In my master's thesis, I explored whether or not children's self-portraits mirror their personality traits. I studied whether the self-portrait art task could express the two personality types introversion and extraversion. I decided to implement a specific didactic approach. To the normal art-making activities in the learning process, I added a thorough study of art history. While analyzing children's art works, I was attentive to how children express themselves in paintings, to their originality and use of colours and shapes. To research this occurrence, I used a qualitative research approach. In the theoretical part of my master's thesis, I defined the concept of self-portrait and how self-portrait developed over time. I focused on self-portraits that reflected artist's psychological aspect. From a psychological point of view, I presented colour and shape psychology, personality psychology, and the psychological value of self-portrait. The last chapter was dedicated to discussing an article about the curricular reform of art education in Slovenia, which was also linked to my research. Lastly, the empirical part of my thesis included research that I conducted with two groups of primary school children, between the ages of 12 and 15. In the first phase of my research, the control group learned about self-portrait like they would in an art education class. The experimental group learned the same motif in the second phase, but I included more psychological self-portraits, with a special emphasis on art history integration. My research findings show that using this specific didactic approach results in significant changes. Therefore, a key finding is extensive integration of art history in the art education curriculum. No such research was conducted in Slovenia; therefore, my master's thesis will bring new scientific discoveries.
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