Keynote Address
Saturday October 15, 2010
8:30 am

When the Art Club is Not Enough
OR
Teaching Inside Out: A Challenge to Educators

What are we really doing when we claim to be teaching about visual arts? Is creativity something that can be explicitly taught? Shouldn't all assessment of visual arts learning be eliminated? Should we bring art to the students or our students to the art? Why should students be forced to collaborate when art making is really a solitary act? How many computers do we need and why are we still teaching drawing? Do we truly want visual arts to be "front and center" in the curriculum? Is teacher collaboration beneficial or just a fad? Why should teachers be political? How can teachers' passions be displayed in the classroom? Why should we be worried about motivating kids and individualizing instruction - isn't the Art Club enough?

These are some of the questions that visual arts educators continue to ask, that colour our interpretations of art and curriculum, and that will shape this keynote address. Delegates will be offered a set of challenges about their perceptions and their future work as we consider potential directions for visual arts education in Ontario schools.

Bob Phillips recently retired after thirty years of teaching, mainly with the Peel District School Board. Bob's creative passions include printmaking, acrylic painting, and drawing, as well as theatre (directing & production), film, and collecting contemporary ceramic teapots. Bob has been a member of OSEA since 1987, and has served as President (1991-95), Honorary President (2003-07), and currently sits on the Executive Board. In 2001, Bob received the Ray Blackwell Excellence in Art Education Award from OSEA. He has been a sessional professor in the Art & Art History program, University of Toronto at Mississauga & Sheridan College; he has taught preservice and inservice elementary and secondary teachers at OISE/UT; was chair of the Arts Education Council of Ontario; and has been involved with local and provincial curriculum writing, and presented numerous conference workshops in Ontario and across Canada. Bob holds a Masters of Arts in Curriculum Studies (OISE), and has published articles in the Journal of the Ontario Society for Education through Art (JOSEA), OISE's ORBIT magazine, and recently a chapter and cover artwork for Mary Beattie's The Quest for Meaning: Narratives of Teaching, Learning and the Arts (Sense Publishers, 2009). His continuing education interests include visuality and interpreting images; critical & creative thinking strategies; assessment and evaluation practices; and abstract art. Bob lives in Stratford with husband, Joseph, and their cat Dante.