Teacher Education Programme in Visual Arts
In this year’s Degree Exhibition, the teacher education students in the Department of Visual Arts and Sloyd Education (IBIS) are exhibiting the artistic components of their degree projects from the Independent Study course. As a unique part of the Swedish teacher education programme, they work based on what we call the ‘double perspective’ i.e., that knowledge can be embodied both through artistic expression and through scientific writing – in this case in the field of education.
In autumn 2025, the new GY2025 curriculum was introduced, with the aim of reducing the stress that previously characterised upper secondary school. By organising the teaching into levels and giving grades only once a subject is completed, opportunities are opened for learning in which knowledge is allowed to take time and to come to the forefront. When this year’s students enter the workforce, they become part of the teaching staff that gets to experience and develop this new curriculum.
At the same time, the students are graduating in a time marked by global uncertainty, in which wars and ecological crises are leaving their mark on the present. In this reality, they will encounter young people with a great need for visual literacy and the ability to both communicate and process experiences through images. Young people who need both hope in the future and tools to critically review the visual narratives that create the world we all live in.
The students are taking on this present in degree projects that investigate and create new knowledge by imagining a utopian future; new knowledge through power-critical thinking surrounding marginalised subject positions and regulation of young people’s creativity; new knowledge by examining what senses, experiences and body movements are expressed in the school’s visual arts teaching; new knowledge by reviewing how perception, security and courage operate in educational situations. Hopefully this can contribute to increased resilience in a complex present and ultimately help build a more secure future.
Maria Eriksson
Senior Lecturer in Educational Science specialising in Visual Art
Jacob Kimvall
Senior Lecturer in Art History and Visual theory
Teacher Education Programme in Upper Secondary Education (Visual Arts–Media or Visual Arts–Design), at the Department of Visual Arts and Sloyd Education (IBIS)