| At present, college students’deficiency of personality and creativity as well as their psychological imbalance, which have been caused by the unbalance environment featuring restlessness and profit-orientation in the context of market economy, seem also related to the inadequate education in the humanities, especially in art, in colleges and universities. The essence of education lies in the formation of a complete and all-around person through culture, thus making college education people-oriented and culture-based so as to achieve the integrated development of a person. There remains a long way to go for China’s college education to adhere to the subjectivity of national culture and carry forward China’s fine tradition in education.In recent years, the national government as well as colleges and universities nationwide have begun to emphasize education in the humanities, including that in art, especially cultural and quality education for college students. However, the misunderstanding that art education simply involves the teaching of skills with little attention to its cultural connotations has not been changed substantially. In particular, art education oriented to non-art majors in colleges and universities has failed to adopt a standard operation mode in the absence of unified planning and leadership, top-down design, as well as respect to the extent of being marginalized. Little work has been done on the art education oriented to non-art majors which stands between professional art education and art teacher education, and even none doctoral dissertation on the theory and practice of art education in regular institutions of higher learning.The present study integrates and summarizes domestic and international experience in art education in colleges and universities, based on which the author, by integrating his years of practice in cultural and quality education for college students, puts forward the fundamental proposition returning to the cultural essence of college education with reference to theories concerning the essence and characteristics of college education and art education as well as higher education, in effort to reconstruct an art education theoretical framework and practical mechanism to achieve the all-around development of a person in colleges and universities, and ultimately to help students pursue the poetic realm of life. This study, based on educational practice investigation and basic theoretical research, integrates the "down-top" empirical study and "top-down" theoretical reflections. By adopting various methods like case study, interview, literature collection, comparative analysis as well as integration and statistics, the present dissertation adopts a practice-theory-practice research mode and explores the construction of mechanism and strategies, so as to provide theoretical foundation and operable experience for China’s colleges and universities, particularly comprehensive universities featuring science and engineering, to boost art education with the objective of cultivating the all-around person. Findings show that college education should adhere to Chinese cultural tradition and manner while learning western experience so that every student may strive to improve themselves in pursuit of the poetic realm of life, and to accomplish the historical task to inherit and carry forward Chinese traditional culture, in effort of helping Chinese nation survive in the fierce cultural conflict.The innovations of the present study lie in the close integration of theory and practice based on adequate detailed and accurate data and the author’s work experience, in the strong conscientiousness of problems with the question proposed directly targeted at reality, and in the suggested way to construct and reconstruct art education in regular institutions of higher learning, which both suits the conditions of China’s colleges and universities and boasts Chinese characteristics. |
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