최근 미술교육의 성격과 내용은 급속도로 확장되고 있다.시각문화 환경의 변화와 함께 ‘미술’교과의 성격 자체를 재정립하고자 하는 시도가 있어왔고,정부의 문화예 술교육 정책에 따라 미술이 가르쳐지고 향유되는 맥락과 대상의 폭이 넓어지고 있다 (황연주?정연희,2005;AndersonㆍMilbrandt,2007).예를 들어 사회문화예술교육은 학교 교육과는 다른 차원에서 보육원,군부대,소년원,양로원 등 사회의 다양한 구성 원들이 모두 미술교육의 기회를 얻도록 하는 데에 중점을 두고 있다.이와 같이 증가 하는 사회적 요구와 관심이 미술교육에 대한 인식을 변화시키고 발전할 수 있는 기회 가 되기 위해서는,보다 실제적이고 체계적인 미술교육 연구가 뒷받침되어야 할 것이 다.즉 다원화된 미술교육의 성격을 맥락적으로 이해하고 다양한 배경을 가진 학습자 들의 미적 경험에 대한 이해를 도출할 수 있는 연구자와 연구 방법이 필요한 것이다.
Recently the nature and contents of art education have been rapidly expanded. Along with the change of visual culture environments, there has been an effort to re-construct the meaning of 'art' as a subject. In addition, the government has established and implemented various culture and arts education policies so as to provide the equal chance for all citizens to learn and appreciate art. In order to improve art education using these increasing social demand and attention as a positive impetus, there should be more vigorous and systematic art educational research. In other words, weneed the researchers and research methods that can recognize the contextual meanings of art and that can draw the knowledge and understanding of aesthetic experiences of those who have different social and cultural backgrounds. In art educational research, the academic attitude that encompasses only scientific and mathematic methods as valid research has placed the hinderance that has led art educational researchers to quantify something that cannot be measured. However, qualitative research methods have been introduced and experimented augmenting the range of research methods for drawing the contextual understandings and meanings of art education. Although the term ‘qualitative research' has become widespread, it is not easy to find a comprehensive qualitative research at this point. This study purports to discuss the nature and characteristics of qualitative research from the methodological perspective. Paying attention to the importance of the researcher in the whole process of research, this article explores the meaning of self-reflection of a qualitative researcher based on the theoretical background and cases. In order to illustrate this methodological discourse, the methods and cases of self-reflection are presented. This study aims at providing a guideline with which a researcher can develop the ability to reflect upon field experiences and to execute a qualitative research with