Epistemologies and Aesthetics of Curriculum, Pedagogical Praxis and Assessment in the Visual Arts: A Comparative Analysis of the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme and the New South Wales Stage 6 Visual Arts Syllabus

Abstract

We compare epistemologies and aesthetics in the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme and the Australian New South Wales Stage 6 Visual Arts Syllabus, focusing on curriculum content, pedagogical praxis, and assessment strategies. Both curricula feature making, reflexivity, and critique. International Baccalaureate components are Exhibition, the Process Portfolio, and the Comparative Study. In New South Wales Visual Arts they are the Body of Work and Visual Diary. Issues are the teacher as curriculum; uneven resources; shifting contexts and formulating standardized expectations. In both, qualitative assessment and examination are achieved via articulating criteria and levels of achievement, and examiner training. In International Baccalaureate, what counts as good work can vary in relation to Principal Examiner standards, particularities of context, pedagogy, and resources, with work ranging from sophisticated installations, to anime, to the school art style. In New South Wales Visual Art aesthetic conventions are reinforced because the system is less distributed than International Baccalaureate, where aesthetics become engrained, perpetuating conventions around what counts as good art. In spite of supervening assessment structures, teaching, learning, and assessment in visual arts education is always highly qualitative, unfolding, and rooted in the situated shifting conditions and ways of being in the world of each teacher, student, artwork, examiner, artist, and scholar.