The Winchester Guide to Keywords and Concepts for International Students in Art, Media and Design

PART A DEFINING PRINCIPLES

THE WESTERN EDUCATIONAL STYLE

Art, media and design are terms widely used to define a group of disciplines that share important characteristics but that are different in significant ways. Learning in these subjects aims to develop your aesthetic sensibility and your capacity to be creative, as well as your intellectual and analytical skills. The material outcomes of engagement with these fields are also varied. But they require the development of particular mental and practical abilities.

If you come from a country outside the West, the style, methods and expectations of learning art, media and design will certainly be different from those familiar to you from studying in your own country.

Western educational institutions value clear articulation of an argument or interpretation and sustained support of an argument. Rather than relying on dogma, dictates or the arguments of the powerful, you must learn to defend your views and modify them in the face of criticism or challenges to your position. This means giving great importance to the linearity, clear articulation and rational form of your argument. In particular, educational institutions foreground the importance of what you are adding to a given reading, situation, theoretical set of concerns, interpretation and so on.

The role of critical thought in Western teaching also sets it apart from other intellectual ...