A Metaphoric Study Of Popular Visual Culture In Art Education Of Grade Four And Five In The Primary School

Popular visual culture, like cartoon, ads, posters, placards and pictures, spreads inpeople’s daily lives and influences them in almost every way. It provides many contemporaryartists with valuable reference materials. Its influence is gradually spreading to art education.Children are a special group of art learners. Their lives are closely connected with popularvisual culture. Cartoon, posters, placards, pictures and so on are rich in their lives. Therefore,it is important to cultivate their critical thinking about what is behind the culture: thefashionable trend, social pursuit and ideology. This study is conducted within the frameworkof image metaphor in the purpose of providing some enlightenment for art education inprimary school.The purpose of the present study is to analyze popular visual culture images in student s’life and integrate them into art education in order to cultivate their critical thinking, to be themain stream in social life. The adoption of popular visual culture has reformed the classroomart education. It enriches its teaching materials and methods and makes learning extensive.Through literature review, investigation, case study and action research, the studyintends to explore the great influence that popular visual culture exerts on art education ofgrade four or five who is capable of down-to-earth realism and understanding differentcultures. By integrating popular visual culture into classroom teaching, the students aremostly likely to have a better understanding of image metaphor and critical thinking about life,culture and society. The research is conducted from the following five perspectives:1. Acareful study of related literature and the definition and classification of popular visual cultureimage metaphor.2. Analysis of popular visual culture image metaphor within the theoreticframework of youth subculture, non-university of children’s cognition, aesthetics andpedagogy.3. A case study on its influence on art education of primary school students ofgrade four or five.4. A curriculum model constructed within the framework of popular visualculture image metaphor.5. An experimental study to show the cognitive difference betweenordinary students and experimental subject.The implications of the present study include the following two aspects. First, to have adeep understanding of the great impacts of popular visual culture’s influence on students. Second, to give some hints as to how to conduct art education, to enrich its teachingmaterials, to reform its teaching methods and therefore to enhance the students’ criticalthinking.