Abstract
Performing arts teachers, in diverse regions of the world, recognise that globalisation has indelibly influenced how the arts are valued, practiced and taught (Rowe, Martin, Buck, et al., 2018). As illustrated by three key United Nations Education, Science and Culture Organisation (UNESCO) policies on arts and culture in the 21st century (UNESCO, 2003, 2006, 2011), global mandates can present contrasting imperatives, prompting shifts within regional, national and institutional strategies. So how do tertiary arts educators respond to shifts in global policies? After a brief historical analysis of three UNESCO strategic documents associated with arts education, this article considers how the contrasts within these strategies have presented challenging learning moments for arts educationalists. ‘Threshold concept’ theory is presented as a means of framing such learning challenges, to highlight the professional development needs of designers of tertiary curricula. Critically reflecting on the author’s experiences of codesigning tertiary degree programmes in New Zealand, China and Fiji, this article identifies key conceptual thresholds that can challenge tertiary educators when seeking to align institutional teaching practices with contemporary global policies on arts education.
Which revolution am I part of?
The influence of neoliberalism on higher education has created a certain cynicism towards policy documents; it is easy for an arts teacher to feel that any new strategy ultimately stems from the economic imperatives of the corporatised institution (Altbach and Knight, 2007). This is unfortunate because the imperatives driving global policy documents in arts education embrace very diverse concerns and can support exciting initiatives in higher education. As identified in the 2015 United Nations Education, Science and Culture Organisation (UNESCO) Global Action Programme on Education for Sustainable Development, advancing policy into transformative learning environments is now a critical goal.
Navigating the flow of valuable ideas from policy to pedagogy to practice can, however, require extensive discussions with those at the frontlines of the strategy: teachers. As an educational process for teachers, this flow of ideas is not simply focussed on explaining what the policy is, or even rationalising why it exists, but extends to an exploration of how it relates to and expands the current values of the teachers affected by the policy. As Paulo Freire emphasises: It is absolutely essential that the oppressed participate in the revolutionary process with an increasingly critical awareness of their role as subjects of the transformation. (Freire, 1970: 127)
Such a journey might feel like an endless odyssey within the 21st century, as arts teachers have been traversing an ever-shifting delta of global cultural policies governing and guiding arts education. Whilst welcomed by many involved in arts education, the evolution of these policies has continuously modified our understandings of what is globally valued within the arts. Remaining within the currents formed by these policies has been challenging for arts teachers, and for those preparing arts teachers for professional careers.
The on-the-job learning process that is experienced by professional practitioners when they adapt to the new policies that govern and guide their practice might be considered in terms of threshold concept learning (Meyer and Land, 2005). To explore the relationship between cultural policy and ‘threshold concept’ theory, within this article I focus on three arts curriculum initiatives in tertiary education institutes in New Zealand, China and Fiji. After a comparative analysis of three key global strategies relevant to arts education, I reflect on my own experiences of codesigning curricula in diverse settings, identifying some conceptual thresholds traversed by arts educators seeking to comprehend policy shifts.
The conceptual thresholds of committees
Committees, of varying sizes and levels of authority, are central to the strategic planning and operational activities of tertiary institutions. Committees are responsible for identifying salient issues, responding to concerns and opportunities, delegating responsibilities, and determining and articulating recommended strategies. This collective decision-making process might be considered the ultimate function of a committee; a means of maintaining shared values, distributed leadership and collegiality within academia (Liberatore, Nydick and Sanchez, 1992).
As tertiary institutions undergo rapid transformation in response to global changes in knowledge and education (Yielder and Codling, 2004), committee members can be required to rapidly expand their knowledge and possibly shift their philosophical understandings on an issue. Given that academics within committees will have formed their perspectives and values at different points in history, such transformation can require more than simply a logical argument. It can require a form of pedagogy that accounts for how committee-members-as-learners currently understand a subject. This sort of learning is distinct from content-focussed learning that may relate to other areas of professional development, such as learning a new repertoire of music or dance, or a new technological extension to a current educational practice. So how might the professional-learning context of institutional committees be better understood? How might a theorisation of learning-within-a-committee support collective decision-making processes, and thereby support the transfer of policy-to-practice within educational development?
Threshold concept theory presents a framework for considering the transformative learning that academics might experience when adapting their viewpoints in the context of an academic committee. Educational theorists Meyer and Land (2005) posit that threshold concepts create borders around our understanding of a subject. Crossing a threshold concept is like moving through ‘a portal, opening up a new and previously inaccessible way of thinking about something’ (Meyer and Land, 2005: 373). This paradigm-expanding learning has particular relevance to the transformational leadership goals (Bass and Avolio, 1990) embedded within institutional responses to global policies, particularly in an era of shifting global mandates.
The crossing of such a threshold concept can involve a learning process that includes:
Transformation (it changes a learner’s perception of a subject); Irreversibility (it is something that cannot be unlearnt without considerable effort); Integration (it exposes an interrelatedness of knowledge and allows new conceptual associations to be built); Bound (it is relevant, significant, and limited to particular disciplinary contexts); Challenging (it contrasts with the dominant paradigms that a student may carry).
In emphasising the latter point, Meyer and Land (2005) identify that a threshold concept has particular significance because it contains ‘troublesome knowledge’ (2005: 373). A learner will inevitably experience a sense of intellectual and possibly emotional disruption as the threshold is navigated. Crossing a conceptual threshold is thus akin to experiencing an epiphany: A new and important way of seeing the world is realised, allowing an individual to further guide their own learning and decision-making in a subject.
Within the context of an academic committee responding to policy changes, an example of a threshold concept might be the idea that arts-learning has instrumental functions. In other words, arts learning can be used as a tool for learning content knowledge, in other subject areas. The passage through such a conceptual threshold can allow an individual to no longer consider arts education as an endeavour focussed solely on gaining mastery in that particular artform. This particular crossing can prompt individuals to construct new associations between arts learning methods and learning in other areas, and reflect on how they might adapt and extend arts teaching methods as a result.
Whilst this may seem (on the surface) to be a very straightforward realisation, the movement across such a conceptual threshold can involve much oscillation, as the learner/committee-member seeks to reconcile this new way of seeing the world with former ways of seeing the world (Land, Meyer and Smith, 2008). Attending to this period of oscillation and allowing an individual to construct their own unique pathway beyond the threshold thus becomes the focus of the pedagogy. Once an individual committee member is beyond the conceptual threshold, and inclined towards seeing the subject in a new way, they will be more intrinsically motivated to guide and expand their own practices (Perkins, 2008) as an educational strategist.
Threshold concept learning might therefore be seen as an extension of educational theories in transformative learning (Taylor and Cranton, 2012), self-directed learning (Knowles, 1975; Rothwell and Sensenig, 1999), the social construction of knowledge (Eisner, 2002; Vygotsky, 1978), and the gaining of a disposition towards further knowledge acquisition and application (Perry, 1970). This process, whilst perhaps slower, contrasts with a command-style of teaching/leadership (Mosston and Ashworth, 1990): simply presenting a new mandate and directing learners/committee members to implement that new mandate.
Whilst studies in threshold concept learning have predominantly focussed on complex principles within science and technology subjects (Land et al., 2008), it is possible to see the value of this pedagogic theory for practitioners facing new imperatives from a policy or strategic plan. It cannot be presumed that an arts educator, upon seeing a new policy, will wholly comprehend its rationales and immediately apply its new ideas within the design of a curricula or pedagogic practice in the classroom. Like any other learner facing a professional development experience within their career, an arts educator may need to undergo a significant change in disposition to recognise the value of the policy. Being supported through such a dispositional change can be seen as a crucial pedagogic leadership action, if the individual is to subsequently value and extend the strategies that flow from the policy.
Arts education strategies in the 21st century: Shifting conventions, road maps and agendas
As social theories and political movements evolve, global arts education policies expand and change. In the decade 2003–2012, the UNESCO published three key strategic documents that presented directives for culture, arts and arts education: the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (UNESCO, 2003), the UNESCO Road Map for Arts Education (UNESCO, 2006) and the UNESCO Seoul Agenda for Arts Education (UNESCO, 2011). These three documents intersect with broader UN conventions and policies that seek to promote humanism, cultural pluralism and equality around the globe. The three policies emphasise the importance of universal access to the arts and arts education, and promote cultural diversity and political inclusion through arts practices. In doing so, it could be argued that these documents are underpinned by philosophical ideals that seek to challenge five centuries of European cultural imperialism, hegemony and appropriation (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1990; Bhabha, 1994; Fanon, 1986; Freire, 1970; Said, 1993).
Whilst sharing common values, these three documents nevertheless present contrasting imperatives for arts education. These three strategy documents underpin subsequent regional and national cultural policies, in turn impacting the strategic directions of higher education institutes. Reviewing these documents and identifying contrasts between the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH; UNESCO, 2003) and the Road Map for Arts Education and the Seoul Agenda for Arts Education (UNESCO, 2006) can therefore be an important departure point in the progressive design of 21st century arts curricula.
The ICH recognises performing arts practices as forms of intangible cultural knowledge, and emphasises the rights of minority groups to sustain these practices and resist cultural hegemony and cultural appropriation. Ratified in 2003, ICH extends earlier UN and UNESCO political directives addressing human rights (UN, 1948), economic, social and cultural rights (UN, 1966a) , civil and political rights (UN, 1966b) , cultural and natural heritage (UNESCO, 1972) , traditional culture and folklore (UNESCO, 1989) and cultural diversity (UNESCO, 2001) . Extending on the work of cultural anthropologists (e.g. Bronislaw Malinowski, Alfred Kroeber, Franz Boas and Claude Levi Strauss), the ICH promotes the value of precolonial and intranational cultural products of minority groups. The ICH has been applied extensively within formal education (Kasapoğlu Akyol, 2016) and underpins the values of tertiary programmes that are dedicated to the research and practice of intangible cultural heritage, such as the Choreomundus Joint Masters degree amongst the University of Clermont Auvergne in France, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Norway, the University of Szeged in Hungary and the University of Roehampton in the United Kingdom (Choreomundus, 2018).
Whilst the discourse of the 2003 convention on intangible heritage emerged from cultural anthropology, for arts education practitioners, the convention encourages:
Educational, awareness-raising and information programmes, aimed at the general public, in particular young people; Specific educational and training programmes within the communities and groups concerned.
It could be argued that these two points construct a social binary; that people outside the communities holding the intangible culture should be made aware of the value of the intangible culture, but specifically the community members themselves should be educated in the continued practices of the intangible culture. Whilst this mandate may function in contexts in which minority cultural groups are living in isolation from other groups, this binary poses concerns regarding cultural segregation within increasingly urbanised multicultural educational contexts.
It might further be argued that the ICH promotes ‘salvage anthropology’ (Clifford, 1987), canonising precolonial era expressions of culture and privileging these cultural practices over more contemporary local cultural practices. This emphasis on the preservation of cultural forms can impede the cultural dynamism of minority cultures, and their ability to remain relevant across generations (Rowe, 2009).
These two issues create dilemmas for arts educators operating within dynamic, multicultural constructions of community, particularly within urban schools and tertiary institutes distant from the traditional location of the culture (Ashley, 2014; Mabingo, 2015; Morunga, 2013). Teachers implementing ICH goals within the curriculum are required to negotiate uncertain pathways; integrating precolonial minority cultural performances into mainstream education whilst not seeking to represent those minority cultures as static, uncreative and segregated from global currents.
The 2006 UNESCO Road Map for Arts Education (UNESCO, 2006) draws more directly on the discourses of arts educators. Whilst it does not directly reference the ICH, the 2006 Road Map emphasises the importance of cultural pluralism through reference to the UNESCO (2001) declaration on cultural diversity. The Road Map considers such cultural pluralism as essential to equality, through reference to the UN (1948) convention on human rights. In this manner, the Road Map is closely aligned with the ICH.
Perhaps distinctly, the 2006 Road Map also references the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UN, 1989) . This draws the emphasis of the policy document away from the importance of the continuation of art/culture for its own sake (or for the sake of a wider cultural identity/group), and instead identifies the instrumentalist function of arts for developing an individual’s potential. Building on arts education theorists (Craft, Jeffrey and Leibling, 2001; Eisner, 2002; Robinson, 1982), the policy recognises the capacity of arts to enhance creativity amongst all young people (not just an elite few deemed as ‘talented’), and identifies how the arts can support learning in other subject areas within formal education. It could be argued that a neoliberal, economic rationalism underpins the Road Map, as it repeatedly emphasises the relationship between arts education and the creative knowledge economies of the 21st Century. An alignment with the Road Map can therefore be seen within tertiary degree programmes that have been redesigned to support the diverse ‘portfolio’ employment outcomes for students of the creative and performing arts (see Ball, Pollard and Stanley, 2010).
Whilst the 2006 Road Map establishes the instrumental functions of arts education, it is predominantly focussed on educational systems and outcomes as established within Western paradigms of formal education. It could be argued that the Road Map is not inclusive of performing arts practices that sit beyond neoliberal economic imperatives and an idealisation of individual emancipation (Rowe, Martin, Buck, et al., 2018). Through an emphasis on arts education in formal curricula, the Road Map appears to assume that arts education around the globe predominantly takes place within institutional settings, neglecting the complex diversity of global arts pedagogies that resist institutionalisation.
The subsequent UNESCO Seoul Agenda for Arts Education, adopted in 2011 (UNESCO, 2011), sought to extend upon the Road Map, through specific objectives and action points that could be addressed at a national and regional level. The development of the Seoul Agenda involved a more globally diverse stakeholder consultation process however, and as a result many of the objectives of the Seoul Agenda are more cognisant of diverse systems and rationales for education (Buck, 2015; Pereira and Buck, 2014). Nonformal education is more clearly valued, as are learners of more diverse ages and with different learning imperatives, which include personal and social wellbeing. Whilst the first two Goals of the Seoul Agenda reflect imperatives of the Road Map (enhancing the accessibility and quality of arts education), the third Goal presents a broader mandate: Goal 3: Apply arts education principles and practices to contribute to resolving the social and cultural challenges facing today’s world. (UNESCO, 2011: 8)
The shifts of emphasis amongst these three documents identify different reasons and methods for teaching performing arts. These include teaching performing arts to safeguard heritage, to enhance formal education and knowledge economies, and to respond to diverse social challenges. As discussed below, these expanding rationales for arts education were subsequently integrated within regional and national policy documents on arts education, which in turn became points of reference for tertiary institutions seeking to expand and grow the contemporary relevance of their degrees in performing arts.
In the following discussion I draw attention to three salient points of contention within the introduction of new academic degrees, and align these with shifts in global policy associated with arts education. To illustrate each of these points, I present autonarrative accounts (Ellis and Bochner, 2000) of how threshold concepts underpinned the committee-room debates within the introduction of three new tertiary degree programmes in Asia and the South Pacific.
Valuing arts as knowledge: The ICH and the Doctor of Philosophy with creative practice
The idea that sophisticated cultural knowledge might be effectively understood and communicated through a medium other than words is a key argument advanced by the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (UNESCO, 2003). This recognition of alternate ways of knowing challenges several centuries of logocentric rationalism within education (Bourdieu, 1991). The ICH therefore offers support to evolving education systems that seek to be more inclusive of diverse forms and sources of knowledge, including those forms of knowledge articulated through intangible mediums such as dance, music and drama.
Within Aotearoa New Zealand, education and cultural policies have recognised the impact of cultural colonisation, and promoted intangible expressions of indigenous culture within education (Ashley, 2014; Morunga, 2013). This has had a significant impact within the primary and secondary curriculum of Aotearoa New Zealand, and tertiary institutions have highlighted strategic goals to advance indigenous knowledge (Durie 2009).
By 2009, however, university statutes in Aotearoa New Zealand regulating the Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) remained firmly restricted to text-based examinations. Given that the PhD is the highest institutional qualification for validating original contributions to knowledge, this restriction to text-based expressions presented a glass ceiling for other forms of knowledge. Those seeking to have alternate modes of expression recognised were instead directed to undertake ‘named’ doctorates, such as a Doctor of Music or a Doctor of Fine Arts. These named doctorates are traditionally assessed as articulations of advanced professional practice, and any intellectual contributions emerging from them are not expected to be transferable across disciplines and contexts. As such, named doctorates maintain a lower academic status within academia, are subject to different institutional regulations, and (crucially, within the increasingly economically rationalised context of higher education) are limited by more restrictive financial regulations.
As the Associate Dean (Postgraduate) of the Faculty of Creative Arts and Industries at the University of Auckland from 2009 to 2014, I was involved in the negotiations for the introduction of a creative practice component into the existing PhD statute, which came into effect in 2011. The introduction of the PhD with creative practice subsequently provided scaffolding frameworks for university-wide examination templates rationalising research with creative practice within Masters degrees, transforming meanings of creative practice research across the institute (Rowe and Buck, 2013).
This change to the PhD statute required extensive negotiation across the University of Auckland and within the nationwide Committee on University Academic Programmes, as the University of Auckland was the first university in Aotearoa New Zealand to formally introduce creative practice components into a PhD statute. These committee-based negotiations required substantial representations of new ideas to committee members: the provision of current literature on PhDs with creative practice (Elkins, 2009; Nelson, 2006), and data identifying similar regulatory shifts at benchmark institutions around the world.
These academic arguments and institutional references confronted significant scepticism, however, amongst academics in the university. Within committee room discussions, the introduction of a PhD with creative practice appeared to academics from diverse disciplines to be an unwarranted academic fad; a dumbing-down of the institution’s highest award; a response to neoliberal imperatives to increase research degree enrolments by admitting students who appeared incapable of verbalising their ideas in academic terms.
It could be argued that such perspectives represented a threshold concept for some committee members. The idea of dance or music as a sophisticated medium of understanding presented ‘troublesome knowledge’: Moving beyond this threshold required disassembling epistemological and ontological hierarchies that placed the status of the written word above other forms of knowledge expression (Rowe and Carter, 2011).
To address this conceptual threshold, the ICH Convention (UNESCO, 2003) presented a progressive global consensus that knowledge systems are complex and multifaceted, including forms of valued cultural knowledge that sit beyond the written word. This consensus helped shift the debate away from suppositions on students’ academic capabilities. The realisation that institutional, governmental and global policies had been collectively generated, and that the PhD with creative practice was a clear and valid interpretation of these policies, sustained the discussion towards a more fruitful outcome. Without an expanded understanding of these policy directives and their relevance to academia, these committee room thresholds may have remained, leading to a stalemate over initiatives to expand the PhD.
Valuing arts as employability: The Road Map and the Masters in Dance Education and Community Dance
The idea that arts education is beneficial for every student (regardless of the student’s particular capabilities and career aspirations), and that artistic training may lead to expanded employment opportunities beyond that of a creative/performing artist, are two key arguments advanced by the Road Map for Arts Education. These arguments challenge the restriction of arts education to a ‘talented elite’, and the focus of tertiary training of those elite towards very narrow career options (Craft, Jeffrey and Leibling, 2001; Eisner, 2002; Robinson, 1982). The Road Map therefore offers support to evolving education systems that seek to utilise artistic practices for diverse learning outcomes, and to expand the employment potential of graduates of arts training programmes.
Within China, an alignment with these global cultural policies has taken place in tandem with economic reforms, which have resulted in an increasingly economic rationalisation for culture (O’Connor and Gu, 2006; Shan, 2009). Policy documents such as the ICH were interpreted in ways that led to the development of distinct sites for the production of traditional culture, and other sites for the consumption of that culture. The change in emphasis of culture-for-politics to culture-for-the-economy has meant that the state has shifted its focus from cultural engineering to cultural management (Shan, 2014). This economic rationalisation of the arts and culture has prompted long-standing state-funded arts institutions to seek ways of making themselves relevant within the market. In fields in which cultural production is high but consumption is limited (such as dance, music and drama), this has meant diversifying the employment skills of graduates of performing arts institutes, to diversify the markets for culture, in alignment with the mandates of the Road Map.
In 2015 the University of Auckland and the Beijing Dance Academy introduced a new Dual Masters degree, which requires students to study for two years in Beijing and one year in Auckland to gain a Masters degree awarded by both institutes. Focussed on research into dance education and community dance, this programme was the first Dual Masters degree in the performing arts between China and another country. For the Beijing Dance Academy, the imperative for this cooperation came from Chinese governmental directives, seeking a more applied use of the arts within creative economies. For the University of Auckland, the motivation came from strategic goals emphasising the importance of international academic engagement. For both, the economic imperatives of the Road Map for Arts Education underpinned the rationales for developing a joint research programme.
This research degree resulted from more than four years of negotiations and joint symposia between the two institutions, in which divergent understandings of dance research, community dance and dance education were shared (Rowe, Buck and Martin, 2015). As one of the team from the University of Auckland involved in these negotiations, I experienced various moments in which assumptions regarding the role of dance in communities and dance education were being challenged. Resistance to the Dual Masters emerged within committee negotiations in Beijing. For some artist-academics, the sole purpose of postgraduate studies in artistic disciplines was the advancement of professional practice in the art form: They perceived the theorising and research into areas such as community and education as more the remit of educationalists and sociologists, not creative arts institutions. The conceptual threshold being negotiated was the idea that artistic practice as research might have multiple imperatives; sometimes artistic practice could be focussed on advancing the art form, and sometimes artistic practice could be an instrument for expanding approaches to community development and learning.
Whilst the Road Map (and its alignment with governmental and institutional strategies) was useful in moving beyond these thresholds, divergence between UNESCO policies gave rise to further points of contention. Notably, the UNESCO Convention on Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage (UNESCO, 2003) was raised as a rationale for noncooperation amongst some of the academics within the Beijing Dance Academy. It was argued that traditional folk dances are the basis of community dance and dances in the school curriculum, and as noted by the ICH, such cultural knowledge is very localised, very valuable, and very at risk from foreign hegemony. So from within this conceptualisation of dance, education and community, little could be gained from international engagement on this issue, and much could be lost. The Road Map appeared to be a strategy constructed predominantly by European theorists, attending to the neoliberal imperatives of arts in an economically rationalised Western society. At this point in the discussions, the Seoul Agenda (which drew on a much more global, grassroots consultation process) provided a useful mechanism for broadening understandings of arts education.
Valuing arts as socially transformative: The Seoul Agenda and the major in Pacific Studies, Arts and Cultures
The idea that arts practices might effectively address emerging social challenges is a key argument advanced by the UNESCO Seoul Agenda for Arts Education (UNESCO, 2011). This Agenda recognises that the world is facing unprecedented economic, political, social and environmental crises resulting from population increases, migration and climate change, demanding wider rationales and locations for the use of arts in society. The Seoul Agenda therefore offers support for evolving education systems that seek to use the arts as a means of supporting social transformation.
For the committee members within the Beijing Dance Academy, the imperatives flowing from the Seoul Agenda provided a fresh reason to consider expanding current understandings of dance in schools and the communities. China was undergoing one of the greatest migrations of people in the history of the world, as hundreds of millions of people moved from rural villages to rapidly growing urban centres (Zhang and Shunfeng, 2003). At the same time, an opening of markets and relations to international engagement meant that the population of China was encountering divergent cultural trends. Former constructions of identity and community based on national, regional or local cultural forms were unravelling, requiring newer understandings of how artistic practices may promote both a dynamic economy and a stable society. Assumptions over the meanings of community, and therefore the role of dance in a community, stood out as a significant conceptual threshold that had to be navigated for the Dual Masters partnership to work. This threshold concept might be understood as: Meanings of community are shifting, and therefore the function of dance within (particularly urban) communities is becoming increasingly diverse. The Seoul Agenda provided a recognition that such transitions were not China’s alone, and that through greater cross-cultural engagement, artist-academics might advance knowledge of how to use the arts to address new social, political and environmental issues.
The tension between arts education to sustain heritage and arts education to transform economies has been felt in other regions. The Pacific Culture and Education Strategy 2010–2015 (UNESCO, 2015) was similarly informed by UNESCO arts education objectives, emphasising, Culture-inclusive education in formal schooling [requires] the inclusion of all forms of cultural expression and heritage learning [and promoting] arts education as a means to explore contemporary values [through] the development of arts and culture programmes in tertiary institutes. (UNESCO, 2015: 14, 15, 17).
As an external consultant on curriculum, I worked with the Oceania Centre for Arts, Culture and Pacific Studies from 2014 to 2017, to develop a proposal for a Major within the arts degree that would focus on Pacific Studies, Arts and Cultures. This involved discussions with all of the teaching staff employed within the Oceania Centre and presentations of diverse curricula associated with such a degree. These staff had been responsible for delivering theoretical papers in Pacific culture and heritage to undergraduate and postgraduate students, and noncurricula training in music, dance and visual arts on campus.
A strategic division between teaching staff with PhDs in anthropology and teaching staff with professional skills in artistic performance presented a particular challenge within the development of this programme. Aside from the clear Cartesian theory/practice split that had been emphasised by the institutional conventions (lecture halls versus studios) and their teaching methods, the strategic split could be sourced to interpretations of shifts in global arts education policies. The anthropology staff were deeply aligned with the ICH Convention and the need to safeguard Pacific traditions. By contrast, the performance staff were committed to creative adaptations of culture as a means of ensuring employment opportunities for graduates (flowing perhaps from the Road Map), principally within the arts entertainment/tourism sector in the Pacific. These differing viewpoints presented a dichotomous conceptual threshold for the committee members: Preserve culture and make it irrelevant, or appropriate and adapt culture for the sake of tourist dollars.
The Seoul Agenda again provided an expanded rationale for arts education within the Pacific, and a framework for moving discussions beyond preservation/creation binaries. Through the emphasis on addressing urgent developmental issues, and its recognition of the multiple locations of arts activities within diverse societies, the Seoul Agenda extended both the importance of indigenous knowledge and the importance of diversifying the application of such knowledge, to address 21st-century problems.
Conclusion
Global cultural policies relevant to arts education have emphasised different locations, systems and rationales for arts education. These global policies have influenced tertiary education programmes, and the practices of arts educationalists in different parts of the world. How have these arts educators experienced paradigm shifts to extend and apply these policies? How do curriculum designers within tertiary institutes adapt their understandings of arts education? What are the learning thresholds that they must cross to ensure that their curricula remains relevant to global policy trends?
The three threshold concepts identified above are by no means a comprehensive list of thresholds standing between global policy and individual practices. Nor are they universally relevant. Performing arts educationalists adapting different curricula in different parts of the world inevitably face diverse conceptual challenges. It can be argued, however, that global cultural imperatives surrounding arts education are dynamic. This emphasises the importance of life-long professional learning for arts educators seeking to maintain an understanding of contemporary cultural policies. The challenges experienced when transitioning such policies into practice may be framed as threshold concepts. This application of threshold concept theory within the professional development learning context of an academic committee, whilst new, may resonate with many practitioners who have undergone transformative journeys during the development of progressive curricula. This article may therefore provide a platform for further investigations into the role of threshold concepts, as global cultural policies continue to evolve and transition into diverse individual practices.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
This research has been undertaken as part of The Arts as Public Service: Strategic Steps towards Equality (ArtsEqual) project funded by the Academy of Finland’s Strategic Research Council from its Equality in Society programme (project no. 293199).
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by Suomen Akatemia grant no. 293199.