Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.3/210793

Title

Art, media and design research and practice: views of educators in a 'new' Australian university

Author(s)

Melles, Gavin

Abstract

During the late 1980s and early 1990s further and higher education in the UK and Australia underwent restructuring, bringing institutional mergers and the transformation of institutes of technology and colleges of education into 'new' universities. Vocational fields, including the creative arts and industries of design and film, came into the higher education sector and had to now adjust their vocational creative focus to include research. The development of a research culture was pursued through a range of strategies, including the 'doctoring’ of staff, the development of 'creative' practice-based alternatives to traditional PhDs and research outputs, and the recruitment of research-qualified academics from other fields. This qualitative study based on semi-structured interviews conducted over 2006–2007 examined research views and aspirations of 53 full-time and part-time lecturers in design, media and arts fields in an Australian university of technology. Drawing on concepts from Gee’s D/discourse analysis, this paper explores how visual arts (design and media) educators’ positions regarding research are informed by their identities in communities of practice. Employing a constructivist grounded theory approach; interview analysis suggests that conflicting discourses around practice, profession, industry, and research in practitioner and academic communities of practice present significant challenges to identities in these fields.

Publication type

Journal article

Research centre

Swinburne University of Technology. Faculty of Design

Source

Research in Post-Compulsory Education, Vol. 16, no. 4 (Dec 2011), pp. 451-463

Publication year

2011

FOR Code(s)

1301 Education Systems

Keyword(s)

Australia;  Design educators;  Design research;  Higher education;  Industry;  Practice-based research;  Professions

Publisher

Routledge

ISSN

1359-6748

Publisher URL

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13596748.2011.627152

Copyright

Copyright © 2011 Further Education Research Association.

Peer reviewed