(f)acts of defiance. Challenges and opportunities for anti-discriminatory art education at secondary II level

Abstract

Textbooks represent traditional knowledge systems and power relations, which manifest themselves in content-related, methodological and aesthetic discourse practices and positions. This dissertation project explores the question: Which discriminatory discourses can be identified in current secondary level II textbooks in the subject of Art and Design? Textbooks can also be understood as discursive arenas in which socio-politically effective educational powers struggle for recognition, bring together a variety of discourses that will be analysed and their effects clarified. Multimodal discourse analysis is used to draw attention to intersectional aspects and discrimination. Following the analytical part, exemplary materials critical of discrimination and reflective of difference will be created, which will be developed in collaborative-explorative settings with learners (pupils and students) using artistic and art-based formats of art and cultural education. In this process, the learners become cultural producers in the sense of cultural studies, oriented on initiating transformation processes towards a self-empowered critique of hegemonic knowledge and expressing their resistance as actors. As the way in which people and groups are represented in language and images is powerful and constructed, stabilising norms and creating inclusions and exclusions, this dissertation project also focuses on the potential of emancipatory art education practices in order to develop them for schools on the basis of current theory.

Short biography

After degrees in Education in the Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and completion of the ecm-Master´s program for exhibition theory and practice at the University of Applied Arts Vienna Maria Hündler teaches art and visual practice as well as technology and design at schools in Vienna, since 2001 various teaching assignments at the Institute for Education in the Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, since 2017 also in the field of study Pedagogy, Arts and Culture.