Creating Space for Possibility: Transformative Practice in an Elementary Visual Art Studio

• In Event: Roundtable Session 90
  In Roundtable Session: Visualizing Spaces of Possibility Within Schooling

Abstract

Using an interpretivist framework as the theoretical foundation, this phenomenological study examined the art studio as a context for understanding how children describe their experience of meaning making while engaging in visual arts practice. My study contributes to the public good through teacher participatory action research that blends theory and practice through arts-based learning. As students create, construct, and critique artifacts in the studio, their process and experience holds interest for visual arts researchers. Data were analyzed utilizing qualitative methods for coding interviews, written responses, and visual data. Creating space for possibility refers to my assumption that aesthetic engagements with the arts support diverse ways of knowing while allowing for the possibility of transformative experience through visual arts practice.

Author

• Debora Joy Nodelman, Chapman University