The Role of Visual Culture Studies on Primary School Students' Interpretation of Visual World

Abstract

Visual culture studies have become the focus of research in recent years mainly due to the frequent use of art applications in Visual Arts courses in primary schools and the inadequate content of discipline based art education for the interpretation of today's multiple stimulants. By interrogating students' semantic stratums related to visuals, visual culture studies carried out in Visual Arts courses can help students gain a different perspective regarding artistic studies. The present study aimed finding out how visual culture studies can be carried out in Visual Arts courses in primary schools. The study had an action research design and was conducted during the 10 hours class-time of a Visual Arts course in a third-grade class of a primary school in Eskisehir in the fall semester of 2007-2008 academic year. The data of the present study, which was conducted on seven focal students, were collected with various data collection tools, such as demographic information scale, video recordings, semi-structured interviews, document analysis, researcher diaries and student diaries. The collected data were analyzed using descriptive analysis. The present study revealed that the students effectively participated in visual culture studies; that they made critical interrogations by broadening their thoughts based on their previous knowledge; and that they found the course more entertaining thanks to the visual culture studies. In conclusion, findings of the study suggest that visual art applications, which will encourage students to criticize cultural meanings within the Visual Art Curriculum, may be used as a strong instrument to help students interpret the visual world and become more efficient in expressing their ideas in art works.