Gestaltandets pedagogik : Om att skapa konsthantverk

• Main Author: Knutes, Helen
• Format: Doctoral Thesis
• Language: Swedish
• Published: Stockholms universitet, Pedagogiska institutionen 2009
• Subjects: Arts and Crafts; act of making; life-world; the lived body; phenomenology; semiotics; ethnography; Education; Pedagogik
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-26822; http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:isbn:978-91-7155-858-9

Why, and what does it involve for an individual to perform Arts and Crafts, are the questions studied in this thesis. The purpose of this thesis is to examine the pedagogical conditions of Arts and Crafts objects, through studying the processes that take place where people give form to personal expressions and to understand the meanings these processes have for them. Phenomenological theory, especially the theory of the lived body, which presents the body as a unity not separated into body and thought, with object and subject in an inter-relationship, is used as a theoretical standpoint throughout the thesis. A phenomenological and a semiotic approach have been used to analyse and describe the empirical data. This thesis consists of three different studies, the examination of a place where Arts and Crafts are performed, the study of people's experiences of creating Arts and Crafts objects, and finally how people relate to their chosen Art and Craft materials. This contributes to an understanding of the pedagogical conditions and processes present in their relationship to work materials. The analysis illustrates that an opportunity for a new level of understanding is reached when particular pedagogical processes are carried out whilst working with various forms of Arts and Crafts materials. These processes understood as pedagogical conditions consist of: time and pace, physical and mental environment, materialization, the object and experience. Another finding is that there are different ways of relating to the Arts and Crafts materials, a bodily relation or a cognitive relation. These ways of relating exist in one person, but one of these relating attitudes is often more salient than the other. Making Arts and Crafts is in this thesis seen as an activity of both bodily and cognitive meaning making.