News

19/12/2024 Coming up

03/12/2024 Advent Get-Together

26/11/2024 New Publication

We are happy to announce a new publication by Linda Puppe, Helen Jossberger and Hans Gruber entitled "Perception and teaching in the visual arts". This chapter will be published in forthcoming book "Teacher Professional Vision: Empirical Perspectives" edited by Rebekka Stahnke and Andreas Gegenfurtner (https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003370604).

Abstract

Perception plays a central role in the visual arts in the higher education context. In this chapter, perception is looked at from the following three angles: (1) perceiving art, (2) developing perceptual skills, and (3) lecturers’ perceptual skills in teaching. Creating artwork is a challenging endeavour for art students at the beginning of their higher education journey. Learning to perceive details and translate what is perceived into two- or three-dimensional artworks is highly complex. The support of lecturers seems essential, as they must perceive and diagnose students’ problems to provide appropriate support to help students advance in their accomplishments. By observing a beginners’ course, an advanced course, and a tutorial in the artistic subdiscipline of sculpture at a university, the authors explored the perception- and skill-related problems faced by students, lecturer perception and feedback, and the contents and structure of the courses. The observations showed that perception differs between beginners and advanced visual arts students. Students needed lecturer feedback and content regarding form-finding to identify inconsistencies in their artworks and material properties.

11/11/2024 E-CER Meeting in Antwerp

In November, we held our second EARLI Center for Excellence in Research (E-CER) meeting in Antwerp discussing scaffolding in simulations. It was a productive meeting with exciting presentations of on-going research in different professional settings, lively discussions and interactive work sessions. The exchange helps to clarify problems and move research forward. Thanks for hosting us!

30/10/2024 New Publication

We are happy to announce a new publication by Barbara Hrabetz, Elisabeth Kraus and Hans Gruber entitled “Social identity in environmental protection engagement: How are different kinds of identity related to different types of engagement?” which has been published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology.

You can find the open access article here: http://doi.org/10.1111/jasp.13072

Abstract

Social approaches can contribute to clarifying environmental issues. For instance, social identity theory can help to comprehend people's motivations for getting involved in environmental protection. However, the kind of social identity best suited for predicting environmental protection engagement remains unclear. This study examines different categories of social identity in relation to different types of environmental protection engagement. The predictive power of identification with environmentalists, as well as with politicized and non-politicized environmental groups, are considered separately. Furthermore, environmental protection engagement is divided into pro-environmental behavior and two different demanding forms of pro-environmental collective action—participatory environmental action and leadership environmental action. Data collected online from 985 respondents involved in environmental protection were analyzed using structural equation modeling. The results showed that while environmental group identification was not significantly related to any kind of environmental protection engagement, environmentalist identification emerged as a predictor of participatory environmental action, leadership environmental action and pro-environmental behavior. Moreover, these connections were stronger for participants belonging to a politicized environmental group than for those belonging to a non-politicized environmental group and those not belonging to any environmental group. These results support and extend previous findings on the role of social identity in pro-environmental collective action and pro-environmental behavior.