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