Variation in teachers' and students' understanding of teaching and learning in Fine Art and the broader community

This paper focuses on discerning the critical differences, or variation, in the way
teachers and students experience and understand the subject of Fine Art and its
relation to its broader community. In previous research (Reid, 1999; Davies & Reid,
2001), relations have been found within the music and design disciplines where
teachers and students experience of one of three defined dimensions was strongly
related to the ways in which they understood teaching and learning their subject. The
musicians and designers (and their students) described their experience of the
professional world in three hierarchically related ways. This constitution has become
known as the subject 'Entity'.
Taking a phenomenographical approach, the paper asks whether the experience of
learning and teaching in Fine Art education, both for students and teachers, is
consistent with conceptions shared, within the educational community, about the
professional world of fine artists. In so doing this research project is intended to
reveal the 'Fine Art Entity'. Discerning and describing the 'Fine Art Entity' is
intended, not only to provide a basis for enhancement of learning, teaching and
curriculum development in Fine Art practice, bit also to make a significant
contribution to the subject discourse within the community