Didactique des arts visuels au primaire en acadie et art acadien contemporain : élaboration d'un devis pédagogique ethno-esthétique

The arrival of the visual arts within the Acadian people in New Brunswick is a recent phenomena and its development, among other things, can be encouraged by forming visual art teachers at the elementary level. In this perspective, we have thus tried to develop the content of a course in visual arts didactics at the elementary level by connecting Acadian culture and the contemporary visual arts. Our basic hypothesis included the idea that it could be possible to bring Acadian students not specialized in visual arts to be initiated to the theories and teaching methods in this field. This would be achieved by preparing and testing a teaching unit with children starting from the artistic process of a contemporary Acadian artist. The methods used were the deliberative approach for development research, life histories, the vignettes that reflect case studies, and concept analysis. The research produced, as a result, an identification of two modern visions in the formation of visual art teachers in Acadie during the sixties, those of Eulalie Boudreau and Claude Roussel. Case studies carried out in 1992 within two didactic courses in visual arts at the elementary level at Université de Moncton revealed a post-modern vision of artistic education in the formation of students at that level. A review of these two courses permitted the establishment of an education process comprising twenty steps. The analysis of the concepts of Acadian culture and contemporary art resulted in a definition of contemporary Acadian art, an art that embodies post-modern features and types of historical, intimate, social and ecological memories. A review of the literature relating to culture and contemporary art in visual arts didactics lead to five different educational approaches permitting the insertion of contemporary Acadian art in artistic pedagogy. These approaches are the pedagogies of play, success, living culture, attention and creative process. The different parts of the thesis end up in the development of a course plan in visual arts didactics at the elementary level in Acadie that integrates contemporary Acadian art. Finally, other areas of research are listed, among others, the possibilities of inter-cultural exchanges between different cultural groups in New Brunswick and elsewhere.