[[alternative]]An experimental research of integrated curriculum of visual art : Using integrated curriculum of environmental issue in elementary school as an example

[[abstract]]Along with the transition of society, integrated curriculum has become the main trend in school curriculum development. How art related to life makes the connection among different knowledge get closer to people’s life and culture. That is why visual art education, with the feature of immense integration and the background that arts ‘derives’ from life, is appropriate to be integrated with other subjects. This study aims to explore the relevant concepts and modes of visual arts curriculum in integrated curriculum. In addition, based on the curriculum framework of TETAC (Transforming Education through the Arts Challenge)(USA), the environmental issues are connected with to develop ‘the artistic diagnosis of environment’, a visual-art-centered integrated curriculum, to explore students’ learning proficiency after their participation of this experimental curriculum. The objects for this research are the sixth-grade students of an elementary school in Taipei City. The curriculum is implemented under the single-participant research design. It is practiced as a six-week long experiment with two classes per week. Afterwards, students’ worksheets and pre- and post-test data are collected as the basis of assessment, and to infer the feasibility of this curriculum. The findings in this study are as follows: First, according to the research, integrated curriculum of visual art education related to the social issues is corresponded with post-modern ideology. Secondly, integrated curriculum of visual art education enhances student’s ability of thinking in the art, i.e. icons exploration, multi-interpretation and concept construction, etc. Thirdly, the application of contemporary art works and visual images can be connected with the social issues to develop visual-art-centered integrated curriculum. Fourthly, visual-art-centered integrated curriculum promotes the learning of visual arts onto the level of thinking (towards the opportunities for thinking). |In conclusion, drawing on the findings, suggestions for the experimental teaching result in visual art integrated curriculum and the relevant research are provided for the future art educators’ reference.