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Reconsidering Contemporary Approaches to Teaching Art History

Discussion
Focusing on the External Activity of Students
Several scholars have argued that every teaching method is, in essence, an
active one (Šteh, 2004). Even so, it is important to distinguish between learn-
ing situations in which students are active only at the internal level and those
in which their activity is externally observable. In art history pedagogy, the
latter wish to manifest through constructivism, in which case students ac-
tively co-create the learning content and imbue it with their personal un-
derstanding of the problem at hand (Marentič Požarnik, 2004).
Owing to the legacy of the Vienna School, art history built its methodology
on receiving information through sight as the primary sensory channel for
art historical analysis, followed by description and interpretation (Riegl, 2017;
Wölfflin, 1917; cf. Dolšina Delač, 2025). Consequently, art history teaching has
often been limited to the visual observation of images accompanied by the
teacher’s explanations of their formal, stylistic, and iconographic characteris-
tics. Other sensory modalities, such as hearing, smell, and touch, have been
largely disregarded, and this sensory reductionism has consequently con-
tributed to a noticeable decline in student motivation. Since Halsall (2004)
delineated the experience of the world as inherently multi-sensory in turn
meaning that the senses influence one another, it becomes clear that teach-
ing and learning processes should be guided by the same premise.
Theempiricalfindingsfromtheelectivecourserevealthat multisensorydi-
dactic approach promotes student engagement and deeper understanding
of art-historical content. Participants expanded art-historical interpretation
beyond the visual domain, as already proposed by Pentcheva (2006). In light
of this theory, the illustration of sound distribution in a Greek theatre pro-
gresses beyond verbal explanation to direct sensory experimentation. The
difference in perceived sound volume was not only argued but experienced,
convincingly demonstrating through direct perception that the semicircu-
lar shape of the theatre importantly facilitates better sound distribution and
therefore contributes to its excellent acoustics.⁹
An alternative approach to teaching art history that actively engages stu-
dents beyond passive reception is the implementation of formative assess-
ment. It promotes critical and divergent thinking crucial to relevantly dis-
cuss, evaluate, and successfully transfer theories to practice. Introduced by
Black and William (1998), formative assessment has diverted attention from
the summative assessment toward assessment during the learning process

⁹ For a more detailed discussion on multisensory teaching of art history, see Dolšina Delač (2025).

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