Abstract

This thesis is based on the assumption that there are significant relationships between my art making process and my art teaching practice. While I am able to implicitly incorporate my feelings and intuition as subjective experiences within my holistic sense of my "self", I am using the systematic and disciplined process of reflective inquiry to make the relationships explicit--that is, to document them, describe them, and make them consciously available for communication and analysis by me and by readers of the thesis. Through self-reflection, I explore how my inner, private meanings are manifested in my outer, public practices as an artist and as a teacher, and see how they can be a resource for other art educators. In presenting my research I adopted David Kolb's model of experiential learning as a frame that I applied to my experiences as an artist and as a teacher. Through description of my art-making practices and reflective introspection, I integrated practical and theoretical orientations within myself as an artist. In the art classroom, I adopted participant observation and action research strategies for my research. The data from the studio was in the form of a journal/diary, along with the actual art products. I have included photographs to show to the reader some of the images I produced. My data from the classroom was in the form of audio tapes, a video tape, log/reflection/diary, and photographs of student's art-work. I then used methods of qualitative research to analyse the data and to discern the relationships that emerged from both collections of data. For me teaching is a life-long process of learning, just as in the creative process there must be a constant evolution. In order for the art-educator to evolve, he/she has to practice creative activity. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)