The investigation of visual culture practices focused on social network on visual art teaching

It is possible to mention a world that various, complex and innumerable images take place in where communication mediums and environments rapidly advanced in paralel with technologic developments. Individuals need to understand the surrounding images and their rational, sensual, and conceptual structures to be able to understand, judge and change this world. In accordance with this necessity, the development of critical thinking skills and interpretive attitude become more important provided by and art education approach focused on of visual culture. Within this scope, the purpose of this research is to determine how social network-focused visual culture studies can be developed and implemented in studio courses in the curriculum of Fine Arts High Schools. This research was designed as an action research and implemented in Drawing course in the first 4 weeks of Fall semester in 2015-2016 academic year, and 2D Fine Arts Studio course in the following 10 weeks. The data of the research were collected in a period of 14 weeks, between the dates of October 8, 2015 and January 18, 2016. The participants of the study were nine 11th grade students who attended the social network oriented visual culture practices in these two courses and the researcher herself as the instructor the activities. The data of the research were collected through the researcher's reflective journals, video recordings of the course sessions, students' reflective journals, semi-structured interviews, document reviews and WhatsApp. Reseacrch data were analyzed in content analysis through using NVivo Pro 11. There are five themes attained in the context of the research findings; 'The Perception of Visual Culture', 'The Process of Development of Visual Culture Practices', 'The Usage of Social Network', 'The Learning Outcomes of Visual Culture', and 'Opinions Related to Visual Culture Practices'. Keywords: Visual culture, Social network, Visual arts education, Critical pedagogy.