THE NEW COURSE – Predicting the Future (2021)?

The visual arts guide for the 2016 course will be published in a little less than three years time –  around about March of 2014.

At present the new course looks quite different to the current one.

Proposed changes include such things as

no more choice of options (option A or option B) and

having three rather than two components, (the current 60/40 breakdown becoming a 50/25/25 breakdown)

The current titles of the three parts are:

Part 1  Visual inquiry: exploration and experimentation (25%)

Part 2  Informed individual response: contextual and comparative study (25%)

Part 3  Visual arts practice: selection of resolved works. (50%)

But these may change!

Part 1  Visual inquiry: exploration and experimentation (25%)

Up to now this part has involved the student’s development of technical skills and aesthetic awareness through the use of verbal and visual documentation in investigation workbooks This component would include the development and recording of appropriate/purposeful ideas, techniques, approaches and methodologies relevant to visual practice, leading to unresolved and/or resolved outcomes.

Part 2  Informed individual response: contextual and comparative study (25%)

For part 2 students will investigate the art and artefacts of two different traditions (one familiar and one unfamiliar to the student), leading to a comparative study of these works with reference to their cultural and historical significance.

It is hoped that the addition of this research-based and multi-contextual dimension to the course will emphasize through students’ inquiry, discovery, evaluation and reflection the ideas of international mindedness and global engagement that the IB as a whole values so strongly.

Part 3  Visual arts practice: selection of resolved works. (50%)

At present this component involves the selection of pieces from the student’s completed/resolved works, with the ideas that:

• the pieces chosen reflect technical competence and evidence of visual thinking
• outcomes reveal an understanding of the use of materials, ideas, and practices appropriate to visual thinking
• chosen works display judgments made by the student regarding ways to communicate a message to an “audience”.

The new course will run until 2021, or thereabouts, and one of the big issues for the curriculum review committee is trying to anticipate what technology will be available to students, teachers, schools and examiners by that time.

For example, I have been working with students – and research workbooks and more recently investigation workbooks – for well over 25 years. Many students love the workbook and really use it well, with in-depth and articulate written and visual research.

But there are many other electronic/digital/new media alternatives to an A3 or A4 book, with some great creative possibilities – and by 2020 there will be even more options.

So when we frame the course aims and objectives, and the methods of assessment, we are peering ten years into the future and trying to discern what technology will be available..

Pass me that crystal ball?