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Making Objects to Make Meaning: A Theoretical Framework for Understanding The Embodied Nature of the Artmaking Experience

Year: 2010
Type: article
Abstract: Teachers in any subject must sift through an enormous amount of material, deciding what content is the most important for their limited amount of instructional time.As an art education student I was able to observe the practices of numerous art teachers and the choices they made concerning the content of their curriculum.I found that art teachers often placed differing values on the teaching of artistic skills, techniques and knowledge of media (object-making), and the teaching of meaningful exploration of ideas through artmaking and interpretation (meaning-making).A systematic review of the literature from the last ten years of Art Education, Visual Arts Research, and Studies in Art Education revealed this divide as prevalent in art education theory, with much greater value placed on meaning-making.I believe dichotomous thinking such as this reflects a wider philosophical divide in Western thought: that of body versus mind.However, an understanding of the mind as inherently embodied offers art educators a relatively unexplored theoretical paradigm for better understanding the relationship between object-making and meaningmaking.Furthermore, an understanding of how the embodied mind develops an underlying tacit knowledge as it interacts with the world could have immense implications for the manner in which we teach art.Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to establish a theoretical framework for the future research of K-12 art curricula.From this newly conceptualized paradigm, art education theorists can iii begin developing a stronger understanding of the intrinsically intertwined nature of the physical and the conceptual in art, and how this synthesis can be incorporated in art education pedagogy.
Language: English
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2596573847
FWCI:
Cites: 58
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Related to: 10