“Det är väl mest bara för läraren?”

Abstract

Earlier research show that documentation of the artistic process by students can promote self-assessment, ownership of learning and the development of one's artistic identity. The aim of this study is to deepen the understanding of documentation of the artistic process as a phenomenon, using an autoethnographic method paired with a phenomenological lens. The autoetnography involves several interactive interviews with students attending a visual art programme at a Swedish upper-secondary school as well as an a/r/tographic exploration, by the researcher, of multimodal documentation. Thus, the study attempts to answer the following questions: (1) How can a multimodal approach of documenting the artistic process take form? (2) How do students experience documenting the artistic process in visual art education? (3) What didactic implications follow the students’ attitudes to document the artistic process in visual art education? The results indicate that by using different modes in the documentation one can better capture the essence of the artistic process. Furthermore, two different forms of documentation were found; a documentation of the artistic process and a documentation about the artistic process. The students mainly documented about the artistic process through text, which they found boring, repetitive and meaningless – something they only did because the teacher asked them to. Their documentation was often separated from their artistic process, done at the end of a project. Therefore one can question whether the students are even documenting the artistic process, or rather creating a narrative around it afterwards. The study highlights the importance of varying methods and different modes in documentation to truly capture the artistic process, which could (hopefully) make it more meaningful and interesting for students in the visual art subject.