Abstract

This study explores how dialogue, guided by an educator, helped gallery visitors to formulate and express their own views, integrate the viewpoints of others and recognize their own role in determining the meanings of artworks. Engaging in naturalistic, qualitative research, the researcher designed a gallery visit, based on a constructivist approach to teaching and learning, was delivered on two separate occasions to two small groups of adults with very little experience visiting art galleries. The participants' verbal responses were recorded and transcribed to create a record of the dialogue in which they engaged. The transcripts were subsequently analysed. Some of the findings were that, as a result of the dialogue in which they engaged, research participants heard and attended to their own thoughts, emotions and questions; as well, research participants spent a significant amount of time responding to the works of art on display and sharing their reactions and viewpoints with each other; sharing through dialogue enabled research participants to fund each other with information from their lived experience which helped group members to construct thoughtful interpretations of the artworks.