Determining Visual Art Curriculum Topics Through Student Negotiation: A Case Study in a Presidential School

Abstract The study focuses on determining negotiated curriculum topics for grades 5 (11‐year‐old students) and 6 (12‐year‐old students) for Presidential and Specialised Schools in Uzbekistan. Traditionally, the visual art curriculum has been decided and provided by authorities with no influence from students. Accordingly, this study explores how student perspectives can be systematically incorporated into an existing collaboratively developed visual arts curriculum in a Presidential school, with the aim of identifying specific content areas that may inform future curriculum refinement. Negotiating a curriculum was understudied in the educational context of Uzbekistan. This is a qualitative study with quantitative components and examines how a visual art curriculum could be shaped through negotiation with students. The questions were: (1) How many topics does the curriculum include if created in collaboration with students? (2) What topics will most students accept after negotiations to add to the curriculum? (3) How many new topics will appear compared to the regular curriculum? Results demonstrated that students successfully developed a negotiated curriculum, identifying relevant topics despite their relatively young age, and landscape painting, portrait drawing, digital artmaking and 3D modelling were the most popular topics among the students; in addition to the current curriculum, several new topics, including digital art‐related themes, had appeared. The findings from this study will benefit students and instructors simultaneously by contributing to curriculum revision in the classroom.