VIRTUAL MADRID FOCUS ON PEDAGOGY

Abstract

When positioning art and design education as a product of the experience economy, it becomes possible to reframe educational materials as artefacts. Walter Benjamin’s prevailing dialectic of visuality in terms of the extra-textual symbolism he regularly accrues to artistic artefacts and their associated aura can conceivable be applied to the field of pedagogy, too. Just as artworks possess a unique spatiotemporal characteristic that triggers an affective response, so too can educational materials. This unexpected connection between epistemes may seem out of place within the institutionalized realm of educational academia, but aligns well with the fluidity of the arts field Benjamin is so often associated with, and thus allows for a new system of value to be applied to academic instruments within this pedagogic field. Tools, texts, assessments and activities, as well as their intended usage in a didactic context can summarily be interpreted on the basis of any intended agency that increases their educational significance as experienced by a classroom audience. This can be contrasted with that which is experienced by Benjamin’s predominantly cinema- and museum-based audiences. This paper thus aims to establish a meaningful connection between academic instruments and the dialectical image through the lens of reception theory, after which their educational and auratic value can be determined. A student survey into creative teaching practice provides empirical evidence as support for this theory, which summarily offers alternative approaches to future advances in pedagogic fields such as curriculum development, didactic approaches and assessments.