A strategy designed to enrich the drawing ability for Foundation Course students / Jaffri Hanafi

Statement of problem: The problem faced by many Art Institutions in Malaysia is that students studying art have difficulties expressing their ideas and developing interests in drawing at Foundation Course. They also have a poor understanding of drawing techniques and theories. The purpose of this study is not only to examine the significance of drawing but also to introduce a new method of teaching drawing using Discipline-Based Art Education (DBAE). DBAE refers to an approach that instructs and enables learning art based on four foundation disciplines which are: (a) Art History (b) Aesthetic (c) Art Criticism (d) Art Production. Therefore the research is intended to provide a ready program that can be adapted and adopted by Art Institutions. It also provides learning activities for students as well as giving them ideas in acquiring skills their area of specialisation after completing the Foundation Course. The finding could also serve as a model in Art Institutions to develop effectiveness on their teaching method as well as to increase students' understanding, creativity and innovative forms of expression. Findings: Analysis of the Experimental Teaching Program in both groups found that the hypotheses was accepted at 0.01 level. There were the neglect of theoretical aspects of drawing, unstructured approaches used in teaching drawing in the curriculum, lack of exposure to adult artists' artwork and the environmental distraction which affect the success of this study. However, the improvement of students' result can also be seen from the result of the control group during the Pre-Test and Post-Test. In fact, although the Experimental Group had shown ineffective result during the Post-Test, the quality of artwork produced could prove that the students were able to understand art concept in formal art education. There were 2 students who obtained A grades and it showed that those students not only could produce artworks but were also able to critic artworks of their colleagues and defend their artwork based on the Historical and Aesthetic context. Besides that, a major advantage could be seen in students of Experimental Group. Although they obtained D grade during Post-Test in Art production but they managed to score good result if they scored well in Art History, Art Criticism and Aesthetic. Therefore, these had opened the administrators minds on the concept that art should be taught not only in the practical context but also theoretical context with discussion.