Action Research on College Students’ Learning Satisfaction of Incorporating Art Therapy and Spirituality into A Career Planning Course

The investigation of college students’ learning satisfaction for a new teaching model: Example of incorporating art therapy and spirituality into a career planning course. The subjects of this action research were 47 freshmen enrolled in the “Career Planning-Soft Power of Employability” course (10 males and 37 females). Two types of Likert scale questionnaire surveys were conducted before the end of the first semester. The Learning Satisfaction Questionnaire survey showed that the students’ response to the course was positive. Regarding the precursor activity designed for incorporating art therapy into the career planning course, the students’ average learning satisfaction was 4.45 with a standard deviation of 0.82, whereas their average learning satisfaction of overall curriculum planning was 4.34 with a standard deviation of 0.78. The results of open feedback forms showed that the incorporation of art therapy into the relevant activities of this course helped enhance the students’ concentration and interest in learning. In addition, the course was designed to enhance the effectiveness of teaching assessment. The results of the Teaching Assessment Questionnaire showed that the students’ average satisfaction of teaching in this course was 4.44 with a standard deviation of 0.78. Finally, this action research not only proposed specific suggestions for incorporating art therapy and spirituality into career planning course design and teaching method but also pointed out the direction for future action research on the incorporation of expressive art therapy into the relevant course activities of general education.


Introduction
Higher education has continually explored how to improve students' learning motivation and enhance their inner energy so that they can be clear about their career choice. In the face of various life challenges, there are many factors affecting college students' career choice, including interest, aptitude/multiple intelligence, value, beliefs and personality traits. In the past 10 years, the career counseling field has also placed great emphasis on spirituality as a factor of career choice. Career choice is to ascertain goals of life rather than finding a job. It is to plan your job as a vocation. Career is a mission, not just a job. Career planning course should pay attention to spiritual factors to enhance the soft power of employability and to improve intrinsic vitality of individuals to make their dreams come true. The college-level career planning courses need to think highly of spirituality to improve intrinsic vitality of individuals to achieve dreams. However, spirituality is hard to be taught and measured.
One of the most important elements that can be applied to the activity design of career planning course is through theme activities related to art therapy and spirituality For example, a precursor activity that begins with drawing is a very good way to calm the students' mind and help the students to listen to their inner voice by having self-dialog. In the art therapy field, we also constantly explore the impact of expressive therapy on spirituality and the change in the internal growth of individual cases. The studies of art therapy, spirituality and career choice have their potential impact. The theme of this action research is to incorporate the precursor activity "art therapy and spirituality" into the "Career Planning-Soft Power of Employability" course. The purpose of this action research is to explore whether the design and incorporation of the art therapy activities and spirituality into career planning courses can enhance the subjects' learning satisfaction of this course.

Background of the Study
The world's demand in the 21st century for manpower is themed by knowledge to replace experience; in the face of rapid development of high-tech, economic development internationalization and liberalization of the development trend, almost everyone in the era are on a 10-time movement compared with older times. With the high unemployment rate of higher education nowadays, career education needs to arouse students' interest in the study of their major subjects, and then improve their specialty employability. Colleges and universities must help students to understand themselves, integrate their academic and job skills, and let them efficiently choose their career path; reducing the cost of blind search and trial error will let students have their own career goals and commit to lifelong learning when they graduate. In the 21st century, the development trend of career education should be tending to preventive strategy rather than remedial education (Herr, Cramer & Niles, 2004). Nowadays career education/counseling can adopt two strategies: one is the preventive strategy and the other is the remedial strategy after a problem has occurred. The two strategies are to see the problem in different perspectives; one is to face and solve it when the problem occurs, the other is to consider the occurrence of the problem as an opportunity for learning (Gordon & Steele, 2015;Niles, 2014). Therefore, the remedial work should be carried out in the student's study life. In order to build a healthy and stable society, college students should study career planning; learn to rely on themselves; know how to apply the social resources; and solve the problems they encounter in career planning.
According to the data from Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, Executive Yuan, the overall unemployment rate was 3.74% in June 2017 and the highest unemployment rate was found in the age group from 20 to 24. These new social faces are harder to find a job than those aged 45 to 64. Now the unemployment rate of people receiving junior college education and above is 4.06%; the unemployment rate of people receiving university education and above is 4.65%, which is the highest, and unemployment rates of different age groups are as follows: (1) 15-24 years old, 12.01%; (2) 25-44 years old, 3.95%; (3) 25-29 years old, 6.58%; (4) 45-64 years old, 1.99%. This shows that the unemployment problem of the young adults in Taiwan is still quite serious. Based on a 2016-year survey of educational statistics at all levels of the Department of Statistics of the Ministry of Education (2016), 10 years ago, the unemployment rate for adult who received university education was only 2.67%; after a decade the figured rose to 4.2%, or a 106.7% increase. The unemployment rate for Taiwan's Master and Ph.D. is 3%; the unemployment rate of those with a university degree is slowly going down, but is still as high as 5.4%. It seems that the phenomenon is directed to that high education does not guarantee employment. The unemployment rate of adults aged 15-29 is 8.9%; among which the unemployment rate of adults aged 20-24 is still as high as 12.6%, and the unemployment rate is expected to be higher for the future college and above. Statistics from the above two data sources show that the unemployment problem of young people in Taiwan is still quite grave. Therefore, the focus of college career education should be to set up career planning related courses early in freshman year, and the concept of career education should be integrated into the teaching of various professional subjects.

Career Education and Career Planning Course
Higher education plays a leading role in promoting career development, especially in the way that it is the stage when school education meets with work in the workplace. If the career development process can successfully enter the stages of each professional field and play a dominant role, a young adult's career and life will be full of hues like a rainbow. The two main axes of college youth career development are academic development and employment preparation; the understanding of self-concept and solid life adaptation are all related to their academic development and employment preparation Jin, 2014). The career development process of college students, if properly planned, will make it easier for them to achieve the goal of self-development. Because the goal of self-development is endogenous, they would be more competent to form the strength of propelling oneself forward, and there is a strong learning motivation and positive learning attitude (Jin, Lin, and Tien, 1989;Chang, Lin, Peng, Chen, Sun, Huang, and Huang, 2010).
The career education of higher education needs to be distinguished from the career education of the senior high school, and the career planning course should be arranged in the optional courses in the first year of each department, emphasizing the importance of specialty-oriented career planning (Peng, 2015(Peng, , 2016. Specialty-oriented career planning aims (1) to inspire students to think and create independently, and to find their own professional development direction and to establish core beliefs and core values; (2) to stimulate students' enthusiasm in the development of their own careers. Career education should be carried out in the students' study life, the content of higher education career planning course can cover career theory and complemented with topics related to spiritual implication, including: introduction of career theory, the importance of profession orientated career development, introduction of multiple intelligences, understanding career interests, understanding one's own values/beliefs, the importance of upright career belief, understanding one's personality aptitude, methods of reading and examination, collecting professional job market information, professional visits outside the campus, and interviews with academic mentors and career mentors (Huang, Peng & Wang, 2016;Osborn, Howard & Leierer, 2007;Peng, 2015;Peng, Lin, & Lin, 2017;Peng & Chen, 2014Perez & Gati, 2017. Should the college student of higher education take the development of interest or the development trend and demand of occupation market as the prerequisite? Professional interest is a prerequisite for students to consider; after graduation, it is too late to consider it, and interest needs time to develop into professional skills. According to the survey conducted by Taiwan 1111 JOB Bank, among office workers with university degrees, when choosing a major in college in the past, 60% focus on selecting the favorite major, while the rest 40% put the dream school as the top priority. In addition, the data show that "50% of the office workers regretted their decision, because the career path of the major is not good, the teaching content does not match previous imagination, or they have no interest in the major". However, from the cross analysis of salary and voluntary choice, it is found that the average income of the office workers who focus on selecting the favorite major is 28% higher than their counterpart, who put the dream school as the top concern; it is also mentioned that if they could start over again, they would take the "future career development" as the primary consideration when selecting a major, and the second is the personal interest and personal expertise. Taiwan Integrated Higher Education Database (2016) also found that up to 1/3 of the freshman year students believed that their choice of the major does not meet the original expectations, and more than 1/4 wanted to transfer major or even college; there were 50% of them who doubted their own interests or abilities, therefore more than 50% were unsure whether their selection of major was right or not. In a nutshell, on the issue of combining the ideal with the reality, infusing spiritual implication into career education has its actual needs.

Spirituality and Career Planning
The calling and spirituality of career planning have been widely discussed and valued. Spirituality emphasizes on continuous self-exploration, which in turn enhances career confidence and active learning (Hirschi, 2011). The meaning and connotation of daily spiritual experience are related to spirituality and belief. Spirituality is the experience everyone has. It is how you listen to your inner voice and how to look at things from different perspectives. Spiritual feeling is to perceive and discover from various experience in life. Spirituality refers to the experience of individual being, the self that transcends an individual and the pursuance and link to the divine. It is a belief that there is a greater presence of power in the universe. It is also the spiritual perception that connects with others, religion and even the universe, nature and all things.
The process and experience experienced in this course is the daily spiritual feeling (Duffy, 2006). The connotation of daily spiritual feeling can be divided into five categories: (1) the link with inner self, i.e., the purpose and meaning of life, resilience of mind and inner self; (2) connection with others; (3) connection with the nature and environment; (4) connection with super-ego; and (5) religion-related. Allan & Dik (2011) discovered that the existence of college students' sense of calling is moderately correlated with academic satisfaction. Three potential intermediary variables are sense of self-efficacy in career decision, hope of work and meaning of life. The results showed that sense of calling is an important predictor of personal growth and meaning of life. In terms of the meaning of life, the search of the meaning of life and self-clarity of career have a significant predictive effect on the existence of sense of calling. The research finding confirmed that sense of calling is a predictive variable. The sense of calling has a potential reciprocal effect on grassroots work and welfare variables.
The role of spirituality and religion plays in mental health has drawn increasing attention and triggered people's interest in studying the relationship among spirituality, religion and career development. Spirituality and religion are positively correlated with self-efficacy in career decision, career values and work satisfaction. Many people are longing for meaningful work, believe that work is a key way to make life meaningful and hope that their work can bring a number of benefits to most people (Steger, Dik & Duffy, 2012). Wrzesniewski, McCauley, Rozin and Schwartz (1997) argued that most people see their work as an occupation (focusing on financial rewards rather than being fun or self-realization) or a career (focusing on promotion and development) or calling (emphasizing the fun brought by sense of achievement and contribution to the society). Duffy and Sedlacek (2010) discovered that 44% freshmen believed that they will have their career calling and 28% were still looking for their calling. The students seeking advanced degree are more likely to feel their sense of career calling. The existence of calling is weakly correlated with religion and life satisfaction. However, it is moderately correlated with the meaning of life. Duffy, Bott, Allan, Torrey and Dik (2012) discovered that sense of calling was positively correlated with career commitment, the meaning of work and work satisfaction among the different groups of employed adults. There is a correlation between sense of calling and career commitment and the meaning of work. For people with a stronger sense of calling, such correlation seems more stable. The research finding pointed out that the meaning of work and career commitment have mutual influence on the sense of calling and work satisfaction.
According to the study conducted by Duffy & Sedlacek (2007) on 3091 freshmen regarding the existence of sense of calling and the relationship between seeking the sense of calling and career development, the existence of sense of calling is positively correlated with the choice of clear career direction, comfort, self-clearness and work characteristics, and is negatively correlated with hesitation and lack of educational information. Seeking sense of calling is negatively correlated with the choice of clear career direction, comfort, self-clearness and work characteristics, and is positively correlated with hesitation and lack of educational information. Hall, D.T and Chandler, D.E (2005) proposed a successful mental model for a career with sense of calling, and mentioned that when people have a sense of calling in their career (i.e., have clear goals, or the work they are destined to do), such sense of calling does not have to link with religion. Dik, Steger Fitch-Martin & Onder (2013) pointed out that work experience is meaningful. It aroused people's positive and clear life goals, and showed a consistent correlation with the favorable outcomes of work-related and general feeling of happiness. Although studies on meaningful work have surged in recent years, relatively few academic studies have focused on the strategy of how to foster a sense of calling. Peng and Gan (2016) mentioned the study on college students' sense of calling: listening to your inner voice, looking from different perspective, daring to dream and living your dream are the mode of spiritual career counseling. Who guides me inside? Career planning is like "the philosophy at the highest level can be described with the simplest words." We need to develop a lifestyle of "listening to your inner voice and seeing from different perspectives." However, how do we listen to our inner voice? Can it be taught? Awakening the Creative Spirit: Bringing the Arts to Spiritual Direction (Paintner, Christine Valters, and Betsey Beckman, 2010) reminds spiritual teachers to apply expressive art to spiritual guidance. Through the intrinsic creative process of art and the creative process of contemplating art works, art guides people to a higher level of understanding and promote spiritual development. Rappaport (2008) proposed that focusing approach is an effective way to listen to the body's own wisdom. Art therapy can initiate creative intelligence. Rappaport (2008) combines the focusing approach proposed by the well-known psychologist Gendlin (1981) with art therapy, and used the whole new focusing approach-oriented art therapy to help clients to get along with their inner self, and obtain healing imagery from felt sense of the body. It is expressed in the form of art, and it can help students or clients to take firm steps of career choice and move towards continuous growth.

Art Therapy and Spirituality
The origins of art therapy, art as a personal expression, and art as a form of psychotherapy dates back to Freud & Jung; in 1969 the American Art Therapy Association was founded. The art therapy methods can be divided in two categories, which are psychotherapy (Naumburg, 1987) and creation (Kramer, 1993). Art therapist doesn't do the "painting analysis" but interpretation of art , and the key is that understanding of the subject's works requires oral expression, creative behavior and background data (Chiang, 2014;Junge, 2015;Kramer, 2001;Lu and Liu, 2008;Malchiodi, 2011;Naumburg, 2001;Wang, 2016). According to this action research, "painting analysis" is more than a projection of the therapist itself, rather it is important to guide the subject to face themselves through the production of the work. The treatment of various nonverbal psychological expressions is referred to as "expressive art therapy", including art therapy, music therapy, dance therapy, drama therapy, etc. Art therapy helps subjects to "be honest with oneself"; "understand one's own values"; "perceive one's own emotions"; "cultivate self-concept"; and "perform overall integration of life" (Garrett, 2015). When the subject is fully engaged in the process of creation, his/ her physiology and psychology will witness dramatic changes. There will be emotional relief, and he/ she would enjoy the freedom to transcend time and space; his/ her body and mind also undergo integration (Horovitz, 2005;Horovitz, 2017). Art therapy is a special psychological intervention way that employs a unique, visual imagery, and is highly functional, so that the subjects have different channels of expression to help them improve their mental health status or adapt to the social situation (Allen, 2016;Van Lit, Bullock, Horbal & Lvov 2017). The individual visualizes the image in his/ her mind through the drawing on the paper, and the process of visualizing the inner image can transform the individual from the passive position to the active one. This step will further help them to explore the inner spiritual resources and to face the inevitable uncertainty in life with a more positive attitude (Hickson, Reiss & Wilkins, 2017). (2012) is one of the most important documents in the history of modern art and a pioneering work in the movement to free art from its traditional bonds to material reality. Exploring religious and spiritual issues in the art therapy scene is an increasingly common phenomenon in many medical fields; the art therapist's religious and spiritual sensitivities in art is of crucial importance (Koepfer, 2000). Feen-Calligan & Nevedal (2008) explained the connections within art therapy, spirituality, and recovery and provided a pattern in which the art therapy could be used in healing plans and getting rid of addictive behaviors so that the spiritual recovery could be achieved. The ultimate spiritual recovery is total resolution of the subject's spiritual, emotional and physiological troubles. Horovitz (2005) mentioned how to avoid the "recipe" guidelines. The therapist/mentor should apply gentle guidance, and the subject would really express and explore his/ her internal goals. Once the subjects enter the atmosphere where they face their real self, their breathing will become slow, deeper; their eyes become soft, their muscles also start to relax. The subject enters the parasympathetic system-led state and does not have to be in a response mode of fight or flight.

Kandinsky's work Concerning the Spiritual in Art
In view of the growing importance of spirituality in the art therapy, Farrelly-Hansen (2001) emphasized that art therapy is related to spirituality and strongly affirmed the transformational power of art therapy. He actively explored how spirituality has become the core element of holistic treatment in different ways which brings huge benefits to life. By using art as a healing medium for a particular group of people to find expression outlets, the story and image are intertwined in the spiritual journey of the therapist and the subject; art therapist may maintain a stance between the divine and the mortal. The work Artistic Creation Is a Spiritual Path written by Allen (2016) mentioned that art therapy encompasses different theoretical orientations, including the contemplative orientation, Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), neuroscience, mentalization, and so on. Horovitz (2017) believed that spiritual art therapy should encourage therapists to make appropriate assessments; when giving more focused treatment plans to the subjects, the art therapist should consider the existence of spiritual aspects in their personality. An art therapist is expected to be aware of the spiritual aspects of healing and the personal significance of finding personal relationships with God; the art therapist should describe the participants' devotion to the art of self-healing: this process presents an affirmation of life and spiritual nourishment.
The positive solicitude of "creation equals healing" is advocated by Gerity (Chilton & Wilkinson, 2017). Treatment does not need to focus on the subjects' ideas, but to create space for them to think through artistic creation. Art therapist does not need to emphasize aesthetics; the spontaneous art creation cannot be perfect, because it is the tool of psychotherapy. To understand the valuable link between art and artistic therapy is quite important; the creation of positive imagination itself is full of unique esthetics. Skaife (2014) mentioned that the actual use of art media and art room space can create a unique emotional exchange opportunity rarely found within the pure oral communication groups; both sides do not need to be too objective-oriented. This approach allows the subject to benefit from the psychodynamic group. Art therapy emphasizes that (1) arts are the bridge between the inner and outer world, also the bridge between imagination and the reality; (2) art therapy absolutely does not appraise, instead it values individual's uniqueness; (3) experience not based on text is conveyed; when painting, the body's consciousness is awakened, which is a body feeling based on the inner knowledge and experience (Junge, 2015;Linesch, 2016;Kramer, 2001;Naumburg, 2001).
Healing is not treatment mainly because healing emphasizes that the person is the protagonist of self-healing process. The meaning of healing is that the subjects feel connected to the spirituality; they do not feel lonely, and there is hope, and curative effect will set in. The way of psychologist Jung's construction is "connected with the spirituality", and the healing effect naturally arises; it emphasizes positive imagination and focuses on the state of emotional distress until the visual image is produced, and the process of visualizing the mood will achieve self-healing. Jung emphasized that the goal of the human spirit was to seek completeness and individuation towards self-realization, including the process of the conscious and the subconscious moving towards a sense of meaning and purpose. The visual image has its own life, and it does not need to be explained in the consciousness, but one needs to learn to let the image to guide (Malchiodi, 2011). Art therapy has been found to assist undergraduate students in developing a healthy self-concept by providing them with a realistic and less defensive view of themselves and their environment (Van Lit, Bullock, Horbal & Lvov, 2017). Feen-Calligan & Nevedal (2008) stated that program evaluation has the potential to offer many useful benefits to the field of art therapy, yet little has been published in this area.

Research Objects
This action study is centered on the design concept of the precursor activities of "Career Planning-Employability skills", which is incorporating art therapy and spiritual-oriented. Objectives of this action study is to explore the design and implementation of art therapy activities and spiritual implications into this course are as follow: ijps.ccsenet.org International Journal of Psychological Studies Vol. 10, No. 1; (1) Is it possible to improve the learning motivation of the subjects and improve the satisfaction of the course learning?
(2) Whether the precursor art therapy activities can help to improve the teaching effect of career planning course?

Method
This action study chose the single group and post-test experiment design. A class of 47 students enrolled in this course was the subjects of this action study (10 men and 37 women). With the 18-week career planning course, the "Career Planning Course-Employability skills" was set as the main axis, and the researcher added 15-20 minutes of precursor activity of the art therapy and spiritual implications in each course. Two questionnaire surveys (5-point scale) were conducted before the end of the semester. (1) "Curriculum Learning Satisfaction Questionnaire and Feedback Sheet"; (2) "Teaching Assessment Questionnaire" in this action study. Data collation and analysis both used descriptive statistics.

Spiritual Implication and Core Conceptual Framework of Career Planning
Higher education needs to enhance the professional competitiveness of college students, not only the hard skills such as professionalism but also the soft power of employment. The spiritual implication refers to listening to the inner voice, the body and soul of the dedication, service attitude, and the mind of gratitude. The career planning course opened by the Department of Finance of National Taipei  Teaching itself is an art. Art therapy through drawing is a simple and easy-to-use medium for spiritual education of "listening to your inner voice." The art therapy is an important precursor activity in the career planning course. It helped students to calm their minds, listen to their inner voice, learn how to be with themselves and advocate the importance of spiritual education. The precursor activity of art therapy course should be designed to be related to the theme of the course. It also guided students to think about the theme of the course. For example, if the theme of the course is career value, the precursor activity can be "draw an animal symbolize the one you want to be". It does not matter whether the students draw birds or fish, as long as they realize the value of symbolic animal of themselves, they do not need to envy others. . .
The theoretical part of this course includes the theory of career planning, the importance of specialty-oriented career planning, recognize your own qualities and multiple intelligences, the importance of positive belief, know your interests and strengths, career values, career choices and fight for dreams, methods of reading/examination, the action plan of career choice, time management, learning process planning-learning career interview; find a mentor, career thinking-an interview with an employment consultant, emotional injury, career planning for women, listen to the call of the heart, the planning of obtaining professional certification, mid-term and final exam, group report on interview with academic mentor or group report on interview with academic mentors or career mentors, and individual portfolio of goal-setting career planning, etc.

Course Precursor Art therapy Activity Design
With the art therapy activities, the researcher designed an 18-week course of "Career Planning Course-Employability skills" to help students form a dream and practice the good habit of listening to the inner voice. Each course has a 15-20-minute precursor activity at the beginning, followed by a set of nine career-planning themed sessions, with another nine related topics for discussion.

Results
This action research adopted the single-group post-test experimental design. The subjects of this study are 47 students who took the 18-week career planning course, "Career Planning Course-Employability skills," in the Department of Finance of National Taipei University of Business. Their average ages are between 18 and 20 and all of them are first year students of the Department & Graduate Institute of Finance, National Taipei University of Business. The action study infused art therapy and spirituality into the Career Planning Course of the freshman year students and the following are the results of this action study: (1) The "course feedback" shows that the learning satisfaction of infusing art therapy and spirituality into the career planning course implementation, the mean is 4.45and the deviation is 0.82; (2) the mean of total satisfaction of course planning is 4.34, and the deviation is 0.78. In addition, the result of the "teaching assessment questionnaire" (5-point scale) shows that the mean of satisfaction of teaching is 4.44with 0.78 deviation. In addition, the result of the "teaching assessment questionnaire" (5-point scale) shows that the mean of satisfaction of teaching is 4.44 with 0.78 deviation. The teaching assessment contents included three categories: (1) Teaching Plan; (2) Teaching Implementation; (3) Teaching Achievement.
Following are student's open-end feedbacks in two kinds of scales: (1) Hope that the precursor activity of the drawing can be lengthened in time; (2) The combination of art therapy and music would be very good; (3) The art therapy activity can relieve pressure; (4) The art therapy is so interesting; very good! (5) Hope that we can learn from the picture to see other people's mood and perspective will be understanding both oneself and other people; (6) Can cultivate the ability to focus and improve the interest in curriculum learning; (7) Satisfied with the diversity of courses, the curriculum is therefore very enlightening; (8) Personally like art and drawing quit a lot; but if people who do not like painting, they will resist this activity; (9) It is good to express oneself by painting rather than using text; (10) At the beginning of painting, the heart can calm down; (11) After joining the art therapy, I found that the teacher plans the curriculum perfectly, and I feel fully rewarded (12) The art therapy can help meditation, and I fully understand the teacher's urge of "listening to the inner voice and seeing in different perspectives"; with clarity of heart and self-awareness, my concentration is increased, and it is a good way to assist in my career choice.

Conclusion
Based on the "course learning satisfaction scale and feedback form," the survey showed that the students' reaction to the course was positive. The average students' satisfaction about the activity design that incorporated art therapy and spirituality was 4.45 with a deviation of 0.82. The average satisfaction about overall curriculum planning was 4.34 with a deviation of 0.78. Based on the open feedback of subjects, the integration of art therapy related activities into this course helped enhance the students' interest in course learning. The students said that the precursor art therapy and spirituality activity helped them enhance their concentration, release stress and calm their minds. In addition, regarding the "Teaching Assessment Questionnaire" (Likert scale), the results showed that the students' average satisfaction about the teaching in the course was 4.44 with a deviation of 0.78. This study has the same findings as the art therapy studies conducted by Van Lit, Bullock, Horbal & Lvov (2017) and Feen-Calligan & Nevedal (2008) and the study on spirituality done by Duffy, Allan & Dik (2011). The feedback results confirmed that the design of art therapy and spirituality activity helps the students further understand themselves and connect them with their inner abilities, which further enhances the college students' learning effectiveness and career choice.
This action research incorporated art therapy and spirituality to enhance the students' learning satisfaction and teaching effectiveness. The results of this action research showed that it is feasible to promote the integration of art therapy and spirituality in career planning teaching in higher education. We hope that such design can trigger seed effect to promote the long-term vision of art therapy and spirituality in the relevant general education courses. The limitation of this action research is the connection between career planning and the spirituality of inner calling. However, spirituality is related to maturity and thinking mode, which are difficult to be precisely measured. In terms of art therapy, few students who dislike drawing may resist such activity and need more encouragement . The issue of personal willness should be noticed.
Future action research's direction: (1) For the new teaching model, future research can adopt experimental research that allow for pre-test and post-test comparison; and comparative research between experimental group and control group on learning effectiveness and career choice.; (2) Art therapy includes expressive art, such as music therapy, movie therapy, writing therapy and dancing therapy. How to create more studies that incorporate expressive art therapy into spirituality and career choice? (3) Precursor activities can be added to various relevant general education courses to trigger the students' concentration and learning motive. Research can be conducted on the teaching effectiveness of relevant general education; (4) More in-depth qualitative studies can be added to this action research to make up for the lack of research on quantitative study. From qualitative study, we can know how art therapy inspire the students'/cases' insights and how art therapy contributes to overall learning and career choices.