Inclusive education practices call for the diverse and individual needs of all students to be met satisfactorily. The needs and experiences of artistically talented students in Australian visual art classrooms are currently unknown. This study addresses this gap in research through an inquiry into the experiences of artistically talented students and their teachers in visual art classrooms, by examining the accounts of a group of students and teachers at one high school in South East Queensland. This study is significant as it provides teachers, parents and others involved in the education of artistically talented students with additional means to plan and cater for the educational needs of artistically talented students. Teacher and student accounts of the visual art classroom in this study indicated that identification processes for artistically talented students are unclear and contradictory. Furthermore, teacher and student accounts of their experiences presented a wide variety of conceptions of the visual art classroom and point towards an individualised approach to learning for artistically talented students. This study also discovered a mismatch between assessment practices in the subject visual art and assessment of art in the ‘real world’. Specifically, this study proposes a renewal of programs for artistically talented students, and recommends a revision of current procedures for the identification of artistically talented students in visual art classrooms.

The aim of this study was to research the visual arts classroom and its impact on the teaching possibilities within. The visual arts subject has been subject to many studies based on curriculum and policy documents. This study chose to focus its research on the physical elements of the classroom, which meant the classrooms construction, materials and furnishing as the focal point. Observations have been made to study these layers in the visual arts classroom in three separate schools in the south of Sweden, which were all public elementary schools. In the three schools there have been four visual arts classrooms observed, and the teachers of these classrooms answered an open question survey around the time of the observations. The material was then analyzed using frame factor theory and Foucault’s power theory (1979). Based on the observations and the survey multiple discoveries were made. There is a power in how the classrooms are furnished, and the funding of the school has a big impact on what the art teachers can do. Most of the art teachers wants to work with three-dimensional materials and assignments, but feel limited due to either space, class size, limited budget, or limited time among others. The primary materials the teachers were working with were therefore paints or pencil crayons on paper. The study has also seen the similarities and differences in the arts classrooms furnishing and has shown some ways that the students try to create their own persona and revolt against the school structure.