The National Gallery of Victoria’s (NGV, 2021) ‘Big Weather’ visually engaging learning resource combines First Nations knowledges, climate education, art and history through gallery-based (Ian Potter Centre, 2021) and digital teaching and learning. Despite the gallery exhibition ending in 2022, the NGV (2021) have developed a learning resource to support the teaching and learning when viewing through the online gallery format.
This resource provides learners with a range of diverse works along with providing both teachers and learners with learning objectives and curriculum links for the relevant learning areas in the Victorian Curriculum (n.d). The works presented in ‘Big Weather’ explore the uniqueness of Australia’s weather systems focussing on the generational cultural knowledge of First Nations people being central to the understanding of Australia’s natural environment. In addition to this, the NGV (2022) has created sentence starters to scaffold student learning using questioning that relates to each individual artwork.
Teachers can incorporate Yunkaporta’s (2009) eight-ways pedagogical approach through incorporating culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP) in their teaching of First Nations People’s artwork within this resource.
The Australian Design Centre’s (n.d.) Sustainability + Design education kit provides teachers with a detailed and high-level teaching resource that introduces key concepts of sustainable design, encourages responsible creation and consumption and empowers designers to make impactful and sustainable choices. This resource encompasses clearly organised learning sections where teachers can discuss the importance of materials, life cycle, design thinking, design for value, design for disassembly, biomimicry, bird textiles and utopian creations with reference to relevant contemporary and historical designers, architects and artists (The Australian Design Centre, n.d.). Despite having detailed information relating to relevant design teaching and learning, there are no clear curriculum links within this resource requiring teachers to identify appropriate curriculum links relating to this resource when incorporating it throughout the teaching and learning of Visual Arts.
When engaging in the teaching of design and incorporation of this resource, teachers should consider pedagogy founded on social constructivism, such pedagogy that focusses on the construction of learner knowledge through reflection, fostering of learner curiosity and encouragement of learner collaboration throughout the process (Yilmaz, 2008). When incorporating this teaching resource, Victorian teachers should consider aligning this resource to content descriptors in the Visual Communication Design curriculum (VCAA, n.d.) content descriptors VCAVCDR004 and VCAVCDR005 through interpreting the social and historical contexts surrounding sustainability within design and identifying appropriate methods, media and materials used throughout such examples throughout the resource.
Teachers can use this resource as a teaching tool to scaffold learners through a collaborative ‘mini’ design brief to contextualise the learning in a practical manner. When considering the contextualisation of this learning, teachers should draw on Bronfenbrenner’s socio-ecological model (Bronfenbrenner, 1979) when enacting collaborative learning and consider and support the diverse backgrounds and contexts each learner brings to the classroom.
Tate’s (n.d.) art makes resource is a practical and simple to follow lesson designed to focus on students’ development and understanding of storytelling, identity, community and memory through using drawing, collaging and painting skills. This resource is presented in the context of the English education system targeting Key Stage 1-5, requiring Victorian teachers to identify and align this learning activity to the Victorian Curriculum (VCAA, n.d.). When relating to the levels 7 and 8 content descriptors in the Victorian Curriculum, both VCAVAE033, VCAVAV035 and VCAVAR038 could be engaged with requiring students to explore and express ideas, experiment with materials, techniques, technologies and processes along with analysing how ideas and viewpoints are expressed in artworks. When incorporating this resource in the teaching and learning of storytelling and identity in art, teachers should acknowledge that each learner brings their own ‘Virtual schoolbag’ to the classroom consisting of their lived experiences and cultural contexts (Moll et al., 1992). In considering this, teachers should understand that not all students will have similar experiences some of which can be traumatic.
This resource is designed in a simple step-by-step layout for teachers to easily follow as a simple lesson which explores the example artwork, utilises questioning to encourage students to analyse the artwork in a collaborative manner, provides a history of the artwork and outlines both how students should create their work and how teachers should structure the lesson.
Furthermore, this Tate resource provides excellent opportunity for students to extend their learning through collaboration with their peers, cutting their work in half and swapping pieces or inviting others to add to their piece to create further worlds in their artwork. This resource can be used as a quick go-to lesson to engage students in the creation of personal artwork that represents identity with the sample artwork being interchangeable if required to personalised for any school’s context.
REFERENCES
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut elit tellus, luctus nec ullamcorper mattis, pulvinar dapibus leo.