PROFESSIONAL STATEMENT

In the professional learning and audit plan part of assignment 1 for this unit, I identified Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art as a priority for my learning. For the practical side I turned to my earlier placement, where I realised Visual Communication Design, Art Creative Practice and Art Making and Exhibiting use many of the same building blocks as foundations for those subjects, and understanding these, how they differ between subjects and what vocabulary is used would really help me see how to navigate students through their curriculum. This reflects APST expectations around understanding and respecting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories, cultures and languages, and identifying professional learning needs (AITSL, 2011, Standards 2.4 and 6.1).

I began to see the foundations that sit underneath the different Visual Arts subjects. I then organised them into 16 resources students could return to across Years 7–12, and called these Studio Building Blocks. The earlier blocks really touch on more direct, visual and practical foundations, and the later blocks bring these together through visual language, materials, idea development, experimentation, reflection and presentation. In each block there is a heading, ‘In your practice’, that explains how ACP, Visual Communication Design and Art Making and Exhibiting use different vocabulary for the same topics. I mapped recurring foundational concepts and practices against the VCE Art Creative Practice Study Design and theoretical textbooks across Art Creative Practice, Visual Communication Design and Art Making and Exhibiting. This helped me organise related knowledge into resources students can revisit across subjects and year levels. Revisiting these foundations provides multiple exposures to important concepts while making differences in disciplinary language visible (Department of Education and Training, 2020).

These Studio Building Blocks can be used within lesson plans to give students access to foundational visual and practical knowledge across the three subjects. They make similarities and differences in disciplinary language visible and provide resources students can return to when they need additional support.

The Creative Thinking Toolkit works alongside these building blocks and adds another layer of support by helping students generate ideas, use feedback and critique, question ideas, iterate, reflect and decide what next step to take. Students learn that creative thinking can be empowering because it helps them guide the process when they feel uncertain or stuck.

I used backward design, beginning with the intended outcome and assessment evidence before planning the learning sequence (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005). I used the Study Design to keep the sequence anchored to curriculum intent. I made the Cultural Lens the organising lens for the five-week sequence, using the Personal and Structural Lenses where they helped students become acquainted with the work from a more personal standpoint.

Students first look at how visual details carry meaning within the story shown in The Birth of Alexander. They then look at artists who have carried particular marks, lines and forms through their work until these become part of their visual language. The studio activity asks students to start building their own visual language by exploring their own marks. They draw from the same source several times, notice which forms keep returning and select one mark to carry forward. In the second lesson they begin changing and developing that mark into their own visual language.

In Week 2, these ideas are extended through place and context by looking at Joan Miró and the symbols and associations within his visual language. By Week 3, the Cultural Lens becomes more necessary as students use Maree Clarke’s practice to consider how Country, family, cultural knowledge and continuity shape meaning.

In Week 4, Peter Waples-Crowe and megan evans show how an artist’s relationship to history shapes what they can speak about, how they represent it and how collaboration can negotiate difference.

In Week 5, students bring these understandings together by comparing how four artists’ practices shape the meanings of their artworks through context and position. For assessment, they complete an annotated visual comparative report for Unit 2, Area of Study 1, Outcome 1.

Across the five weeks, students collect visual observations, contextual information, art terminology and comparative evidence in their Visual Diaries, which they use to complete the final report. This means the assessment grows out of the learning sequence (VCAA, 2022).

Making and responding were deliberately designed alongside one another throughout the learning sequence so that each could deepen the other. Students look at how artists use marks, symbols and recurring forms, then test these possibilities in their own work. Their making gives them another way to understand how artists’ visual decisions create meaning.

Across the ten lessons, students repeatedly recorded and reflected on their thinking in their Visual Diaries, revisited interpretations as new context was introduced, and used feedback and discussion at selected points to refine their ideas (VCAA, 2022). This also helped me understand Creative Practice as something that moves back and forth between investigating, experimenting, reflecting and developing a visual language, rather than following these as separate steps (Greenwood, 2023).

Working with First Nations artists made me think more carefully about how I introduce cultural context and responsibility in the sequence. I wanted students to begin by looking carefully, but also to understand that looking at an artwork does not automatically give them access to all of its meaning. They first form an interpretation from what they can see and then use information from artists, question, revise and deepen that first reading (VCAA, 2022). With Maree Clarke, the learning moves towards Country, continuity and cultural authority. With Peter communities and authoritative cultural sources to Waples-Crowe and megan evans, students learn to consider how different relationships to history shape what an artist can speak about and how those different positions need to be approached with care, especially when artists collaborate. In the studio work, students are not asked to copy culturally specific symbols or styles; the focus is on understanding how cultural context, authority and responsibility shape interpretation, artistic practice and the development of visual language. Creative Australia’s First Nations Cultural and Intellectual Property protocols helped me understand how culturally specific visual language is introduced and discussed in the classroom (Creative Australia, n.d.).

Across the lessons I use explicit teaching, modelling and worked examples when students are introduced to a new process or way of thinking. Research on cognitive load supports explicit guidance and worked examples with unfamiliar knowledge (Sweller, 2016), while Martin and Evans (2018) describe a progression towards increasing independence.

AERO describes scaffolding as support that can be adjusted and gradually faded as student proficiency develops (AERO, 2024). The Studio Guides therefore offer different levels of support through worked examples, vocabulary prompts, Optional Support, Studio Building Blocks, additional questions and Extended Reading. The Creative Thinking Toolkit also supports peer critique and feedback by providing a clear structure for healthy classroom communication.

Questions, critique and short reflection prompts provide formative evidence throughout the sequence. I can use this evidence to revisit context, model a process again, provide additional scaffolding to individuals or small groups, or reduce support when students are ready to work more independently.

I would review student work during and after each lesson, look for Visual Diary reflections and assessment evidence, and identify which supports students actually used. I would look for where interpretations became more precise, where students needed scaffolds and whether the Cultural Lens was being applied with appropriate cultural understanding. I would also consider whether the accumulated Visual Diary evidence was preparing students adequately for the comparative report. This evidence would help me decide what to revisit, model or teach differently in the next lesson, and what I would change before teaching the sequence again.