Institutional art education: Curriculum, teacher and learner

The purpose of this paper is to examine the degree to which institutional structures and their rationales affect educational opportunity in art. The meaning of educational opportunity is explored to disentangle individual learning which is negotiated within it. Curriculum is limited in its effectiveness unless it is accompanied by appropriate teaching where silent voices may be made audible. A swing of power in knowledge, methods, or skills from a teacher or curriculum-centred to a traditional learner-centred approach is insufficient. Individualised learning, leading to personal empowerment, is seen in the construction of self-belief that allows the learner to question the tenets of the teacher, the institution, and the politics of education, i.e., to see the system not in order to succeed within it, but in order to question its validity. The paper is in four sections - contexts and problems, art and curriculum, art and teaching, and individual learning. © NSEAD, 1999.