A Child’s Constructed Life: Primary School Children’s Perspectives on Aesthetic Self-Development Through Structural Translation in Scottish Education

Abstract

In the midst of the Scottish government’s implementation of a new National Curriculum in public education, my research project has attempted to create a flexible and interactive space in which primary school children explored and shared their life knowledge and construction(s) of self through reflective narratives and various art mediums in a classroom environment. Utilizing an educational model derived from the work of John Dewey, my research focuses on working with these children as co-researchers as we explore the results of processing, expressing and sharing life stories through art mediums in the creative spaces brought about by a time of structural transition, and in what ways narrative and art expression serve as communicative forms which can enable children to re/create and assign meaning to the concept of self and personal identities