Every man has his own narrative. In the case of a teacher, he is in a position of putting practical knowledge to work, and therefore his narrative involves the pursuing of various methods for overcoming the discrepancy between theory and reality. The ...
Every man has his own narrative. In the case of a teacher, he is in a position of putting practical knowledge to work, and therefore his narrative involves the pursuing of various methods for overcoming the discrepancy between theory and reality. The author also has been striving incessantly to reduce the discrepancy between theory and practice while carrying out‘art criticism education' in school, and this is an ongoing narrative yet to be completed. The striving led the author to have doubt about the effect and efficacy of various appreciation/criticism models that had been widely utilized in school on learners. This is not irrelevant to the fact that the criticism models proposed by many art educators since the mid-1960s are not based on pedagogy but on the theories of estheticians.
The doubt began to grow because of the trouble of the art teacher <I> with analyzing the cause of the difficulty in conducting art criticism class in school. Historically, teacher’s narrative and its meaning have been peripheral subjects in the field of educational research. Nonetheless, every class is planed, given and analyzed by a teacher himself; the narrative of teacher is the narrative about class and about education. This thesis, therefore, is meaningful in that a practical effort has been made for the development of art criticism education by analyzing the narrative that was generated by teacher in school during the process of developing and applying art criticism model for learner—rather than by making a macroscopic approach that involves collective dealing with the problems of art criticism education.
This research is a biographical one, involving an inquiry into the narrative of the author himself. To achieve the research objective, the author was subdivided into <I-1> as an art criticism model developer, <I-2> as a class teacher, and <I-3> as a class critic; and an inquiry was made into the narrative of each of them.
First, the description about the position of <I-1> as an art criticism model developer is as follows: The narrative of <I-1> begins with an investigation into the motive that led the author to become a researcher. Then it makes an introduction to the experience of an appreciation class that had given him an inspiration for an art criticism model, as well as to the narrative 6-level art criticism model that was first developed in 2010. His narrative shows the changing process of art criticism model, as well as the author’s understanding about the discrepancy between the theory and teaching of art criticism based on the process. According to the result of the analysis on the narrative of <I-1>, he showed a strong tendency of leading a change by his narrative, rather than depending on existing criticism models. In addition, <I-1> began to realize the necessity for art criticism education and the problems of art criticism theory through his personal teaching experience, and based on the experience he designed a basic frame for establishing an art criticism model. Whereas the greatest and decisive reasons for his developing the art criticism model were shown to be: his colleague teachers’ cognition about art criticism education, his consciousness of crisis caused by their cognition, and his sense of responsibility.
Second, the description about the position of <I-2> as a class teacher is as follows: <I-2> is the author himself who was in the process of applying the narrative art criticism model developed by himself to his class. The narrative of <I-2> shows the factors that caused the change of his teaching activity during the practice of the narrative art criticism model. It also revealed the relation between individual factors, as well as the process of finding and interpreting the new variables deduced during the practice. According to the result of the analysis on the narrative of <I-2>, the factor that he regarded as the most important while preparing for art criticism class was teacher’s professional knowledge. And this indeed acted as an important factor for improving learner’s participation in difficult art criticism class. In addition, as time passed by after developing the art criticism model, he was shown to expand his concern about the model to deeper and wider reams. Finally, it was shown that he had a difficulty with the factors that were not related to art, although he had a lot of teaching experience as an art teacher of midium standing, and that he chose a frontal breakthrough method in order to resolve the difficulty.
Third, the description about the position of <I-3> as a class critic making criticism on the teaching activity of the criticism model developer <I-1> and of the class teacher <I-2> is as follows: <I-3> is the author himself who was in the process of making objective criticism on his own teaching activity. For this, he had an opportunity of self-supervision, using the class videos and records collected so far. The narrative of <I-3> provided a help for the objective evaluation and introspection of <I-1> and <I-2>, as well as an opportunity to find the factors contributing to the development of art criticism education. According to the result of the analysis on the narrative of <I-3>, above all, the establishment of a theory from the viewpoint of esthetics of reception was not easy; and the process of verifying an art criticism model was to have different thoughts than existing ones as to the direction of art criticism education. In addition, the efficacy of art criticism class was shown to be improved when learner’s emotional and cognitive realms were simultaneously reflected in art criticism model. Further, it was shown that the involvement of meaningful and important art works in art criticism class for art history education could cause confusion in art criticism to learners.
Theory and practice cannot be separated from each other; the problems of theory are reflected in reality, and those of reality are reflected in theory. And knowledge is modified, adapted and selectively utilized according to the direction of particular problems faced in real situation. Teacher’s practical knowledge can be reflected in the inter-relationship generated during teaching process, in self-centered interpretation based on inter-relation, in practical language, in metaphorical expression, and in introspective but self-centered thought. In other words, knowledge is neither objective nor subjective, but is teacher’s personal asset.
If one faces a situation in his life where a judgment has to be made on something other than the story about himself, he cannot but apply a very vague and dry standard of value. As a biographical narrative inquiry that involves teacher’s life with regard to a particular subject, this research dealt with the practical knowledge and life, or the socialization process, of teacher. Biographical narrative in this research has a significant meaning as a more popular code for informing colleague teachers and researchers of the connection between narrative introspection and growth that the author experienced as an art teacher.