Abstract
ART EDUCATION AND THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF AFFECTIVE AND COGNITIVE EMPATHY IN EARLY CHILDHOOD By Luke Meeken, BFA A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Art Education at Virginia Commonwealth University. Virginia Commonwealth University, 2013. Major Director: Dr. Sara Wilson McKay, Art Education Chair, School of the Arts This study constructs a theoretical framework for exploring the relationship between art education practice and the development of empathy in early childhood. In this study, I construct a schema for the experience of empathy in kindergarten-aged students, derived from the work of Martin Hoffman, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Vittorio Gallese, which acknowledges both the affective and cognitive dimensions of the experience of empathy. This schema is examined within the context of aesthetic and artistic experience, as distinguished from each other by John Dewey. I articulate several ways that art education’s cultivation of subtle aesthetic perception may encourage affective empathy, and its cultivation of imaginative cognition may encourage cognitive empathy. Suggestions are made for projects and practice in the early childhood classroom.
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