Classroom teachers's views on the implementation of "visual arts culture" learning area in the elementary school visual arts lesson curriculum

One of the most significant requirements of today?s world is to nurture creative, productive and interrogating individuals who embellish the environment with a deep sense of aesthetic, have an interest in and love of arts, and have a high level of general knowledge. The art education plays a pivotal role in equipping individuals with such qualifications as needed by today?s world.Visual Arts Lesson, one of the implementation areas of art education in the primary school, plays a crucial role in child?s development in this respect. The objectives of Visual Arts lesson can be achieved through proper implementation of the new curriculum introduced in 2006. One of the most important features of the renewed Visual Arts Lesson Curriculum is that it divides the lesson content into three learning areas including ?shaping in visual arts?, ?visual arts culture? and ?museum awareness.? Particularly, the visual arts culture is an area of learning encompassing the ?art criticism?, ?art history? and ?aesthetic? as a whole. Furthermore, the activities included in this area of learning help the students become conscious art consumers who think critically, have an interrogating mind, have an understanding of arts, appreciate arts, and have a deep sense of aesthetic.This study is intended to identify the views of the primary school classroom teachers who implement the ?visual arts culture? area of learning within the scope of the Visual Arts Lesson curriculum and to clarify what they do in the context of this area of learning and what kind of difficulties they experience.The study has been carried out by conducting a survey on 20 primary school classroom teachers who also teach visual arts lessons during the 2009-2010 academic year in Istanbul. The research data have been gathered through semi-structured interviews as a qualitative research method with an aim to deeply reveal the opinions of the teachers on the subject. In analyzing the data, descriptive analysis method has been used and the obtained results have been presented in numbers.According to the obtained results of the research, almost all of the classroom teachers found the updated Visual Arts Curriculum better since it is more comprehensive and detailed now than it was before and it focuses on different aspects of art.The classroom teachers stated that the visual arts culture learning area art history discipline activities that they carry out in the classroom include the introduction of famous artists, focusing on specific artists and giving basic information about them. The classroom teachers also stated that the aesthetic discipline activities they carry out include the examination of an artwork by paying attention to the aesthetic elements as well as the activities carried out to teach the students to make their environment look neat, clean and more beautiful and to ask the students to talk about the aesthetically positive and negative elements that they see around. Almost all the classroom teachers interviewed stated that they show the artwork of a renowned artist in the classroom and examine it within the scope of the art criticism discipline activities.The primary problems concerning the implementation of the visual arts culture area of learning were stated as follows by the classroom teachers: teachers? lack and insufficiency of education in visual arts culture. The classroom teachers offered the following suggestions to solve these problems: teachers should receive training on art history, aesthetic and art criticism disciplines; teachers should be given information about the updated program, and the lesson can be given by the branch teachers.