Institutional practices shaping art education student-teacher attitudes towards community engagement

Abstract

The White Paper of 1997 on Higher Education Transformation formed the basis from which community engagement (CE) was adopted as a core purpose of higher education (HE) in South Africa, together with teaching/learning and research. However, CE is often marginalised within the HE space with perceptions of it being an add-on and a “nice-to-have” activity. This is of course due to a lack of conceptual clarity of CE, which is often influenced by the variety of contexts in which CE should be practiced by higher education institutions (HEIs), hampering the progress and implementation of CE within respective HEIs. The institutional practices of CE and the fostering of civic-mindedness in students and awareness of the role they are to play in socity thus become the responsibility of respective HEIs and faculties in relation to their contextual milieu. In this qualitative case study I seek to understand the role institutional practices of CE at the faculty under study have played in shaping Art Education student-teacher (AEST) attitudes towards CE. To acquire this understanding the study makes use of an Art-Based Research method consisting of reflection drawings as the primary means of collecting data. Incorporating the voice of AESTs’ in the timely debate about CE within HE provides the Faculty of Education with valuable insights that inform CE practices from AESTs’ authentic experiences of CE. The study reveals that while Methodology of Art Education (JMK/ART/Fourth year)1 exists within the auspices of the University of Pretoria’s Faculty of Education, AESTs contrarily regard the faculty as not playing a significant role in the shaping of their attitudes, understanding and definitions towards CE.