The purpose of this study is to investigate what socio-cultural value and
belief about visual arts are learned and internalized by Korean children. For a
long time, children's art-making has been considered as a product of individuals.
Therefore, children's art has been understood based on universal developmental
information. However, new scholars who are interested in socio-cultural aspects of
children's artistic development starts raising questions on this developmental
perspective. For example, Pearson (2001) claimed that children's art practice is a
social practice. It means that we need to understand children's art practice with in
a specific context in which children are engaged in. Through participating in
repeated everyday art practices, children can learn social value and belief on art
and they produce their art as expected by their society automatically. Therefore, it
is important what social value and belief on art Korean children learned and
internalized in order to think about the direction of future art education in Korea.
For this study, 418 elementary school students were interviewed with a
question, "What do you think art is?" There answers are transcribed after interviews
and analyzed using the method of discourse analysis which is known as a powerful
method to understand what socio-cultural meanings are included in everyday talk
people use for a specific theme. From the result of analysis, four meaings were
found: (1) Korean children understand mainly as drawing and/or making, (2)
Adjective words used for describing the characteristics of art by Korean children
shows what school art is and what it aims, (3) Korean children devide art into
school art and others, (4) Korean children understand art is for talented artists.
From these findings, art educators should consider ways to change children's
distorted understanding of art and widen the boundary of understanding art.