Topic:

Artistic Creation as a Bridge to Environmental Meaning-Making: Retrospective Analysis of an Online Integrated Curriculum for a Low-SES Chinese Primary School.

Research Questions:

1. How will students' final works and written reflections as research data reveal their environmental cognition and emotional engagement narratives formed in online comprehensive courses?   

2. Through retrospective analysis of course outputs, what specific mediating role does the process of artistic creation play in promoting the internal integration of scientific environmental knowledge and emotional responses?   

How does the dual teacher teaching design reflected in the teacher log and curriculum plan support this integration process, and what teaching problems and advantages are reflected in practice?

Objectives:

-Conduct a retrospective qualitative analysis of the outputs of implemented online science and art courses, including student works, written reflections, teacher logs, and course plans.   

-Understand how art plays a role in semiotics and emotional mediation in students' environmental meaning and emotional construction through a qualitative explanatory process.   

-Critically examine the operational dynamics and teaching logic of the dual teacher model as a core component of interdisciplinary curriculum design.   

Conceptual/Theoretical Framework:

This study is anchored in Multimodal Social Semiotics, which allows for the analysis of how students combine visual, textual, and symbolic modes to construct meaning about the environment. It frames students' artworks and writings as legitimate forms of "voice," aligning with Childhood Studies perspectives that advocate for listening to children's non-verbal expressions.

The theory of aesthetic learning is one of the core concepts in European educational philosophy, providing important theoretical support for related research and analysis. This theory suggests that the depth of the learning process relies on the sensory experience and creative participation of learners; In this process, knowledge will be internalized and transformed by individuals in an aesthetic form. This theoretical framework also provides a new perspective for us to interpret the acquisition mechanism of scientific concepts: through artistic expression and construction, students can not only clearly explain the connotation of scientific concepts, but also achieve a deep understanding and digestion of them.

The research on the dual teacher model is based on interdisciplinary educational theory. This study analyzes how the cooperation between science and art teachers can create a unique curriculum that can enhance students' environmental awareness and willingness to take action to protect the environment in areas with low teaching resources through artistic expression. This is directly related to the education priorities in the European Digital Education Action Plan. Promote a common learning model to improve the quality of education. Developing empathy through art to achieve the emotional goals of the European Green Deal and the global education agenda. The coordination of sustainable development (ESD) and the purpose of this research are not only in education, but also in cultivating caring and motivated global citizens.

This study adopted a retrospective qualitative design, focusing on interpreting existing, student generated materials and course artifacts from the completed 8-week online intervention through hermeneutics. Data source: This analysis will triangulate four major, pre-existing datasets: (1) Student artwork: the complete set of final creations by all participants (such as emotional portraits of endangered species, "My Earth Vision" paintings), as the core visual text. (2) Attached written text: Student reflection after class and personal environmental commitment statement. (3) Course file: A complete science and art curriculum plan, detailing the sequence and comprehensive design, including specific roles and transitions between dual teacher teachers. (4) Teacher Reflection Log: Reflections of Science and Art Teachers after Implementation. This study adopts a qualitative analysis method, focusing on three research paths: in-depth analysis, thematic analysis, and visual analysis. Among them, visual content analysis is conducted on the artworks created by students, with a focus on identifying symbols, metaphors, composition techniques that repeatedly appear in the works, as well as color usage methods that can convey students' cognitive understanding and emotional tendencies; Conduct thematic analysis on students' written reflection materials and teachers' teaching logs, extract the core narrative context, teaching challenges perceived by teachers and students, and key nodes for teachers and students to generate comprehensive cognitive insights. The most important aspect of this study is to compare and analyze the painting works created by students before and after the "My View of the Earth" theme course. The purpose of the analysis is not to evaluate the quality of the works, but to track the changes in visual metaphors used by students and the development of the complexity of their narrative logic through the works. Finally, a literature analysis will be conducted on the teaching design plan of this course to restore the problems and advantages of dual teacher collaborative teaching.

This study aims to generate rich descriptive insights into the ways and reasons for integrating art and environmental education into learning. Qualitatively speaking, the analysis of this study will provide a detailed description of the ways in which students' visual and textual outputs reflect the integration of knowledge and emotions. We expect to identify specific visual metaphors and narrative types used by students (such as "rescue narrative", "symbiotic and harmonious depiction"), providing concrete evidence for the mediating role of art. The study will also draw a teaching roadmap for the dual teacher curriculum plan, highlighting effective strategies and potential issues in interdisciplinary online collaboration. The main theoretical contribution will be a process oriented framework that interprets art as a symbol and emotional medium in the creation of environmental meaning, based on the experiential reality of student works. This contributes to the international discussion on aesthetic education and embodied learning. For European and international practices, the outcome will provide: 1) an evidence-based qualitative toolkit for teachers to explain the depth of student learning in interdisciplinary sustainable development education projects, beyond assessment correctness, and understanding individual integration. 2) A detailed online case study was conducted on the scalable dual teacher model, providing practical design principles for overcoming the shortage of professional teachers in rural or remote areas, which is a common challenge faced by the European education system. 3) Strongly support viewing children's creative expression as effective data in educational research and policy, and advocate for adopting more inclusive and holistic approaches to evaluate sustainable development education on a global scale.

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