The Study of Life Education in Visual Arts Curriculum and Teaching in a Junior High School

• Main Author: 石文怡
• Other Authors: 林玉山
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2014
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/zd6ce3

碩士 === 國立彰化師範大學 === 美術學系 === 102 === Life education has emerged as an important issue for society and the domain of education today, and it has been included as one of the 7 main subjects of the 9-year Joint Curriculum for Junior High Schools. After extended periods of exposure to junior high school teachers and students, the author has discovered that teenagers at the junior high school age are going through the vital phases of exploration for ideas such as self-worth, peer relationships and interpersonal relationships. After having witnessed present-day children’s lack of understanding of their own lives, the author (a junior high school art teacher) has chosen to incorporate aspects of life education in visual art courses in an effort to help students become more mentally mature. In this study, the author attempted to examine the status of actual application for the incorporation of life education into a junior high school visual art course in the form of case study so as to assess relevant teaching results and the potential issues and difficulties that may arise in the implementation. Focusing on 33 students in her class as subjects for case study, the author has separated the syllabus of life education into three themes: “Who am I?”, “The Map of Life” and “Catastrophe and Reflection” in order to incorporate the four dimensions of life education (i.e., “One and self”, “One and others” and “One and the environment”) in the course. Coupled with the regular visual art curriculum, observations of students’ pre/post class behaviors and sharing/discussion of students’ works, the author was able to implement a series of instructions and exploration. Results of the study can be summarized into three specific dimensions: (1) For actual application, the incorporation of life education into a visual art course can help students to cultivate the right values of life and offers a positive impact on the improvement of students’ perception and recognition of life education; (2) In terms of teaching results, the incorporation of life education into a visual art course would enrich course contents and enable students to gain better affective and cognitive understanding, which would improve their performance in visual art techniques; (3) With regards to potential difficulties in implementation, since junior high students are still young and have limited life experience, issues such as the smooth incorporation of the subject matter in the course, the alignment of teaching materials with students’ experiences, students’ ability to faithfully express what they have learned through practice and creation of art works and so forth would require further research and adjustment. The incorporation of life education into junior high school visual art courses will help students to broaden the width of their life and render course contents more diverse and extensive through constant reflection and internalization. In addition, the teacher will also be able to gain deeper understanding of the value of life and improve personal thoughts on the subject to learn from the teaching process as well. The improvement of contents for visual art teaching should be a common goal that all junior high school visual art teachers ought to strive for in the future.