The most important task of the Department of Visual Education and Art Theory, established in February 2019, is to provide
a modern professional methodological basis for the arts and visual culture teacher training at the university as well as creating a theoretical background for the courses of fine arts, graphic design, motion picture, media and media literacy programmes.
Visual education, which appears in the name of the department, includes modern visual pedagogical theories (creativity models, constructive and experience pedagogy, complex art education) and their performativity and methodology based on the study and adoption of good practices of domestic and international visual pedagogical workshops.
The term ”art theory” refers to the variety of aesthetic (art philosophy, visual theory, communication theory, film theory, artwork analysis), historical (art history, history of aesthetics, film history), as well as other scholarly disciplines that appear in the training of our institute; not only in the Arts and visual culture teacher training programme, but in the training provided by the other departments and specialisations as well.
At present, Arts and visual culture teacher candidates can be enrolled at our institute for five years, ie. four years of training and one year of practice. There is a wide range of majoring pairs to choose from, from Mathematics to Hungarian literature and linguistics, through Physical education to Media literacy and film culture. The training aims to develop modern and varied professional knowledge that is expected of today’s art teachers. Within this framework, the students acquire the knowledge of techniques of various artistic genres, as well as classical and contemporary art history, after obtaining and reinforcing the solid artistic bases during the four years of the training. We consider it important to familiarize teachers with the most up-to-date methodological issues of teaching and learning, and thus to help their pedagogical work. During the training, students have the opportunity to engage in various modern pedagogical workshops, community building workshops, and can also pursue active fine arts activities. The knowledge acquired here can be utilized in public education, in the 5th to 8th grades of primary school, and in high school. Students can also engage in the pedagogical work of galleries and museums. The training also opens the way for active participation in visual pedagogical research and serves as a preliminary for PhD education.
Our graduates encountered many hardships, since their final term was marked by the COVID-pandemics and online teaching. Suddenly something was broken which worked smoothly before, and communication was limited to online channels, including final teaching exams. We have learned a lot, and I am sure they have learned a lot too.
A crucial feature of contemporary art pedagogy as we perceive it, is adaptability in the sense that we shall always be ready to employ an adaptive pedagogical attitude, which is constantly modified by the actual situation, and to possess a methodological kit, equipment or palette. In addition to all these, we shall activate the teachers’ creativity, which can facilitate the students’ creativity. In the case of adaptive teaching, one must take into account the given framework, the individuals we are teaching – as this is an individual or student centred approach – and also our own conditions, situation, competences. In this situation all three components were vital: the perimeters changed, hence suddenly everyone found themselves in an unusual position. We had to understand how we operate, including the limits of our digital competences, and by showing tolerance towards ourselves and each other go through self-improvement in this strained situation (for instance I got used to the camera, and became capable of conducting simple online games, create sub-groups on Zoom.) Inclusion became vital, since not everyone was automatically in the classroom, it required special knowledge to join, the mere intention was not sufficient anymore. Presence and live communication became more important than ever before. On the level of exercises I had to take into account the students’ circumstances at home, their interests, the perimeters and characteristics of our current context. And since our contemporary world is highly visual, visual literacy became essential in the virtual world, which is built upon the visuality of memes and social media platforms. The term “creative subject” is an old-fashioned approach in this context, since it is vital for everyone to acquaint themselves with this language, which provides the basic communication channel with the world and to ourselves. It explores, shapes and expresses our personality.
In this world of excessive online presence, offline communication started to seem valuable, we experienced what it feels like to spend too much time in front of the screen, material tangibility, and nature started to become valuable, just as real in opposition to virtual, and real-life experiences gained new significance. Not only we could, but we had to leave the classroom. Art teachers proudly shared their experiences with each other, thus methodological knowledge appeared online as well in professional and student Facebook groups. In order to gain substantial experiences we got inspiration from the Nature Art specialisation which is prevalent in our teacher training studies, and from a broader context from contemporary art. Both are dominant in our programmes in Eger, and thus shape the minds of our students and provide them suitable methodological skills.
The Eszterházy Károly University in Eger – a former teacher training college – is one of the strongholds of Hungarian teacher training. In addition to the classic drawing and visual culture teacher training, there is an expansive and high-quality art training in our institution, via which the two main pillars of current art pedagogy appear simultaneously:
- “educate through art,” where art is a tool, a tool for nurture, self-improvement, gaining information or learning,
- and its counterpart, “educate for art,” where art itself is the goal, art is taught for itself, hence this is especially dominant in art training.
Throughout their art teacher studies our students obtain the overview and skills of both fields, they can forge or separate these two methods and ways of thinking. Within this theoretical framework everyone can find their own personal art teacher identity.
To go back to the original thought, in this unusual state of pandemics, us, lecturers have been challenged as well, in this novel situation we have even more become role models, and to parafrase the poetic words of László Nagy, we took gently between our teeth preserved Love safely to the other bank of the river!1 We are visible, and our graduates are going to be visible, or are visible even now, and taking “love” to the other bank, along with attention, the ability to play, creativity and caring. I do not fear for them!
Virág Kiss
The author is a Associate Professor,
lecturer at the Visual Arts Institue.