Art education for adults has been widely practiced and given a lot of weight in the field of lifelong education. However, there have been no papers regarding adult art learning in Korea. This dissertation sought to fill this void and explored women ar...
Art education for adults has been widely practiced and given a lot of weight in the field of lifelong education. However, there have been no papers regarding adult art learning in Korea. This dissertation sought to fill this void and explored women art learners who started painting in their late-midlife. The intent of this study is to come into a deeper understanding of the learning process in fine arts.
The research questions guided this study were :
What are the relationships between the life experiences of women in their late-midlife and the beginning of learning to paint? What actually happens when they experience learning how to paint? What does art learning mean to them?
In order to explore the process of art learning, this qualitative study used in-depth interviews. The participants consisted of three women in late-midlife who started painting in their fifties and sixties. The in-depth interviews were carried out in 2012 from September to November. Data collected included field notes, transcribed audio recordings, follow-up email dialogue, telephone conversations, art works, and written reflections from the participants. With the in-depth interviews, the art works of the participants was collected and displayed in this dissertation as a resource to help readers visualize the participants' lived learning experiences.
Chapter Ⅱ contains a comprehensive literature review of the three major concepts closely related to the subject of this study: adult learner theory, adult development in late-midlife, and art learning of adult amateurs. The purpose of this chapter is to provide the theoretical background of this study and to find focal points of data analysis. Firstly, I discussed six assumptions about adult learners which Malcolm Knowles presented under the concept of Andragogy, and built a conceptual framework for analyzing the characteristics of participants as the adult learner. Next, I explored the characteristics and developmental tasks of late-midlife women to analyze the relationship between participants' life and art learning from the perspective of life-span development theory. Finally, discussing the historical context of art learning of amateur adults, I emphasized the need for reexamination of purpose and direction of the adult art learning in an era of lifelong learning. Moreover, I explored educational values of the arts from the recent discussions in the field of adult learning.
In Chapter Ⅲ, the findings are presented and categorized in three parts according to the research questions.
First, in the process of becoming an art learner, the developmental tasks of late-midlife and experiences in the transition period of age 50 and 60 are closely connected to the beginning of the art learning. I investigated the process that guided learners to art learning with the dynamics of previous experiences, emotions and feelings. In the process of becoming an art learner, emergent themes were: relationship between self-knowledge and self-expression, the exploration of self and the world, previous experiences as a rich resource for learning, and the desire to be creative.
Second, in order to describe the processes through which art learning happens, nine codes were extracted from the transcribed data. The codes were rearranged according to the three aspects of transaction. In the first aspect of transaction between body, emotion and knowledge, 'painting thoughtlessly', 'reflecting on the painting', and 'wandering and keep practicing' emerged. In the second aspect of transaction between imitation and creation, there were 'copying' and 'exploring the invisible'. In the third aspect of transaction between learning and life, 'finding subjects in daily life', 'observing the world closely', 'showing', and 'shaping the time and space for painting' emerged.
Third, emergent themes about the meaning of art learning were the creation of daily life, means of self-knowledge and self-expression, and art learning based on the concept of lifelong learning.
Based on these findings, suggestions are made for reexamining the purpose of lifelong art education from the perspectives of adult learners and for shaping the learning environment of adultness. The significance of this study can be found in that it attempts to deeply understand and reveal the process of adult learning in fine arts and present adult learners' own voices to academic world.
I would be interested in seeing further studies of adult art learners who engaged with various art forms and seeing what resulting major themes might emerge. And further studies with various qualitative methodologies are expected to extend understanding of adult learners in the field of art education.