Action research about development of students' artistic form of expression by conceptual art activities

Fast change in art and developments in technology that occurred by 1960s changed and transformed the expression forms of today's art as well as its ways of thinking. Along with this change in art, a need of structure and planning in art education emerged. Art education needed to transform itself into a plural structure other than a one-dimensional education system which improves creativity, puts conception on its basis, and interacts with different disciplines. An art education program should be applied that roots itself among social and individual cultural facts; develops individual perspectives and pushes one's limits; leads one to criticize and to do research; focuses on the process but not on the result. If one looks at the schedule of educational institutions, he/she can say the change in art is not integrated in art education field. For this matter, it is aimed that students would experience the process of transforming an object into an art object through conceptual art's presence with its research and questioning manners. An answer to the question of 'what kind of experience can students have while transforming their ideas into art products by using conceptual art's theoretical and practical ways of expression?' In accordance with this aim, this research is designed with activity research model to determine the problems occurred and to find solution proposal to this matter. This research was conducted with third grade students enrolled in Graphic Design main art workshop in Anadolu University Fine Arts Education Department during 2012-2013 Fall semester. This study was practiced between October 4 and December 2, in 2012 and two activities were conducted during the research. Both of the research has phases. Firstly, class discussions related to subject were made; secondly, the activity was applied; and thirdly the art object was created. Thus, the activities were edited in such a way that both theory and practice were applied together. It took ten weeks to finish this research and all workshop classes were recorded during this process. All of the students attended to all conceptual art projects and data were collected. During the research, activity was made with twelve students and six focus students were determined via internal sampling model. At the end of the activity, semi-structured interviews were made with those six focus students and interviews were recorded via voice recorder. Data were collected from class video records, semi-structured interviews, student diary, researcher diary, student objects/products and social media interactions. New action plans were included to the program in cases of emerging problems and students' needs during the activity. Data of the research were resolved through thematic analysis method and the results were interpreted according to research questions. Some important results at the end of the research as follows: •It was understood that students developed awareness towards their environment whilst experiencing research and questioning process by conceptual art activities. Therefore, they realized their individual experiences. •With this research, it was seen that students evaluate objects with a different perspective and they started to analyze these objects artistically and therefore they had transformation in their artistic perspectives. •Students, who gained skills on doing research on basic levels, change their attitude about reading positively. •Students changed their distant attitude towards conceptual art and today's art; they also changed their prejudices regarding these. They tried to signify them. Key words: Art education, Conceptual art, Contemporary art education.