Abstract

This thesis examines the links between who I am, the art I make, and my personal art teaching philosophy. In using personal narrative inquiry as my research method, I have constructed an account of my lived experience as a person of ethnicity. The narrative is the result of the compilation of memory fragments. The fragments were edited and sequenced in such a way that allowed each to retain its own meaning while contributing to a larger story that emerges from the whole. This phenomenological research, grounded in a post3nodern approach, uses as its data, my constructed personal narrative. In the second and third parts of the thesis, this data is grounded in theory, and then is further interpreted, ultimately becoming the foundation for my pluralistic, community-oriented, needs assessment approach to art education. This thesis not only illustrates the value of researching personal lived experience, but it also demonstrates the importance for art educators to explore how their lived experience informs their teaching practice.