31 May 2010

Creative and Performing Arts - Professor Jonathan Holmes

Report for Council of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences Newsletter

At the Australian Learning and Teaching Council national forum on academic standards held in Melbourne in early February, 2010, the expert panel for Creative and Performing Arts recommended the development of a generic suite of threshold learning outcome statements that could be applied to the following broad practice-led disciplines:

Visual Arts · Music · Theatre · Dance · New Media · Creative Writing

Since the National Forum, Professor Jonathan Holmes, Discipline Scholar in Creative and Performing Arts, through extensive consultation, has been able to develop a suite of six threshold learning outcome statements for undergraduate degrees in Creative and Performing Arts. These are currently being reviewed by the Creative and Performing Arts Discipline Reference Group, which first met in mid-April, 2010, and they will be released for widespread discussion and comment in early June.

Given almost all university degrees in the Creative and Performing Arts are accredited by the individual institutions (that is, that there are few degrees that require a national board for accreditation), the strategy has been to identify the peak academic bodies of the disciplines identified above. The Chair or Deputy Chair of each of these bodies has been invited to join the Discipline Reference Group with the idea that they can then draw in their discipline communities to the process of establishing and endorsing the national academic standards in the field. Later this year the aim will be to seek endorsement from the executive boards of these peak bodies along with the endorsement of the Deans responsible for managing degree programs in the Creative and Performing Arts. This strategy appears to be meeting with the approval of the many academics who have been consulted so far.

In recent weeks Jonathan Holmes has been discussing with stakeholders the ways in which these learning outcome statements might be implemented at the university level and the overwhelming view has been that the current form of the draft statements, which seeks to establish a generic set of learning outcomes, is the preferred model rather than one that attempts to define a set of discipline-specific learning outcomes for each of the broad fields of endeavour described above. The stakeholders are generally of the view that the proposed learning outcomes will meet the desired goal of establishing a set of threshold national standards for all undergraduate degrees in Creative and Performing Arts and that the role of the Discipline Scholar over the next few months should be to consult with the discipline communities in order to produce an evidence-based document that describes how the learning outcome statements might be interpreted at the program and degree levels within individual institutions.

A similar process is currently being applied in order to establish threshold learning outcome statements at the Masters by Coursework level.

Discipline Reference Group

• Professor Noel Frankham
  Chair, Australian Council of University Art and Design Schools
  (University of Tasmania noel.frankham [at] utas . edu . au; 03 6226 4301)
• Associate Professor Su Baker
  Head, School of Art, Victorian College of the Arts and Music
  (University of Melbourne - bakerse [at] unimelb . edu . au; 03 9685 9464)
• Professor Richard Vella
  Chair, National Council of Tertiary Music Schools
  (University of Newcastle - richard.vella [at] newcastle . edu . au; 02 4921 5995)
• Associate Professor Ian Maxwell
  Chair, Australasian Association for Theatre, Drama and Performance Studies
  (University of Sydney - ian . maxwell [at] sydney . edu . au; 02 9351 6847)
• Ms Alison Wotherspoon
  Chair, Australian Screen Production Education and Research Association
  (Flinders University - alison . wotherspoon [at] flinders . edu . au; 08 8201 2290 or 08 8201 5121)
• Associate Professor Kim Vincs
  Deputy Chair, Tertiary Dance Council of Australia
  (Deakin University - kim.vincs [at] deakin . edu . au; 03 9251 7663)
• Dr Marcelle Freiman
  Chair, Australasian Association of Writing Programs
  (Macquarie University - marcelle.freiman [at] humn . mq . edu . au; 02 9850 6892)
• Professor Ian Howard
  Dean and Provost, College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales
  (University of New South Wales - ian.howard [at] unsw . edu . au; 02 9385 0850)
• Professor Jennifer Radbourne
  Dean, Faculty of Arts and Education, Deakin University
  (Deakin University - dean-artsed [at] deakin . edu . au; 03 925 17099)
• Mr Martin Cass
  Founder and Director, JMC Academy, Sydney
  (JMC - martin [at] jmc . edu . au; 02 9281 8899; 02 9212 4801)
• Professor Jonathan Holmes
  (Discipline Scholar, ALTC, University of Tasmania - holmes [at] utas . edu . au; 03 6226 4336)
• Ms Wendy Fountain
  (Project Officer, ALTC, University of Tasmania - wendy . fountain [at] utas . edu . au; 03 6226 4318)

 

Jonathan Holmes
31 May 2010

 

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