A Method and Model for Studying the Learning of Artistic Techniques: Analyzing Sculptural Expression in School Sloyd

While Chap. 3 emphasizes the empirical investigation of learning an embodied langauge-game in a mobility practice, this chapter explores how Dewey’s aesthetics can further our methodology by investigating sculptural expression in a production practice. Against the background of the primacy of the aesthetic encounter, creative action, aesthetic appreciation, and especially the creation of artistically expressive meanings, this chapter develops the analytical model of SAR. The SAR model and the PEA method are used to analyze sculptural expression in school sloyd. Since sloyd is approached as an embodied production practice, the analyses enable explorations of learning as it moves from an instrumental learning of a body technique to an artistic expression through a body technique and through the material worked with. Thus, the connection between the learning of body techniques and artistic expressions and the formation and transformation of the self are investigated.