Exploring the role and balance of visual arts teachers to integrate expressive arts therapy into secondary school

This research explores how Art teachers integrate the Expressive Arts Therapy (ExAT) into Visual Arts lessons. Hong Kong students are gradually under more pressure while both their physical and mental health are of great concern to the community. Students regard academic performance as the main pressure. In this case, their emotions are very likely to be negatively affected. Especially when teenagers are in puberty, they are undergoing rapid changes in terms of physical, mental health and social interaction, which contribute to their emotions fluctuation. These changes affect their daily lives academically and socially.
The literature review shows that integrating the ExAT into Visual Arts lessons can effecrively help students to reduce stress and increase positive emotions. In addition, the author uses Arts-based inquiry and Practice-based research to experiment how ExAT creates a more complete or better artwork. The conclusion shows that Art teachers can use ExAT in Visual Arts lessons to achieve the goals: negative emotions prevention and understanding more of their emotions and thoughts. I hope this research can serve as a reference for Hong Kong art teachers, to think about whether integrating the ExAT into Visual Arts lessons is a good way to increase the level of completeness of artwork.