Understanding, competence and achievement in the school-based art education

Abstract

This paper studies the artistic understanding of a group of 606 Primary and Secondary school students in relation to their self-perceived artistic competence and in relation to their academic achievement in Art Education. Two aims were established: first, to identify the areas which previous research defines for the artistic understanding (social, historical, aesthetic, pedagogic and biographical understanding) and the four consecutive levels of complexity for every area (naive, novice, apprentice and master). The second aim is to analyze artistic understanding and academic achievement in art education class. The two initial hypotheses established assume a significant positive relationship between artistic understanding and, firstly, the subjects’ age and gender, and secondly, their self-perceived artistic competence and their academic achievement in art education. These hypotheses were further clarified by the results. The artistic understanding is better among the girls and it increases with the age until the students are 15 years old. Then the differences between this age group and the other age groups become non-significant. Self-perceived artistic competence in the classroom declines according to the artistic understanding while the artistic achievement rises according to the artistic understanding.