| My work in this thesis contains three major frameworks. First, it deals with the use of the imagination as a method for envisioning alternate ways of being. This is illustrated using the narrative of the film Pleasantville . Second, I explore what personal expression has come to mean to me as an artist and teacher. For this, I draw from my experiences as a student of Fine Art at University. I utilize the work of critical theorists working in education, as well as the work of art educators. Third, I move into the context from which this thesis grew to begin with-my experience as a teacher in an art class in the Caribbean. Here critical theory helps me to understand what I refused to know at the time.; From each of these frameworks emerges a much more complicated picture of art education than I could have ever expected. It is a picture that comes with political relations, subjectivities, and issues of power. I try to work through this tangled mess, but come to the realization that gathering the strands into neatly-tied bundles is impossible. Yet, I learn from my own working-through that it is the embracing of this impossibility that makes teaching for social change possible. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)... |
