Visual Culture As a Teaching Practice in Visual Arts Education in Turkey: Practitioner Inquiry

Abstract

The present research investigates the experiences of pre-service visual arts teachers in the planning and application phase of a course focusing on visual culture in the special teaching methods course. This course in Turkey provides information about how and with what type of methodologies arts-related topics should be taught in visual arts education. During the first semester, the course was conducted theoretically, and in the second semester the researcher focused on the application of these theories. In this research, visual culture is discussed as one of the special teaching methods of visual arts education. A total of five visual arts pre-service teachers were selected as participants using criterion sampling. The research used practitioner inquiry as a method and conducted during the 2017–2018 spring and 2018–2019 fall semesters, lasting 8 weeks in total. During the application process, the pre-service teachers taught their samples of course plans on visual culture that they created during their pre-service practice to the primary and secondary school students in 2 weeks of classes. The research data were obtained through semi-structured interviews, document review, and reflective notes and analyzed with descriptive methods. As a result of this research, the visual arts pre-service teachers saw the students gain a critical perspective, become more aware of issues in their daily lives, express themselves in a better way, and improve their inquiring skills with the application of a visual culture course plan. With the visual culture course plan, the pre-service teachers also gained several professional experiences and skills.