Abstract:

Images of Women in Western Civilization is a university distance-learning undergraduate course offered by a New York state college, which focuses on women’s art and gender issues in the Western world. Most students attending the specific course are non-art/art education majors, who tend to focus on gender issues that they have experienced or understand (e.g., domestic violence, ideal body image, unequal pay, motherhood). Whereas students’ views of Western world and gender issues are limited to American women’s life experiences, an intercultural dialog that developed for a two-week period between them and a group of Greek art education graduate students aimed, at allowing both groups of students to study women’s life experiences and gender issues in different cultural contexts and produce personally meaningful but expressive artwork. Students’ interaction took place on a Moodle platform in forums where students presented their initial artwork and explanation, gave feedback to the work of others in the form of raising questions or making suggestions about a knowledge base/media/symbols/possible processes/studying artists and artworks, and discussed issues. At the end of their interaction, each student could, either reconsider, revise and resubmit their art work or reconsider and describe how they might revise their artwork. Students’ artworks, initial descriptions and final reflections were analyzed based on the symbolism and the degree that each student was able to visualize the personalized big idea. Students’ peer feedback comments were analyzed based on their connection to stages of meaningful artmaking described by Walker (2001), which include personalizing big ideas, building a knowledge base, problem solving, and setting boundaries. Results showed that visualizing and illustrating gender issues can be challenging for students but peer feedback that aims at the self, task, process, and regulation levels (Hattie &Timperley, 2007) helps them understand the creative process as meaning making and produce personally meaningful and expressive artwork.

Keywords:

Meaningful artmaking, gender issues in art, international collaboration, higher art education.