National Advocates for Arts Education

Name (Individual/Organisation)

National Advocates for Arts Education

Responses

Q1. How could the purpose in the ARC Act be revised to reflect the current and future role of the ARC?

For example, should the ARC Act be amended to specify in legislation:
(a) the scope of research funding supported by the ARC
(b) the balance of Discovery and Linkage research programs
(c) the role of the ARC in actively shaping the research landscape in Australia
(d) any other functions?

If so, what scope, functions and role?

If not, please suggest alternative ways to clarify and define these functions.

The National Advocates for Arts Education (NAAE) is a coalition of peak arts and arts education associations who represent arts educators across Australia. NAAE members are: Art Education Australia (AEA), Australian Dance Council – Ausdance, Australian Society for Music Education (ASME), Australian Teachers of Media (ATOM), Drama Australia, and National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA).

The NAAE believes that it is in the ‘national interest’ for research to be funded that values the educational, social and cultural dimensions of human knowledge and experience and that quality research across disciplinary realms is supported to help promote social inclusion and cohesion, foster critical thinking, imagination and innovation – all aspects that are essential to Australia’s future.

It is also crucial that rigorous peer-evaluation systems that ensure that high quality research is funded across the realm of knowledge domains are not undermined or interfered with and that these are recognised with the Act. This process must be independent and conducted with rigour and integrity, not open to manipulation and veto by Ministers and the Minister’s role should be primarily that of endorsement.

1. Scope and purpose of the ARC
It is appropriate for the scope and purpose of the ARC to be amended in the act to include the role of the ARC in shaping the research landscape for Australia. As well as support for academic excellent and leadership and other points suggested in the discussion paper, we would advocate for support for the breadth of research disciplines and knowledge domains.

We support the critical role of the ARC for funding research that may be ‘blue sky’ without immediate, commercial application, as well as that with more obvious applications and short term benefit. Hence there should be a balance across Discovery and Linkage style programs with a broad definition of potential industry and partnerships. We do not support the 2021 defining of industry of value to the national agenda being primarily ‘manufacturing’ and that priority being the focus for linkage grants.

Q2. Do you consider the current ARC governance model is adequate for the ARC to perform its functions?

If not, how could governance of the ARC be improved? For example, should the ARC Act be amended to incorporate a new governance model that establishes a Board on the model outlined in the consultation paper, or another model.

Please expand on your reasoning and/or provide alternative suggestions to enhance the governance, if you consider this to be important.

An advisory committee or board which includes representation across research disciplines, contexts and experiences is of value to assist with planning, appointments and review functions. However the appointment process and Minister’s endorsement means the process may always be open to political interference. Perhaps the members could be nominated from or by the College of Experts and endorsed by the CEO. Four-six members may not be sufficient to cover the range of research perspectives of relevance.

Q3. How could the Act be improved to ensure academic and research expertise is obtained and maintained to support the ARC?

How could this be done without the Act becoming overly prescriptive?

The Act could be amended to include recognition of a requirement for the ARC to appoint key personnel and panels with expertise in research, academic excellence and peer review process.

Q4. Should the ARC Act be amended to consolidate the pre-eminence or importance of peer review?

Please provide any specific suggestions you may have for amendment of the Act, and/or for non-legislative measures.

The NAAE supports changes to the Act that reduce the options for a Minister to reject the decisions of the peer-review process and interfere in the awarding of ARC grants. Support for the peer review process and recommendations should be included in the Act.

Q5. Please provide suggestions on how the ARC, researchers and universities can better preserve and strengthen the social licence for public funding of research?

The National interest Test is highly problematic and high quality research of value may not have immediate relevance to the ‘nation’ or necessarily be understood by uninitiated members of the public. There was already a requirement for ‘plain English statements’ prior to the National Interest Test being introduced. ARC applications already include explanations, justifications, value of the research and so forth.

Q6. What elements of ARC processes or practices create administrative burdens and/or duplication of effort for researchers, research offices and research partners?

In recent years there has been a range of changes and delays in ARC programs and processes, many of these prompted by Ministerial requirements and interference. The lack of certainty over dates and focus of some programs has in itself created additional burdens for researchers, university research offices and partners.

The dot points in the discussion paper for this question also include challenges that may be created by the scope and currency of Australia’s Science and Research Priorities. This is an area that we are very keen to see reviewed and expanded. Australia’s research priorities at present are: Food, Soil and Water, Transport, Cybersecurity, Energy, Resources, Advanced Manufacturing, Environmental Change and Health. The link so directly to ‘Science’ priorities skews the focus. At present there are none that focus on the important roles of education, society, arts and culture. Therefore arts, humanities and education researchers do not have any priorities that directly recognise the value of their endeavours. Not having a research priority to address in funding applications directly impacts on the type of research that is regarded as valuable and fundable.

Q7. What improvements could be made:

(a) to ARC processes to promote excellence, improve agility, and better facilitate globally collaborative research and partnerships while maintaining rigour, excellence and peer review at an international standard?

(b) to the ARC Act to give effect to these process improvements, or do you suggest other means?

Please include examples of success or best practice from other countries or communities if you have direct experience of these.

We would support the proposal that all future grant rounds are delivered on time, to a predetermined time frame.

Q8. With respect to ERA and EI:

(a) Do you believe there is a need for a highly rigorous, retrospective excellence and impact assessment exercise, particularly in the absence of a link to funding?

(b) What other evaluation measures or approaches (e.g. data driven approaches) could be deployed to inform research standards and future academic capability that are relevant to all disciplines, without increasing the administrative burden?

(c) Should the ARC Act be amended to reference a research quality, engagement and impact assessment function, however conducted?

(d) If so, should that reference include the function of developing new methods in research assessment and keeping up with best practice and global insights?

The ERA and EI exercises required a huge human resource commitment to enact, with little capacity of universities to build in realistic workload allocations that could account for the actual time spent on internal and external review processes. There also appeared to be an unexpected negative bias in the peer-review disciplines. Nationally the discipline areas that showed the greatest increase in performance were all the citations based disciplines, not peer review. Is this because peer reviewers are more reluctant to award the highest ratings? Do people make judgements based on seeing institutions names and histories?
However we would not advocate for a citation-based metrics only system either.

There needs to be recognition that high quality, and valuable research can be conducted in disciplines where there may be small numbers of academics and students and in smaller universities who may not have the numbers to build research centres and clusters.

Re the EI exercise – what is significant here is that some of the universities and discipline areas that performed well were not the traditionally highly ranked academic ones. The development of narrative case studies that valued impact beyond citations and journal Quartile rankings has aspects of value, though perhaps could be combined within and ERA style exercise.

Universities already collect an extensive range of data on research outputs, Research Higher Degree completions and so forth. If it were possible to capitalise on the HERDC processes and reporting that might reduce the duplication of workloads for any research excellence review process. A common portal and engagement data gathering system could be of great value.
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Q9. With respect to the ARC’s capability to evaluate research excellence and impact:

(a) How can the ARC best use its expertise and capability in evaluating the outcomes and benefits of research to demonstrate the ongoing value and excellence of Australian research in different disciplines and/or in response to perceived problems?

(b) What elements would be important so that such a capability could inform potential collaborators and end-users, share best practice, and identify national gaps and opportunities?

(c) Would a data-driven methodology assist in fulfilling this purpose?

There is certainly substantial expertise within the ARC that could be drawn upon for evaluation purposes. However it should also be recognised that over the past 3 years the university sector has also seen a huge loss of expertise from paid employment in the sector as huge numbers of academics were retrenched or encouraged to take voluntary separation. The expectation that researchers could take on additional evaluation roles to those currently in place would be difficult, unless this is about drawing upon the work currently undertaken as part of grant reviews.

Q10. Having regard to the Review’s Terms of Reference, the ARC Act itself, the function, structure and operation of the ARC, and the current and potential role of the ARC in fostering excellent Australian research of global significance, do you have any other comments or suggestions?

The current focus of Australian Government priority areas as those priority research areas identified by the Australian Government, including the National Manufacturing Priorities and the Science and Research Priorities. This narrow range of research priorities devalues the importance of the humanities, arts, education and social sciences. We must have research priorities that value the broad range of research and knowledge – the social, cultural factors and creative dimensions of experience – to be able to address the complex problems we face as a nation and world.

Research needs to be valued and conducted across the range of different disciplines and domains to examine the effects and possibilities for humans, cultures and communities.

One significant request is that the scope for linkage projects be opened up to encompass a broader range of 'industry' partnerships, without 70% of all industry focused linkage grants restricted to the area of manufacturing, not the broad range of industry sectors which contribute to the Australian economy and society. A national research focus on manufacturing (not even industry more broadly) sounds a death knell for much of the research that has been occurring in arts, humanities and social sciences. Education, the arts and humanities have never fared all that well with ARC funding, given the current national Science and Research Priorities which have none that focus on these areas. However over the past decade there have been a number of significant arts and education projects that have been funded and supported by industry under the ARC Linkage programs including some of the following that were successful in 2020:

● Ambitious and Fair: Strategies for a sustainable visual arts sector. This project aims to strengthen the visual art industry’s economic ecosystem (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA), Australian Museums and Galleries Association (AMaGA))
● Precarious Movements: Choreography and the Museum (University of New South Wales (UNSW), Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), TATE UK, National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), and Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA))
● Sparking Imagination Education: Transforming inequality in schools. This project will produce an Imagination Education Pedagogical Framework for use by teachers in schools. (University of Sydney, AIME mentoring, Social Ventures Australia)
● Visualising Humanitarian Crises: Transforming Images and Aid Policy (University of Queensland (UQ), World Press Photo Foundation, Red Cross, Médecins Sans Frontières)
● To map and enhance Australian musical improvisation as a creative industry. (Western Sydney University, Australian Music Centre, Earshift Music)
● Creative industries pathways to youth employment in the COVID-19 recession (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), Australia Council for the Arts, Australian Theatre for Young People (ATYP), The Push, Future Foundations, Centre for Multicultural Youth)
● Rebooting the Muse: Post-COVID-19 sustainability in the performing arts. Rebooting the Muse advocates new ways of tackling the urgent challenges facing the Australian performing arts in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change emergency. (University of Adelaide, (Adelaide Symphony Orchestra; State Theatre Company of South Australia; Patch Theatre, Light Cultural Foundation, Illuminate Adelaide)

According to the 2021 Minister’s request, the total pool for linkage funding beyond manufacturing has been severely restricted and no linkage projects were awarded in 2022. We are yet to see what is possible for 2023. This situation has severely restricted the opportunities for new arts and education research to be funded.

Submission received

14 December 2022

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