Adolescence is the time to struggle to become an independent adult by being emotionally independent from their parents and others, establishing their values, and deciding their career paths. Therefore, understanding and recognizing self-identity in ad...
Adolescence is the time to struggle to become an independent adult by being emotionally independent from their parents and others, establishing their values, and deciding their career paths. Therefore, understanding and recognizing self-identity in adolescence is required for realizing the happy life of the future as well as that of the present.
However, due to excessive admission-oriented competitive education, the school education in Korea is only forcing students to study blindly and passively while losing the essential purpose of education of students’ happiness. This vicious cycle ultimately results in unhappy education and students. In the ‘International Comparative Survey of Youth Values’conducted by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family in 2012, Korean youth showed a very low level of happiness compared to Chinese youth. The unhappy education in adolescence has a negative impact on learners even after they become adults (Jung, Jang, 2009). Eventually, it can be difficult to form the right values and lead a happy life. As a way to recognize and cope with these problems, the current 2015 revision curriculum proposes “self-management ability to lead self-directed by building basic skills and competencies necessary for life and career with self-identity and self-confidence (Ministry of Education, 2015, p.2)” as a core competency.
Especially, art education is a subject that helps to develop self-identity (Moon, Lee, 2015). Students can understand their feelings about themselves with expressing their feelings and thoughts through various art activities, express themselves through visual images, and learn how to understand, respect, and consider others (Kim et al, 2014).
This study expects that students will be able to conduct an in-depth reflection on self-identity through the activity that discovers similarities between objects and self-identity and creates relationships. The art lesson using the symbolism of objects was developed and applied to the first graders in high school. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of such art lesson on the self-identity of high school freshman, and thus, the research methods for achieving this purpose are as follows.
First, this study examines the symbolism of objects and self-identity through previous researches and literatures, and understand the present situation and necessity of art lesson for formation of self-identity in the 2015 revision curriculum.
Second, based on the 2015 revision art curriculum and textbooks, the art lesson was designed using the symbolism of objects and teaching·learning materials and evaluation methods were planned. Furthermore, the Korean version of Park Ah-Chung’s(2003) ego-identity test was revised and supplemented for quantitative data collection, and the self-examination logbook and interview items were designed for qualitative data collection.
Third, 20 students who were in the first grade of J girls’high school in S District of Seoul city conducted a pre-test of self-identity to examine the effect of these lessons on students’ self-identity.
Fourth, after conducting 7 art lessons to experiment group, post-test of self-identity was carried out.
Fifth, the pre- and post- test data of the self-identity were analyzed using Stata(Software for Statistics and Data Science) Ver 15.0 statistical package program. Qualitative analysis was carried out with the self-examination logbook and interview items.
Lastly, based on the results of evaluation and analysis, the effect of the art lesson using the symbolism of objects on self-identity was verified and conclusions were drawn.
The pre- and post- test results of this study are summarized as follows.
First, as a result of self-identity test, learners who attended art classes using the symbolism of objects showed a significant difference in the total score. In addition, statistically significant effects were also verified in the t-test results of the corresponding samples.
Second, in terms of sub-domain of self-identity, there was a statistically significant increase in ‘subjectivity’, ‘goal orientation’ and ‘initiative’.
Third, through the analysis of qualitative outcomes, the art lesson using the symbolism of objects has a positive effect not only on the formation of self-identity, but also on participation in class, the ability to express topic and understand contents, comprehensive review and self-reflection.
Fourth, according to the result of class satisfaction, more than 90% of the respondents answered positively in the overall satisfaction and interest of class, the class materials, the interest in the artwork, and the help of the perception of self-identity.
Therefore, it is meaningful that this study showed that the art lesson using the symbolism of objects positively affects self-identity of the first graders in high school.
Furthermore, based on the self-expressive characteristics of the art subject, it is meaningful that this study developed natural and continuous class in ‘art’ curriculum about self-identity which is required for learners’ leading and happy life.