Remembering Curriculum Together through Art
Open Access DepositedA Currere Study of Inner Aesthetic Response and Memories of Art Creation about Difficult Knowledge with Three Former Visual Art Students
This dissertation study examines the memories of three former young adult visual art and design students, ages 19, 20, and 22, about their experiences making art about difficult knowledge within a curriculum that I designed, “Difficult Histories and Events in Our Lives.” I aim to understand my former students’ inner aesthetic response, a concept created out of my reading of curriculum and psychoanalytic theory—Pinar’s (1975a) currere, Britzman’s (1998) difficult knowledge, and Bollas’s (1987, 1995, 2009) aesthetic of being—to understand their inner experiences while working through difficult histories, events, and topics that they sought to explore while in my high school art and design classes. My methodology, “Currere-Oriented Visual Arts Interviewing,” which I adapted and utilized the theory and method of currere (Pinar, 1975a), consists of autobiographical interviewing methods involving the visual arts, including a series of two interviews and a focus group in which I asked my former students about their inner experiences with artmaking in response to their chosen difficult knowledge topics. I used a coding process to examine transcripts, artworks, and other data along with a thematic analysis, “Personal Memory Rendering,” to highlight each former student’s narrative. For the focus group, I used thematic narrative analysis with visual concept mapping. The study concludes with a discussion about findings and how these three former students shared their inner aesthetic responses through art making, writing, reading, reflecting, and engaging with various artistic processes in their high school art classroom environment. I examine the significance of their experiences in learning and how that impacts them today in their college and university experiences and personal life.
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