Text 5: Vocational and Autonomous Modality (2021)

In text 2: Animation in everyday lives, I briefly mentioned a prefiguratively impact of studying animation in school. Here, I would like to discuss it further as I think it can be useful or might be helpful for anyone in the education system. As in my student life, the time when I was not aware of how an education system works in a society, I did not clearly realise what a curriculum is made up of and how it is arranged. Hence, it seems like I was walking in the mist where I did not know what I was learning for.  

To bring some light into the mist I was in, I think anyone who aims to study animation needs to be informed of there are various perceptions of learning in animation. In common, how animation is taught is simply seen in practical or applied terms as the animation practice is strongly tied to the notion of craft. But to be more precious, here, I would like to introduce two-terms argued by Nils Lindahl-Elliot to lend you a hand: (a) vocational modality and (b) autonomous modality. The former, “Vocational” which means “courses which teach media (or other) theories and practices to prepare students for work in the media production market” and, the latter, “autonomous” means those courses “which teach them to develop what can be described as a critical disposition towards media (or more widely towards popular culture)” (2000: 19)  

For me, animation students can simply be educated in any way but with providing the understanding of the pedagogy in animation. As it will have a huge impact on the development of professional training and applied knowledge’s students received in their education process. Clearly what we are learning is very significant. If you cannot distinguish them, it probably hinders your development more than anything else.  

In Thailand, as far as I know, animation studies are vocational study  programmes training students for employment. Animation courses can be perceived as training for particular animation studios or for the graduates to fulfil specific roles such as animator, modeler, rigger, lighter and others. And those practiced roles are very technical that possibly limit their possible potential in any other part of the process of animation making. In other words, the main of those courses’ objective is to provide students with the tool necessary to compete for employment in an animation studio production.  

To end this short essay, I would like to note, here, that an initial step in the study of animation in Thailand, which is merely my preference, should take, basically but seriously, is, at least, viewing animation as a form of cultural practice entailing the relation between people and society. I expect with high hopes that animation studies in Thailand will stand as an area not only to provide worker bees to the economic wheel of business but also for the autonomous study. 

If you are interested in the education field of animation, as being a student, a professor or even an animation practitioner, there is more rigorous information I gained from Animation studies as an interdisciplinary teaching field by Paul Ward. 

  
Paul Ward (2013), ‘Animation studies as an interdisciplinary teaching field’, in Suzanne Buchan (ed.) Pervasive Animation. Routledge, pp. 317-335.  
 
The book link: https://www.routledge.com/Pervasive-Animation/Buchan/p/book/9780415807241