Asian Art Education Research Projects experiment

For the final term of this year I wanted to experiment with students conducting individual research projects in Art in the hope that they could share a large amount of information in a small space of time as well as build researching skills, and hopefully engage students more in Art History and research as they have chosen the topic themselves. I wanted to do somethign a little bit different as they generally hate research and theory as they would much rather be 'making'!
In line with the Education Research Project proposals used in the classrooms under the Kathy Walker Learning model the students did a smaller scale proposal on what they were going to research, how they were going to go about it, what they hoped to learn, and how they were gogin to acheive their project on time. The overall theme for the research was Asian Art in line with the new collection at the NGV and the fantastic resource pack they recently provided to schools. To view the resource pack click here. The pack provides cards on may and varied areas of Asian Art ranging from sculpture, ceramics, Bollywood films, and Samurai Armour just to name a view. Students chose a card that appealed to them to get them started on their research journey.

Students completed a proposal and then conducted a small research project in which they had to present their found research in any presentation form they wished such as a powerpoint, poster or an interview most students chosing a poster format. They were asked to present five main points on the particular area of Asian art that they had researched and present it in an interesting way. You can see examples of finished presentations below.

On completion of the research projects students then were asked to plan and make a practical project in relation to their area of study. They could choose any medium in negotiation with myself. The final projects included;
A short film based on Hindu gods and their characteristics
Bollywood movie promo
Clay Buddhist sculptures
Mixed medium Chinese landscapes
Sketching of Samurai swords
Hindu god sculptures made from recycled materials
Replica samurai weapons made from clay
Replica small scale of Japanese robe
Manga comic and sketching of Manga characters.
Triptych of mixed medium Chinese inspired landscapes
These are just to name a few.

The students really embraced this project and were excited and motivated by the fact it was their own project decided and managed by themsleves. The only thing that let us down was time.