Engaging Students in Aesthetic Experience through Arts Education in Schools of Hong Kong: A Critical Discourse Study on the Continuity and Changes from 1948 to 2012

'Aesthetic experience', a term used to refer to arts education in the policy documents of education in Hong Kong, occupies an increasingly significant role in the policy discourse of arts education. By examining official documents selected from a historical context of approximately sixty years in duration, this study aims to find out how the discourse on the provision of aesthetic experience changes throughout the specified historical context, which can be divided into three stages for discussion. This study uses Norman Fairclough's model of critical discourse analysis to guide the discussion of how power and ideology are embedded in the relevant texts related to the provision of aesthetic experience to students. In addition, to explore the boundary strength between arts learning and other learning areas, as well as the meaning behind them, Basil Bernstein's principles of classification and framing were adopted. By focusing on analyzing the development of arts education policy discourse from a diachronic perspective, this study has conceptualized aesthetic experience into mainly two inclinations -- personal and societal as basis of discussion. Results of the study indicate that the provision of aesthetic experience through arts education has been changing discursively throughout the early stage -- 1948 to 1977, middle stage -- 1978 to 1998, and the final stage -- 1999 to 2012, and they were influenced by neo-liberalism and related ideology of a knowledge-based economy. While aesthetic experience should be understood as a whole by considering both arts as subjects and as activities outside classroom, it was found that the Government has been exercising increasing control over the form of delivery of such experiences to students at school level and at community level. Changes in the provision of aesthetic experience reflect greater emphasis on the societal values of learning the arts, upheld by the Government. They include: i) class domination existed throughout the entire discourse of aesthetic experiences; ii) the learning of the arts was to serve the societal needs being a primary goal; iii) the learning of the arts has become a compulsory part for all students so as to achieve whole-person development; iv) a weakened boundary between the arts and other learning areas in the implementation of arts education; v) the standardization of arts learning experiences; and vi) the collaboration within the social network demonstrating an increased intervention and control on delivering arts activities. This study concludes that changes are being identified at discursive level, whereas the provision of aesthetic experience through arts education has only been a kind of discourse with semiotic meaning for the Government to promote whole-person development in response to the demand of a neo-liberal conception of global economy.