Aesthetic Intelligence and Aesthetic Experience in Children

How do children experience music, art, emotions, and beauty? Is aesthetic potential in children innate or acquired? Do children understand the world around aesthetically? Is aesthetic experience a developmental process? How can teachers provide students with opportunities to experience aesthetics for cognitive, social, cultural, and psychological development? These are some of the fascinating questions in the field of contemporary aesthetic education. This paper presents what is aesthetic experience and how it enriches the lives of children. Children should be exposed to fine arts and support from teachers will help them to find meaning in fine arts. Visual arts curriculum will help children in cognitive development by continuously constructing new knowledge and integrating it into existing knowledge. Curriculum designed to teach aesthetic experience should incorporate both art viewing and art making. Aesthetic experience integrates mind, body, and emotion. It can induce personal growth in children, and it is intrinsically satisfying.

Of the Akan people: Colour and design education in Ghana

This article digests some of the general ideas that constitute the concept of colour among the Akan people of Ghana and how their proper understanding and desirable consideration will enhance effective visual communication in the Ghanaian visual arts curriculum. The investigation, which involved a number of conversations with knowledgeable personalities in the teaching and speaking of the Akan language, sought to bring out the perceptions, beliefs and functions of colour among the people. The outcome of the study pointed to how colour resides deeply within the traditional lives of the Akan people, not only as aesthetical experience but also as an ‘object’ of cultural and spiritual signification. The study therefore recommends a proper understanding of and conscious respect to the perceptions and meanings of colour among contemporary Akan designers and design educators to improve the design experience of teachers, learners and practitioners.

THE RELEVANCE OF THE VISUAL ARTS CURRICULUM IN THE PREPARATION OF PRE-SERVICE VISUAL ARTS TEACHERS IN UGANDA

The research examined the relevance of the visual arts curriculum content with the view of assessing the extent to which it equips pre-service visual arts teachers with the knowledge and skills required for effective teaching. The study adopted a descriptive case study design. Data were collected from three purposively selected National Teacher Colleges (NTCs), six tutors and 90 final year pre-service visual arts teachers participated in this study. The research findings showed that teacher education institutions are inadequately preparing pre-service visual arts teachers because of the gaps in the Visual Arts Curriculum (VAC) used in NTCs. Some of these gaps are attributed to the structure of the visual arts curriculum tutors use in NTCs. The visual arts curriculum lacks explicit visual arts assessment strategies; it has wide and combined visual arts content to be covered within a short period of two years and the limited knowledge of the available art materials, tools and equipment. The research recommended the restructuring of the VAC to accommodate more practical; and the introduction of specialized knowledge in the visual arts education (VAE) to enable tutors decipher practical knowledge from the theory studied so as to adopt an integrated approach in VAE curriculum. Keywords: case study, pre-service teachers, relevant visual arts curriculum.