned to them as part of the conceptual structure within which they are located. Meaning is not in the text, but in the text that attempts to account for the text (Bracey 1988: 82).

Such features, says Bracey, are "common to all contemporary criticism" (p82). Through studying the arts as forms of social text, students bring their own experience and 'reading' (a product of their own cultural attitudes) to the analysis of art works. They become critical thinkers who learn to ask questions. They do not merely accept the obvious as a given, as simply commonsense.

Texts can thus be thought about in terms of:

• textual production (sign choice and combined technical and stylistic features);
• the ways people interpret and use texts;
• relations between texts (contrast and similarity);
• the cultural conditions and contexts in which the texts were produced, used and experienced, and the effects of their use or experience.

(Davis, Mules & Thwaites: 1994)

The Arts in the New Zealand Curriculum draft statement seeks to acknowledge the present social, cultural and economic climate and to be responsive to its needs. It also seeks to educate students of the arts in critical thought, in the notion of multiple realities, in how to maintain views on history, the significance of art works, and the use of technologies as a tools for the realisation of ideas. Importantly, the document adopts a postmodern stance which acknowledges pluralism, examines the expansion of cultural significance while critiquing the breaking down of barriers between so-called high and low culture.

4. The postmodern curriculum

The Arts in the New Zealand Curriculum draft statement emerges at a time when societal and political life is in rapid change; a time which Hinkson refers to as 'an age of discontinuities' (1991). These discontinuities can be best understood as taking cultural, political, economic and time-space forms. All have implications for education, not only as a matter of curriculum content, but modes of assessment, forms of pedagogy, how students learn, how teachers teach, and the ways in which schools operate as organisations. Hinkson (1991) discusses the condition of postmodernity in relation to changing attitudes toward the role of education.

If the social space of modernity, under the influence of the social groupings called forth by writing, especially that transformation of writing within modernity called the printed word, is displaced by a social space constituted by the information and image revolution, it is clear enough that one must expect a major transformation within education. (Hinkson 1991: 27)

Hinkson asserts that within this orientation, and in terms of the arts, this shift from the fixed, in the form of the printed word, to the immediate in the form of the technological, informational or moving image, presents particular challenges for curriculum development. Certainly, the shift from the medium of writing to mediums in which the exchange of information through sound, image, time and space predominates, has implications for the ways educational institutions are structured and through which curricula are developed and delivered.

The changing nature of teachers' work and the tendency toward the devolution and self management of school administration are also symptomatic of post-Fordist systems of change (Thwaites 1998: 11) and the postmodern condition. Robertson (1996: 28) lists examples from the current educational jargon to reveal how the post-Fordist discourse is shaping schooling with a language that speaks of "outputs, performance, added-value, choice, markets, quality, competencies, excellence, flexibility, deregulation, and school-business partnerships".

Doll (1993) states that the post-modern paradigm is an open system; whereas closed systems merely transmit and transfer, open systems transform. He promotes the notion of the four R's - rich, recursive (recurring reflection), relational (to culture, context and pedagogy) and rigorous (p156).

Doll believes that post-modern education should consider:

• a reinterpretation of history; interrelating events unified in time and space;
• the aesthetic, qualitative - to prioritise the dramatic, artistic, non-rational, intuitive dimensions of the human race;
• cultural analysis which examines the impact of technology on the human psyche and the environment;
• a discourse that accepts and criticises, constructs and deconstructs;
• a global perspective on issues;
• reconceptualising and transcending the interlocking categories of race, gender and class.

How do these political, economic, cultural and time-space changes impact upon how the arts might be both conceived and practiced in schools within the framework of the postmodern paradigm? In the following elaborations, we identify key trends in the following areas of education theory and practice and the arts:

• Critical Pedagogy
• Constructivist Pedagogy
• Education and Technology
• Life-long Learning

4.1. Critical pedagogy

Critical pedagogy combines modernist beliefs in the capacity of individuals to use critical reason, with "a critical postmodernist analysis of how we might experience agency in a world constituted in differences" (Giroux 1988a). Such a marriage of insight is important in an approach to critical pedagogy in the twenty-first century. Critical pedagogy is a pedagogy that equates learning with the creation of critical, rather than merely good, citizens. While comparatively revolutionary, the theories proposed by Giroux (1988a) concern a pedagogy which enables teachers and students to appraise and challenge positions of learning by embodying a language of critique and possibility.

Arguments for schools to exist as sites of 'cultural production' rather than economic reform are not new. In response to the New Zealand Department of Education's Curriculum Review (1986), expressions from a wide range of community and education groups revealed a concern for a critical as well as social vision for education.

I want them to produce individuals who are tolerant but questioning, sensitive to the rights of others but conscious of their own rights and responsibilities. (Parent, Rotorua p5)

and:

[Education should have] far more relevance to the society we live in now rather than the one the media and manipulators seem to think we might have lived in. (Community Group, Christchurch p5)

Also, from a group of fifty-eight Christchurch seventh formers:

Above all we think that the system should fit the people, not the people be made to fit the system. (p6)

Education which promotes inquiry, responsiveness and participation, connects school with life, and incorporates plurality, difference, and the "language of the everyday as central to the production and legitimation of learning" (Giroux 1988a: 4). Such an education makes meaning from and of the "social, cultural and economic context in which it operates" (ibid).

Within the discourse of modernism, it has been European models of culture and civilisation that have dominated curriculum thinking. Such models reflect the "continuous progress of the sciences and of techniques, the rational division of industrial work [and the] intensification of human labour and of domination over nature" (Baudrillard 1988). In the late twentieth century, the modernist view is challenged by the increasing influence of the electronic mass media and information technology which "forces us to think about the way education as a practice is peculiarly attached to a particular medium of interchange" (Hinkson 1991:26). The information and image revolution has blurred the territories between "life and art, high and popular culture, and image and reality" (Giroux 1988a: 8).

Hargreaves (1994) discusses the ways we must consider the "spectacle and superficiality of an instantaneous visual (auditory, kinesthetic) culture" (p75). He is concerned that without language, debate and critical analysis, students' abilities to become discerning and reflective consumers of and participants in such a culture may reveal only the superficial and "trivialising" effects of postmodern technologies. He believes there are inherent challenges for classroom teachers in facilitating students' effective engagement with mediums of information and communications technology to ensure the "cultural analysis, moral judgement and studied reflection they threaten to supersede." (p76)

Where people are surrounded by a plethora of images, this can create dramatic spectacles but also moral and political superficiality; aesthetic attractiveness, but also ethical emptiness. In many ways, contemporary images disguise and deflect more unseemly realities. When students are presented with technologically generated images as profuse and pervasive as they are in postmodern society, the relationship between image and reality becomes even more complex than this (ibid: 77).

4.2. Constructivist pedagogy

Constructivist pedagogical theories acknowledge that knowledge is not received passively. It is built up by construction, and cognition is adaptive and serves to organise the experiences of the learner. Prior experiences influence the learner's construction and organisation of current experiences and how they make sense of their world. Learning becomes a process of knowledge construction rather than knowledge reception as information is interpreted in meaningful ways.

Teaching in a constructivist manner, involves setting up experiences which will challenge and extend student knowledge, skills and understandings, and which will enable students to make connections with prior learning experiences. This means teaching within the student's 'zone of proximal development' and involves on-going formative assessment so that learning can be constantly 'scaffolded' to achieve at higher levels (Vygotsky 1978).

The 'zone of proximal development' can be identified as "the distance between the actual development level as determined by individual problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers" (Vygotsky 1978: 86).

The process may be described as follows:

• assistance by capable mentors (for example, the dance, drama, visual art or itinerant music specialist);
• personal development acquired through practice;
• the development and "fossilisation" (ibid) of knowledge and skills; and,
• the recursion back through the 'zone of proximal development' which leads the learner through a spiral curriculum and potentially into a sequence of life-long learning.

4.3. Education and technology

Educational issues usually are presented and discussed as if they were technical (the kind that requires expert knowledge) rather than cultural and social in nature (the kind that require judgement). (Purpel & Shapiro 1995: 2)

The 'high tech' or technological education context reflected in the information and image revolution challenge our conceptions, not only of how learning takes place, but also of who learns and what they will learn, and indeed provides new modes for constructing and experiencing the aesthetic.

Issues of culture, access, consumption, and an education model which recognises that not all those who go to school will in fact take an active part in the technological society for which schools continue to educate students, are integral features of a condition of which many educationalists are already aware.

Governments and education leaders are well aware of the emergent technological societies within which schools are significant members and contributors. School computer purchases, curriculum modification, the enthusiasm for and investment in Technology as a new Learning Area in the New Zealand Curriculum Framework and Australian Curriculum models are examples of ways schools are becoming consumers of technology, of information and of high-tech knowledge. However, as Hinkson warns, "...one of the consequences of high tech is that there is labour for only a dwindling workforce. Educationalists attempt to conceal from themselves that abstract analytical skills can be acquired by only a proportion of students" (1991: 32).

Hinkson's concern is with the diminished role of education as a mode of social integration. He believes that the tension between social responsibility and the "centrality of the new technologies for economic development" (p 26) are vital questions for curriculum developers. While there are equal arguments which maintain that in fact having a technologically educated society actually creates employment, Hinkson's argument proposes alternatives within which curricula may be reconfigured.

4.4. Life-long learning

The New Zealand Curriculum encourages students to become independent and life-long learners.

The school curriculum will foster the development of the knowledge, understanding, skills and attitudes that will empower students to take increasing responsibility for their own learning. It will provide students with satisfying and worthwhile experiences which will motivate them to continue learning throughout life (New Zealand Curriculum Framework 1993:7).

In the changed and restructured economic, technological and social environment of the late twentieth century, the challenges education faces are indeed the challenges faced by the societies in which they function. Internationally, the condition known as postmodernity is characterised by a general change in the character of social and cultural life; the changed nature of, for example, workplace skills, employment, communication, diversity, consumerism, technology and information. Chapman (1996) maintains that in this environment it is imperative that policy makers and educators reconsider their approaches to education. In particular, she draws our attention to issues of competencies, life skills, employment and performance, and to concepts of 'life-long learning'. Life-long learning as a concept is not new and although it has been used in a wide variety of contexts, its meaning is often unclear. Chapman identifies three approaches to the concept of life-long learning:

• the development and promotion of competencies for a skilled employment market;
• the development and promotion of education as intrinsically good in and for itself;
• the development and promotion of citizenship in a participative democracy.
• We believe that none of these concepts of life-long learning can be separated from each other - all three concepts interrelate and cross-fertilise each other. In summary, education in the twenty-first century must reflect the triadic nature of life-long learning:
• for economic progress
• for democratic understanding and activity
• for personal development and fulfillment.

The instrumental and intrinsic nature of the arts disciplines verifies their position in this triad.

5. The arts: conceptual framework

The conceptual framework for The Arts in the New Zealand Curriculum draft statement is based on the understanding that the arts are languages, from which literacies may be developed. These literacies might be viewed and developed in the following ways:

Multiple Literacies in a Multiliterate World

Literacies in the Arts

Literacies in the Arts in New Zealand

The Concept of Languages in the Arts

The Arts as 'Disciplines'

5.1. Multiple literacies in a multiliterate world

In a postmodern paradigm, traditional definitions of literacy are no longer adequate. Literacy takes on a broader definition and it is becoming increasingly common to refer, for example, to scientific literacy, (Shamos 1995), cultural literacy (Hirsch 1987), critical literacy (Lankshear & McLaren 1993), political literacy (Freire 1985), media literacy (Quin 1998), and technological literacy (Knobel & Lankshear 1995).

The New London Group (1996) has coined the term 'multiliteracies', which refers to a new approach to literacy pedagogy which broadens 'the understanding of literacy and literacy teaching and learning to include negotiating a multiplicity of discourses'.

...literacy...now must account for the burgeoning variety of text forms associated with information and multimedia technologies. This includes understanding the competent control of representational forms that are becoming increasingly significant in the overall communications environment... (p61).

5.2. Literacies in the arts

The Conceptual Framework for The Arts embraces the nature of literacy and literacies in the arts as distinct ways of knowing. Literacies in the arts are developed as students learn in, through, and about different art forms within the arts disciplines and use their languages to communicate and interpret meaning. The conceptual framework defines an approach to literacies in the arts which is critical, culturally based, and reflects current arts practice and theories of cultural pluralism.

Increasingly important are modes of meaning other than Linguistic, including Visual Meanings (images, page layouts, screen formats); Audio Meanings (music, sound effects); Gestural Meanings (body language, sensuality); Spatial Meanings (the meanings of environmental spaces, architectural spaces); and Multimodal Meanings (The New London Group 1996: 80).

Dance, drama, music and the visual arts are vital to a reconception of literacy, which addresses the broader definition of literacies for contemporary society. As forms of representation and modes of meaning, the disciplines of the arts are vital to literacy education and therefore essential in the education of all people. The arts disciplines comprise literacies that contribute to our ability to explore, negotiate, communicate, interpret and make meaning of the radically changing realities of contemporary culture and society.

5.3. Literacies in the arts in New Zealand

To develop literacies in the arts in New Zealand society, all students should have opportunities to gain skills, knowledge and understanding of the special character of New Zealand arts forms as they have evolved and developed. These include: the bicultural heritage of Maori and Pakeha as expressed through arts forms; Pakeha arts traditions, values and expressions; the varied European arts forms, traditions and histories; the arts forms of the Pacific Islands, and international and global arts forms, including those of North America and Asia.

To develop literacies in the arts, students should also have opportunities to gain the skills in, and knowledge and understanding of, the electronic media and other technologies and how they transform the ways the arts function in society. Technological advances in communication and arts applications have had a major effect on the ways in which the arts forms are communicated and understood. Information and communications technologies are tools used in the arts disciplines to research, plan, design and make arts works, including sonic, static, and moving images.

The development of literacies in the arts in The Arts in the New Zealand Curriculum draft statement assumes that:

• literacies have political, social and cultural significance - they cannot be regarded as autonomous;
• the meaning of a particular arts literacy depends on the context in which it is embedded;
• the processes through which arts literacies are learned and understood help to construct their meaning;
• each arts discipline embodies a range of discourses which may themselves constitute literacies.

Dance, drama, music and the visual arts are important as unique forms of knowledge and representation, they are in themselves literacies, which contribute to the broader and developing view of multiliteracies. As Hatfield (1998) writes,

The arts disciplines are basic as means of communication as historical components of civilisation and as providers of unique forms of knowledge. As such they need no other justification as essential components of education. While study in the arts disciplines may enhance other skills, encourage personal development, or lead to a stronger economic base for professional presentation of the arts, these are not and should not be the primary reason for their study.

The goal of all education in the arts should be the development of basic literacy in dance music, theatre and the visual arts. Such literacy is grounded in the study of the language and grammar of each art form as they are directly related to creation, performance or exhibition. Studies in the history, literature and analysis of the arts at the appropriate time are equally important in the development of artistic literacy.

5.4. The concept of languages in the arts

A language can be defined in relation to the people who use it. The signs or symbols of, for example, the English language are arbitrary in that there is no meaningful connection between sound (or letter shape) and sense, except in onomatopoeia. It is by convention that these arbitrary signs are used and used to mean what they do. Likewise, it is by convention that composers, painters, choreographers, dramatists, use the signs and symbols of particular forms, genres, styles and techniques. Thinking in such terms tends to represent the arts as media of communication and to emphasise large-scale historical and geographical traditions rather than the individual artist. (Pateman 1991: 91)

As a consequence, the languages of each arts discipline are distinctively defined in relation to the people who use it. Each has its own language comprising visual, auditory and kinesthetic signs and symbols. They do not form a universal language or communications system. Each discipline is composed not of a singular language, but rather of a plurality of languages. Each discipline has particular signs and symbols that relate to specific art forms that are culturally determined. Each is a language system comprising different orders of discourse, for example: haka, batik painting, tapa making, kabuki theatre, oriori. In this sense arts languages comprise different languages because they are culturally differentiated.

Languages, as Aspin (1989) states, are not single, uniform or homogeneous; they reflect the number of cultural communities of which they are embodiments.

And this is true not only in the case of the languages that we call our mother-tongues; it is also true of the multiplicity of artificial systems of rules and conventions which mankind has invented and developed in order to transmit meanings and to expand and enrich his understandings of the world and to render it intelligible, in some form, to others: such as non-natural languages as those of mathematics, science, religion -and the Arts. Naturally too, each such community will generate its own 'literature', that will reflect and embody the growth and state of the culture and the increasing range and innovation of and in its products (Aspin 1989: 256-257).

Furthermore, each of these various languages has its own employing community of discourse, the identity of which becomes discernible in the various particularised forms in which members publish and render objective their experience.

the languages of poetry, music, painting, drama and dance, in which the highly complex and variegated layers of meaning are embodied and expressed - which makes that particular community the language of which is seen in the Arts, one of the most prolific and multifarious that we can conceive of (ibid).

5.5. The arts as disciplines

Dance, drama, music and the visual arts are separate disciplines. Each has discrete bodies of knowledge and modes of investigation. They have each developed their own distinctive public criteria, conceptual frameworks and syntax or modes of investigation which utilise specialised languages or signs and symbols. They are flexible conceptual structures within which ideas; inquiry, decision-making and experience in the arts may be developed. Each represents unique areas of study, and is concerned with a particular domain of experience. They each have a history and a heritage of literature. Each discipline generates communicating communities of discourse and they each embody expressions of the human imagination.

The arts as disciplines influence how we think, what we know and the ways we communicate. Each discipline provides opportunities through which students develop literacies for communicating, receiving and interpreting meaning, using particular visual, auditory and kinesthetic forms and symbols. The capacity to become literate in these forms and symbols is made possible through engagement with each of the four arts disciplines.

6. The achievements objectives

Achievement objectives are developed at eight levels within each discipline for each of the four strands. The achievement objectives across the four strands in each discipline are closely interrelated, both in how they are constructed as part of the conceptual framework, and in how they will be used by the teacher to assess learning outcomes. For example, when students are exploring the languages of each discipline, they may, at the same time, be developing ideas and starting to consider how meaning is being communicated. As part of the same unit of work, students may also be learning about the social and cultural contexts in which the arts disciplines exist. Within any one unit of work or activity in a particular discipline, students will be achieving against the objectives from more than one strand.

7. The strands

The strands reflect the processes and concepts of learning in each of the arts disciplines. They reflect the breadth and relatedness of the skills, knowledge and understandings necessary to learn in, through, and about the disciplines of the arts. The strands are interrelated, non-hierarchical aspects of arts practice and understanding in each of the arts disciplines.

7.1.1. Strand one - exploring the languages of the arts

In this strand, students:

• select and use appropriate processes and technologies;
• understand and use the vocabularies and conventions of each discipline;
• explore the potential for structure through the use of elements and devices;
• manipulate and understand the languages and media of each of the disciplines.

In this strand students explore and use the languages of the arts disciplines. They learn to use the elements, processes, techniques, conventions and technologies of different genres and styles. They explore the potential for structure through the use of elements and devices and come to understand the diverse properties of the mediums within each of the disciplines. This strand embraces the notion that thinking and learning about art is not the same as thinking in art. The emphasis of this strand is on developing student confidence and competence to understand and use the various vocabularies, conventions, technologies and to begin to think and learn in arts languages.

Exploring the Languages of the Arts assumes that in order for students to fluently and meaningfully express their ideas in the various arts discipline, they require access to and competence in the different languages of the arts.

7.1.2. Strand two - developing ideas in the arts

In this strand students:

• source and initiate ideas for arts works;
• develop, refine and resolve ideas through arts making processes;
• develop ideas through a growing understanding of genres and conventions;
• use ideas and processes to inform further arts works.

In this strand students learn to recognise the unique ways of knowing of each discipline as they source and initiate ideas in the arts. They conceptualise, problem-solve, define, refine and give form to ideas in the arts through the creative processes of art making. Through the active and reflective process of creating, students develop their abilities to represent and communicate, their experiences, ideas, beliefs, feelings through dance, drama, music and the visual arts.

7.1.3. Strand three -communicating and interpreting arts meaning

In this strand students:

• share, present, exhibit or perform arts works;
• respond to and interpret arts works as makers and viewers/listeners;
• reflect on and evaluate their own works in progress;
• make informed judgements about the intentions, quality and value of arts works;
• understand the ways technology and communications media affect intended and perceived meaning.

Communicating and interpreting meaning in the arts involves students adopting critical perspectives with regard to the processes and products of art works informed by their knowledge of aural, kinesthetic and visual languages.

In this strand, students share, present, exhibit or perform arts works. They use models of inquiry to interpret the multiple meanings of art works. Students question and interpret art works made by others and come to understand that meanings change over context and time. Students learn that there can be more than one acceptable interpretation of a single art work. Meaning is socially constructed and this can be seen in the way language and the arts are subject to scrutiny as symbolic codes and cultural conventions.

In making central to our teaching the arts and the symbol systems that present them, we may render conscious the process of making meaning, a process that has much to do with the shaping of identity, the development of a sense of agency, and a commitment to a certain mode of praxis (Greene 1997: 387-394).

7.1.4. Strand four - investigating arts contexts

In this strand students:

• investigate the significance and values attached to arts works in a variety of contexts;
• investigate the contribution and significance of the arts disciplines in contemporary culture;
• investigate forms and functions of the arts in social and cultural contexts, past and present.

Students investigate the arts as social texts and discover how the arts are used to discover the nature of our relatedness to ourselves, other people and the environment in past and present contexts. Students locate the arts and art works within their communities and institutions and investigate the forms, functions and significance of the arts in contemporary life. In New Zealand society such texts are represented in a range of distinctive cultural forms. They are represented as symbol systems in the rituals, ceremonies, designs, and communications technologies of traditional and contemporary culture.

7.2 The interrelated nature of the strands

The interrelated nature of the four strands in each discipline is central to the concept of literacy in the arts. In the arts, literacy means for example, more than making art works, notating musical scores, dancing steps, or reading a script. It comprises knowing about the elements and structures of arts languages, developing and conceptualising arts ideas, communicating and interpreting meaning in the arts, and understanding the arts as social texts through critical investigation and interrogation.

The strands are interrelated aspects of practice and understanding in the arts. Within any unit of work or activity in a discipline, students will generally be working in more than one strand. The order of the strands is not intended to indicate any particular planning sequence, and the close relationships between them will assist teachers to plan programmes that interrelate two or more strands.

8. Building on existing syllabus statements

Music

Music in The Arts in the New Zealand Curriculum draft statement and its relationship to the Syllabus for Schools Music Education Early Childhood to Form Seven

The Syllabus for Schools Music Education Early Childhood to Form Seven (hereafter referred to as the 1989 Syllabus) seeks to identify clear developmental progressions in the learning of music and has a strong emphasis on encouraging a music education in which students become active participants in practical music-making. Previously, students had been the 'receivers' of information, with little meaningful music being made in the classroom. The multi-cultural nature of the Syllabus means that, ideally, the existing eurocentric approach to knowing about music takes its place alongside student compositions, explorations and performances as students come to know in music.

The 1989 Syllabus identifies three words which define what a school music programme should encompass. These are create, re-create and appreciate. The intent is for students to develop and compose their own music (create), to perform the music of others (re-create), and to know about and appraise music (appreciate). Create, Re-create and Appreciate authorise music making in the classroom.

It is as a creative art that music is beginning to play an increasingly important role in education. Like all the arts, music springs from a profound response to life itself...[through which] the arts in education take on a new importance (Paynter & Aston 1970: 3).

The relationship between the 1989 Syllabus and The Arts in the New Zealand Curriculum draft statement is outlined below in relation to the guidelines given to teachers within the syllabus booklet (p6). The relevant strands of the curriculum document are inserted in brackets and in italics:

• Create music
• develop the urge to explore and experiment with music (Exploring the Languages of Music)
• foster the ability to improvise, arrange, and compose music (Developing Ideas in Music)
• make imaginative responses in sound (Exploring the Languages of Music; Developing Ideas in Music)
• Re-create music
• enjoy performing music (Communicating and Interpreting Meaning in Music; Exploring the Languages of Music)
• encourage music-making of all kinds, including the re-creation of their own and other students' creative efforts (Communicating and Interpreting Meaning in Music; Developing Ideas in Music)
• share musical performances (Communicating and Interpreting Meaning in Music)
• Appreciate music
• develop the ability to identify, describe, classify, compare, and analyse, in order to understand and value music (Investigating Music Contexts; Communicating and Interpreting Meaning in Music)
• contemplate and appreciate music through responsive listening (Investigating Music Contexts; Communicating and Interpreting Meaning in Music; Exploring the Languages of Music)
• acknowledge and respect both quality in music and performers who excel (Communicating and Interpreting Meaning in Music)

In addition, the 1989 Syllabus makes the important point that: Perceptive listening is integral to all objectives. Substantial aural development, therefore, is the basis for enjoyable and worthwhile musical experiences.

A strong supporter of an emphasis on listening skills being central to music programmes, is Reimer (1997: 33-38). His reasons for including listening in music programmes is so that:

• Musical details can be heard;
• Critical judgements can be made;
• Historical and cultural understandings can be brought to bear;
• Aesthetic insights can be employed;
• Affective power can be experienced;
• Analytical synthesis can be made;
• Useful comparisons can be employed;
• Preferences can be reflected;
• Sources of bodily responses can be noticed;
• Imaginative interrelationships can be suggested.

Music in The Arts in the New Zealand Curriculum draft statement emphasises the notion of aural development across all four of its interrelated strands. This development is encouraged as follows:

Exploring the Languages of Music - coming to differentiate the qualities between a wide range of sound sources; the essential aural skills (rhythmic and melodic dictation, interval and chord recognition; identifying form, texture, and timbre); and becoming selective in the use of sounds;

Developing ideas in Music - creating and composing one's own music requires a depth of aural knowledge, - this strand puts such knowledge into practice;

Communicating and Interpreting Meaning in Music - critically listening to one's self when performing, and the comparing and critiquing of the performances of others, are essential outcomes of this strand. In addition, the performing by ear represents the aim of the curriculum to restore the aural tradition so prevalent in non-European cultures as well as popular music and jazz, and to develop the inner ear (audiation) as students 'hear' musical scores as they read them away from their instruments;

Investigating Music Contexts - Comparing music's development through history and through a wide range of cultures requires the development of an aural sophistication which enables students to critically examine a range of music works. This strand also encourages listening through a range of technologies from 'primitive' to contemporary electronic as sound qualities are examined and put into practice.

Music in The Arts in the New Zealand Curriculum draft statement acknowledges the recognised effective means of learning referred to in the 1989 Syllabus. These means are listening, moving, singing, playing, reading, recording, directing and researching. They provide mediums through which students can explore, create, develop, interpret, re-create, communicate, appreciate and investigates ideas in music.

Students will come to music programmes with a variety of experiences. In a spiral curriculum, as this syllabus illustrates, all early experiences are continued with increasing sophistication - each part of the subject is reviewed and reinforced at every stage (1989 Syllabus p9).

The Arts in the New Zealand Curriculum draft statement has the intent of scaffolding musical development as referred to in the 1989 Syllabus. There should be a continual interaction between action and reflection. This reflects the notion of the spiral curriculum which underpins the 1989 Syllabus. It is important to acknowledge that the spiral curriculum is not merely the identification of certain key ideas which are then revisited at regular intervals with increasing sophistication. The spiral relies on the "repeated encounters coming from a wide array of differing directions and contexts, learned in their interconnectedness" (Efland 1995: 146).

Music in The Arts in the New Zealand Curriculum draft statement is, therefore, philosophically derived from the 1989 Syllabus. Both documents aim to:

• develop sensitivity towards music through personal experience by the exercise of imagination and the acquisition of skills, knowledge and understanding;
• provide intellectual and aesthetic stimulation;
• develop a perceptive, sensitive and discriminating response to music in past and present cultural contexts;
• encourage the understanding that the expression of some thoughts and feelings may be more readily achieved through music than through other forms of communication;
• encourage the development of memory and the acquisition of skills of a more general nature such as analysis, inventiveness, and co-ordination;
• develop performance skills to enable students to participate in the wide range of musical activities which can be found in the school and in the community;
• provide a body of knowledge, skill development and socio-cultural understanding as a basis for further study or leisure or both;
• develop life skills and social skills through music-making activities;
• stimulate and develop an appreciation and enjoyment of music through an active involvement in the four domains of exploring, developing, communicating and interpreting, and investigating music;
• demonstrate a commitment to bicultural and multicultural music education.

The visual arts

The visual arts in The Arts in the New Zealand Curriculum draft statement and its relationship to Art Education: Junior Classes to Form Seven, Syllabus for Schools 1989

The Arts in the New Zealand Curriculum draft statement builds on and extends from a strong philosophical approach to art education, established in 1989 in the Art Education: Junior Classes to Form Seven, Syllabus for Schools (hereafter referred to as the 1989 Syllabus). The aim of this syllabus is 'to enable students to make art works and to develop an understanding of the actions and relationships of art in cultures and societies' (1989: 6). It is this aim, and its acknowledgement of the fundamental relationships between art making and the social and cultural contexts within which art making occurs, that has given significant form to the conceptual framework of The Arts in the New Zealand Curriculum draft statement.

Art education makes an essential and significant contribution to the learning required by the whole curriculum. Art, just like other subjects in the curriculum, aims to help students achieve their own goals and gain a greater sense of personal worth. But because art is closely linked to social, cultural and spiritual action and belief, its contribution is particularly important (Art Education: Junior Classes to Form Seven, Syllabus for Schools 1989 p20).

Four content areas which reflect the aim of the 1989 Syllabus are: Making Artworks, Sources of Motivation, Knowing About Art and The Social Contexts of Art. In practice, over the last ten years, the syllabus has generally been 'adapted' to reflect a strong emphasis on making art, in response to or in the context of 'art appreciation'. This practice locates art education within the parameters of making and knowing alone, and as Pearson (1998) states, the second part of the syllabus aim (to develop an understanding of the actions and relationships of art in cultures and society) 'seems to have been avoided by almost everyone having anything to do with art education over the past ten years'.

The Visual Arts

The visual arts as a discipline area in The Arts in the New Zealand Curriculum draft statement represents a broad range of visual arts forms, genres, dimensions and styles. It embraces concepts of visual and cultural literacy by recognising the significance of interpreting and comprehending the visible actions, objects and symbols of the visual arts, in the social contexts and circumstances in which they are encountered, made used and valued. Visual literacy refers to the development, production and comprehension of objects, images, events and actions for the purposes of communication, thinking, learning, constructing meaning, personal expression and aesthetic enjoyment.

The 1989 Syllabus acknowledges opportunities for 'expression, communication and commentary', which align the visual arts with other arts, including music, dance, drama, literature and poetry. Each of these disciplines contributes in 'particular way(s) towards student's experience' (p20).

The ideal teaching for the whole curriculum is that which enhances and reinforces skills and knowledge across all subjects while recognising the objectives particular to each (Art Education: Junior Classes to Form Seven, Syllabus for Schools 1989: 20).

Parallels exist between the visual arts strands in The Arts in the New Zealand Curriculum draft statement and the four 'content' areas of the syllabus in acknowledging the significance of visual arts practice, knowledge and inquiry. The interrelated nature of the visual arts strands and achievement objectives promote the relationships between art making and an understanding of the relationships of art in cultures and society. Duncum (1999) prioritises the social and cultural nature of 'relationship' when he contends that art education is 'primarily about the contribution visual material culture makes to knowledge, values, beliefs and attitudes, irrespective of the kind of visual material investigated. Art education is, or should be, primarily about visual culture per se, not any particular kind.'

The strands described in the visual arts discipline area, embrace a diversity of visual art forms and their traditions, their technologies, and social and cultural contexts. These include two and three dimensional art forms such as design, painting and sculpture, time based art forms such as film and video, performance art and electronic art. The achievement objectives promote the development of visual literacies through the scaffolding of learning in the various strands and levels. The strands and achievement objectives enable learners to extend as well as revisit prior learning experiences through a continual cycle of action and reflection.

The visual arts strands are:

• Exploring the Languages of the Visual Arts
• Developing Ideas in the Visual Arts
• Communicating and Interpreting Meaning in the Visual Arts
• Investigating Visual Arts Contexts

The strands reflect and affirm best practice and meet the needs of students and school communities as they move into the next century by:

• acknowledging the skills knowledge and understandings particular to a range of visual arts forms and languages;
• acknowledging the principles of visual literacy (for example, perception, cognition, visual concept formation), the awareness of the structure and function of visual languages (for example, elements and principles), and the use of culturally acquired signs and culturally established sign and symbol systems;
• acknowledging bicultural contributions, traditions and relationships within New Zealand's visual culture, and the unique contribution of the visual art forms and traditions of the Maori;
• acknowledging multicultural and global perspectives in learning in, through and about the visual arts and the increased diversity and significance of contemporary visual culture;
• reflecting and building on the principles of the existing syllabus and the essential features of visual arts theory, criticism and best practice.

Relationship: Curriculum strands and Syllabus content

Aspects of the 1989 Syllabus are reflected in the four visual arts strands. For example:

Exploring the languages of the Visual Arts:

Knowing about and using visual language and procedures are important aspects of making artworks. Students gain knowledge of the materials, equipment, technologies they will use, the elements, principles, techniques and ways of proceeding (conventions). They acquire practical and theoretical knowledge of the different forms and dimensions that visual art works can take and the processes and media that can be used to make them. Students explore the languages of two dimensional, three dimensional and time based visual art forms including design, and explore visual art forms which use combinations of media. Students gain skills, knowledge and understandings of the languages and procedures of the visual arts through this strand. Such knowledge and practice reflects aspects of Making Artworks, Knowing About Art and Sources of Motivation in the 1989 Syllabus.

Developing Ideas in the Visual Arts:

The motivations for making art works arise from the need or desire of individuals to, for example, tell or retell stories, comment upon themselves, their families societies or customs, express personal feelings, attitudes, emotions, experiences, sensations and ideas. Ideas can be initiated and developed through observation, imagination and invention with materials. Students learn to develop ideas in response to experiences and feelings and as they reflect on their own art making. They learn ways to conceptualise and retrieve ideas for art making and to organise them in ways that solve problems and communicate their intentions. Students learn ways to initiate, develop and extend ideas. Aspects of Sources of Motivation, Knowing About Art and Making Artworks in the 1989 Syllabus, are reflected in this strand.

Communicating and Interpreting Meaning in the Visual Arts:

In this strand students learn to interpret and respond to the meanings and intentions communicated through the forms of the visual arts. They become 'readers' of the visual culture in which they are participants and contributors. Students develop the confidence and ability to evaluate their own and others' works and make informed judgements about what has been or is being achieved. They react to the art and art works in the school and community and comment upon communications media and technologies. They discuss their responses and feelings and express points of view about their own and others' works. They use questioning and inquiry processes that are central to learning about and making meaning from the signs and symbols used to communicate ideas in art works. Assuming the role of consumers, spectators and critics helps students increase their knowledge about art and can extend their responses from immediate reaction to considered evaluation. Such skills, knowledge and understandings reflect aspects of Making Artworks, Knowing about art, Sources of Motivation and The Social Contexts of Art in the 1989 Syllabus.

Investigating Visual Arts Contexts:

Personal responses to art works need to be placed in broad social contexts and understanding the actions and relationships of art in cultures and societies is fundamental to arts learning. To develop such an understanding, students investigate the objects and images that have been made in and have come from a variety of times, places and contexts. They develop an understanding of the significance of art in their own culture, and the variety of ways in which art works are and have been valued or regarded. Students learn to talk about their own and others' art works and the significance of the objects and images from different cultures, subcultures and individuals. They recognise that visual culture reflects and is shaped by the beliefs, technologies, needs and values of particular societies and groups of people. Students learn to apply their knowledge and understanding of the relationships of art in cultures and society to their own art making. Aspects of The Social Contexts of Art, Sources of Motivation and Knowing About Art are reflected in this strand.

Visual arts education for the contemporary world, while accessing and increasing a wide range of art making skills, improving self-expression, self image, achievement, motivation and independence, must also recognises and take responsibility for the development of visual comprehension, critical inquiry, communication skills, the ordering of ideas and the 'reading' of one's own visual culture. Literacy in the visual arts promotes an 'understanding of the actions and relationships of art in cultures and society' (1989 Syllabus: 6) and enables students to participate in and contribute to the multicultural society in which they live.

9. Statement rationales: dance and drama

Dance

The Arts as an essential learning area in the New Zealand Curriculum Framework (1993) establishes dance as a distinct discipline, alongside drama, music, and the visual arts, within the essential learning area of The Arts.

Traditionally dance in New Zealand schools has evolved, as it has for many other countries, largely under the aegis of the physical education curriculum. In New Zealand this association has occurred largely because of the influences of the British education system and the development of dance in tertiary education within the School of Physical Education at Otago University. Brinson (1992), a British writer, observes that the nature of the link between dance and physical education is a tenuous one, 'it is a link in the minds of educators and administrators based on convenience and pragmatism rather than any principled consideration of dance as an art form' (p60). He goes on to remark that the 'present situation of dance in British education is a result of outdated historical forces combined with social prejudice which has created a hegemony of thinking and attitude, which gives little consideration to the contribution dance would make to aesthetic education' (p64). While the situation in Britain has continued to subsume dance under the umbrella of physical education, in New Zealand the potential for dance to be more fully explored and realised as an arts discipline in its own right in compulsory education is realised with its inclusion within The Arts essential learning area.

Given the increasing nature and number of opportunities for dance study at senior secondary and tertiary level, the demand for a more comprehensive curriculum which focuses on the artistic and aesthetic nature of dance in preparation for higher level study is overdue. Programmes of study in dance at both state and private provider institutions now offer a range of qualifications opportunities. These include National Certificate, Diploma, initial degree and post-graduate study.

Students at all levels of schooling should have opportunities to develop their skills, knowledge and understanding in, through and about dance as an artistic and aesthetic form of expression which is integral to all cultures. The opportunity to engage in dance discipline specific learning, to develop individual capacities and to make personal judgements about the nature and value of dance informed through personal experience and study of the dance as art, should form part of the general education of all students. This conceptualisation of dance as art study however, is currently beyond the scope afforded by its inclusion within the health and physical education curriculum.

The recently released Health and Physical Education in the New Zealand Curriculum (1999) includes dance as an example of a learning context among many within Strand B of its four strands. Dance is identified as one of many physical skill activities that may be used to develop students' physical skills, their ability to accept challenges, and provide experiences in different cultural and social practices. Strand B: Movement concepts and skills, focuses student learning on personal movement skills which are developed in a range of situation and environments. Dance is included in a wide ranging list of potential learning contexts alongside other contexts such as: aquatics, athletics, te reo kori, fundamental movement skills, gymnastics, ball activities, fitness activities, games, adventure activities, team games, and outdoor pursuits.

Dance within the health and physical education curriculum is therefore developed solely as a physical skill related to general movement confidence and competence. While dance undeniably includes the development of physical skills, to confine it solely to this orientation is to severely limit its potential within education. As Dimondstein (1988) remarks:

The practice of making dance an adjunct of physical education has placed it in the same category as athletics or physical skills. Although body control is the basis of all motor activity, the essential characteristic of dance is the control of the body for expressive purposes. Dance therefore uses skills and techniques towards ends different from those associated with sports or gymnastics. Dance is geared neither toward the refinement of skills in themselves nor toward competitive ends. Skills become the means by which each individual grapples with the elements of dance to shape a personal statement... the end state of dance is to give external shape to internal experience (p81).

As artistic and aesthetic education, dance enables a distinctive way of knowing and understanding. Through its use of non-verbal communication, and kinesthetic signs and symbols, an education in, through and about dance as art enables students the opportunity to participate in a cognitive, physical, perceptual and imaginative learning which differs from any other area of the curriculum. Dance as a discipline within The Arts essential learning area is a particular form of knowledge and experience on its own. It is a way of thinking about, organising, and communicating individual and shared perceptions of the world. It provides students with a unique form of inquiry, of expression and representation characterised by its ability to make symbolic statements to create symbolic meaning.

Dance as an arts discipline (Adshead 1981; Hong-Joe 1991; Smith-Autard 1995), which in broad terms comprises performance, choreography, critical viewing and valuing of dance as art, breaks with the dominant assumption that dance is merely a matter of technical skill and physical expertise. As Hanstein (1990) articulates it:

The post-modern view of dance education calls for a curriculum which attends to, in explicit ways, the perception, exploration, transformation, and discrimination of artistic conceptions while cultivating historical and cultural perspectives, developing the discerning skills of the critic and guiding our students as they seek answers to questions about dance as an art form (p57)

Dance within The Arts in the New Zealand Curriculum draft statement provides opportunities for students to not only acquire the skills of dancing, but also to learn about dance in its many contexts, to create and perform in dances, and through watching their peers and professional artists, to learn to respond to, enjoy and make discerning artistic and aesthetic judgements in respect to dance works. Dance as an arts discipline and curricular subject therefore, includes not only physical knowing in and through the medium of movement, but also learning about, and critical reflection upon, issues of dance and its historical, social, and cultural construction. Students therefore connect dance to wider critical, social and cultural concerns within both the wider and immediate dimensions of their lives and living. Rather than being separated out and compartmentalised from the world in which it is used, dance is conceived of as a form of meaning making which is very much part of the students' lived world.

Dance literacy, through creation, appreciation, viewing and criticism is not a separate aspect of dance knowledge divorced from practical experience. Dance theory, dance practice and dance aesthetics are inextricably linked as the distinct nature of dance. The aim is to broaden knowledge with reference to the individual's experiences of the world and more specifically the art of dance (Bannon & Sanderson 1998: 20).

In summary, the study of dance as a discipline within the arts is not provided for within the current scope of the physical education curriculum. The learning outcomes of dance in physical education are different to the learning outcomes of dance within The Arts. To combine them misleads the students and creates disparate emphases in which dance is presented as only part only of a range of physical skills. The emphasis of dance is on knowledge of body and mind through the acquisition of specialist techniques which facilitate the communication of feelings, emotions and situations, especially those that cannot be communicated in words.

What makes dance an art rather than a sport or a coincidence is the fact that dance is a deliberate activity that involves purpose, intentional rhythm, culturally patterned sequences, and extraordinary nonverbal movement of aesthetic and inherent value. Through the study of dance you will discover three aspects of your phenomenal self the dancer, the choreographer and the viewer (Schrader 1996: 11).

Drama

Drama, like dance, music and the visual arts, is a distinctive arts discipline with its own way of knowing, discrete body of knowledge and pedagogical approaches. Drama, as Abbs (1992) reminds us, is a:

...distinctive arts discipline with its many genres, texts, techniques, modes of performance and reception and its many commanding, imaginative and expressive achievements from Greek Tragedy onwards (p3).

In schools therefore, as Millet (1996) advocates, drama must be seen as:

...a subject in its own right with a content and academic value equal to and old as mathematics. We need to remind ourselves and our administrators that drama was not born in the early 1970's but has its origins in ancient civilisations such as Egypt, Greece, Rome and China, and in inextricably bound in the language and culture of all society (p86).

In New Zealand, drama has traditionally been taught within the English curriculum. While drama does indeed share areas of commonality and contribute to programmes within the essential learning area of Language and Languages, the scope and breadth of drama as an arts discipline encompasses far more than the scope enabled by its inclusion as a contributing component to the oral, written and visual strands of the English curriculum.

In drama, as in the other arts, students need opportunities to develop their skills, knowledge and understanding in the medium. Without this defined development drama serves merely as a tool for supporting learning in other areas of the curriculum. Just as visual arts teachers help students to develop skills, knowledge and understanding in a range of visual art forms - painting, sculpture, graphics, ceramics - so drama specialists have a responsibility to equip those they teach with the skills, knowledge and understandings of dramatic expression. Students engaged in the production process do not simply ëstumble upon' the appropriate theatrical forms for the expression of their ideas, but must have demonstrated both the structures and the disciplines which can help them. If, for example, they are to appropriate forms of popular dramatic expression, then they have at some time to be taught about documentary, street theatre, pantomime, the wellmade play, farce and so on (Hornbrook 1998: 135).

The New Zealand Association for Drama in Education identifies a discipline-based orientation for drama as a school subject in its advocacy documentation entitled, Why Drama? (1998). Students involved in drama are engaged as dramatic artists, critics, historians and social commentators. As dramatic artists, students are involved in making, creating and presenting drama. They learn to control and manage the elements of drama in order to make their own drama or to interpret and recreate existing drama, and in the process develop skills in a range of areas such as acting, directing, play writing, technical theatre and design. As dramatic critics, students respond to drama in a range of ways, from spontaneous to critically analytical. As dramatic historians and social commentators, students place their own dramas in the context of contemporary New Zealand society. They consider past and present New Zealand drama, and the drama of other cultures and societies.

Hornbrook (1998) proposes a programme of drama education located in the public world:

...within it, drama is described as a textual message system crafted specifically to convey meaning to watchers. A tripartite structure of making, performing and responding, make it possible to formulate the dramatic text as the product of the drama lesson and to make it available for evaluation and revision by the participants...As actors in a dramatised culture, we write and perform our dramatic texts according to the dramatic forms which that culture, its traditions, its conventions, its history, make available to us (p131).

This formulation of production, text and reception relocates drama in a wider artistic and aesthetic culture. Drama as dramatic text is therefore rich in signification and powerful in its ability to articulate the structures of feeling within which we live and by which we are made. Students come to realise that what they learn is part of a varied and deeply rooted aesthetic vocabulary incorporating forms from all historical periods and all the world's cultures. To engage in drama is to participate in one of the oldest and most sustaining forms of social interpretation (Pateman 1991: 45).

A curriculum structure which includes students exploring, making, performing, responding and investigating the contexts of dramatic texts is best accessed by learning in, through and about drama in process. As Edmiston puts it, 'students must experience dramatic art from the inside out' (1992: 24).

I want students to become dramatically literate; I want them to be able to use the power of drama. However, I also know that they have to develop this ability as they do everything else - in process. Doing plays or doing drama will not be enough; they must create art. Knowing the ëgreat' dramatic texts and theatrical formats are of course invaluable, but improvised drama without the precondition of formal performance is one of the most effective ways I know of enabling students to have significant experiences of dramatic structures (ibid).

Drama as a discipline within The Arts in the New Zealand Curriculum draft statement orientates drama within a much broader field of knowledge, skills and understanding than that currently enabled via the English curriculum. The development of drama literacy acknowledges the appropriate use and integration of drama as process, drama as performed text, and drama as performance as integral components within a broader conception of drama curriculum. Student experiences in The Arts in the New Zealand Curriculum draft statement addresses a wide range of learning contexts that includes both drama as process and drama as performance, for example, dramatic play, improvisation, theatrical performance, script writing, film and television drama.

Process Drama has been described by practitioners and theorists in various ways, including for example: developmental drama (Cook 1917); child drama (Slade 1954); creative drama; educational drama (Way 1967); drama as a learning medium (Heathcote & Bolton 1995); storydrama (Booth 1994) and process drama (O'Neill 1995). While each of these terms can be used to describe a unique approach to the teaching of drama in education, all of these subcategories can be characterised by a number of common features. In all, the students are guided by a teacher in dramatic improvisation. The work is aimed at engaging students in an experience through which they can explore and express their own ideas and emotions. While improvisation may lead to some form of product, for example, a play or script or performance, the pedagogical emphasis is clearly on the process rather than the final product (O'Farrell 1994). Drama as performed text dates back to the time of Aristotle and is the traditional view of dramatic art which develops the students as playwrights. Drama as performance, is largely a twentieth century orientation that focuses on the physical and visual presentation of performed text. This work encompasses the work of practitioner/theorists such as Artaud, Brecht, Growtowski, Stanislavski and Boal.

Students engaged in drama as a discipline within The Arts essential learning area are therefore involved in learning in, through, and about both the process and product of drama in its various forms. As O'Toole (1987) observes:

There is thus a true dialectic between process and product; in theatre there is always dramatic process and in dramatic improvisation are the seeds of some product - which may not even be theatrical outcomes, but other manifestations of the understandings reached within the drama (p29).

As students participate in dramatic activities they will also have opportunities to participate in performance events of greater or lesser magnitude throughout their studies in drama. While these practical activities will sometimes involve the interpretation of play scripts (incorporating traditional production elements and conventions), opportunities will also be given for more open-ended process drama work in which students commit themselves to framed experiences and participate in the creation of their own and shared dramatic texts. Performance opportunities will in themselves constitute both a process of learning and a product consisting of objective knowledge expressed in a variety of forms.

Conclusion, bibliography and references

Conclusion

The Arts in The New Zealand Curriculum draft statement enables students to develop literacies in the arts as they: explore the languages of the arts, develop ideas in the arts, communicate and interpret meaning in the arts, and investigate the contexts of the arts. Developing literacies in the arts both broadens and deepens students' conceptions of the disciplines of the arts, of themselves, and of their worlds. The social, historical, critical and philosophical studies within the disciplines informs students of the ways that art works are made, used and valued in past and present societies and cultures. The praxial nature of The Arts in the New Zealand Curriculum draft statement provides students with opportunities to engage with, and make decisions about, the aural, kinesthetic, visual, and spatial sign and symbol systems which operate as dynamic texts within the postmodern world.

The Arts in the New Zealand Curriculum draft statement takes the position that:

• education in the arts has both intrinsic and instrumental value;
• the disciplines of the arts are a source of knowledge, beliefs, and values about the self and the world;
• arts literacies enable students to develop imagination, critical thinking, perceptual skills, and higher order cognitive processes;
• the arts are essential to the development of educated and multiliterate citizens within bicultural New Zealand and a multicultural world;
• both creating and responding to art works are important forms of inquiry through which human experiences can be understood and cultural values transmitted.

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