The Importance of arts education

Title: Art making and arts knowing as active agents in the development of adolescence students ’ creative capacities to inform the construction of their self-concepts and identities in the 21st Century The imagery of vision, to ‘see ’ carries with it a history of metaphoric meanings and orientations informing our affective epistemological and ontological understandings of the world and self. This paper will explore how a secondary visual art curriculum in Australia, informed by post-modern artistic practice together with social and cultural inquiry has become an active and powerful agent in the construction and negotiation of self-concept and identity for adolescents. The research is a longitudinal study grounded in qualitative traditions and examines final year art students works and focuses on insights informed from in- depth student case studies with the evidence indicating that student art making is being increasingly used as a reflective and active meaning making tool