Looking for a safe harbor: Art making as a process of constructing meaning through action, reflection, and interpretation.

摘要

My research will present a whole picture of what is at the heart of art making and the importance of authentic teaching and learning in the art classroom. From 1997 to 2000, I documented my teaching experiences at the University of Iowa, and my visits and interviews with the directors, professors, teachers and students of several art schools in Taiwan. In addition, I conducted two art workshops in Taiwan in the summer of 1999. Through documenting these activities, I gathered the data I need to reconstruct events over the course of three years.; My approach is narrative interpretation as informed by hermeneutic philosophy. I have woven the episodes of my teaching, my students' art making and my interviews into an historical account. As a result of my art teaching experience and research, I have realized that only an art curriculum that truly its core holds a praxis of art and life bound through critical reflection and action, can make authentic teaching and learning possible in the art classroom.; Art is a means for our students to reflect upon their daily experiences and to share as well as reshape the meaning of their lives. Art reaches beyond what is established. The encounters with art can release our students' imagination, extend their lived experiences, and renew their understanding of their own, as well as others', stories. The art world is a world of interpreted things and it is a constructed world. Greene reminded us to view it as contingent and always open to expansion and revision (Greene, Maxine. Releasing the Imagination. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1995). In a similar way, we, as art educators, should see our art classroom and art curriculum as part of the art world—a world open to interpretation and a world always under construction. Perhaps the new discoveries and new ideas generated in our art classrooms can inspire in Taiwan to open a new dimension to forging identity.