| Summary: | ‘Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else’. This famous line from Charles Dickens’s Hard Times reflects an attitude that, it seems, still appears in some education programmes in Saudi Arabia. This thesis reports on a critical investigation into a teacher-training programme; the research broadening from solely investigating the programme at Department of Curriculum and Instruction at King Saud University, to a two strand examination, also considering the low status of art and art education in Saudi schools and society. The study particularly examined the effect of academic recognition on the programme by the Centre for Quality Assurance in International Education granted according to the standards of the American National Council of Teacher Education. Much of my research adopted participatory arts based methods, inviting participants’ expression of ideas through sets of activities during six months of fieldwork, using semistructured interviews, focus groups, and observation of some of the participants. The research is responsive to multiple stakeholder perspectives: students, student-teachers, faculty members, NCATE committees, Deanship of Quality and myself as researcher. Arts based participatory activities were used to examine the current situation of the teachertraining programme post-CQAIE recognition; connecting art education to individual development, changing perceptions, and general attitudes to art and art education, working towards improving society through art. It appears that the programme remains a conventional vocational course; objectives driven and operating largely along a 'banking concept of education' as described by Freire, with little consideration given to developing skill and students’ voices in the context of the teacher-training programme. Finally, this thesis posits a more progressive, holistic approach within the teacher-training programme, developing students’ skills and abilities and perhaps improving the perception of art and art education in the broader world beyond the institution.
|
|---|
