Pathways Linking Aesthetic Education to Students' Aesthetic Literacy: Evidence from Chinese Higher Education

To explore how aesthetic education in higher education is associated with students' aesthetic literacy development, this study examined students in Chinese higher education institutions and distinguished between two aesthetic education contexts: aesthetic education course instruction and arts practice.Based on these two contexts, two developmental pathways were constructed: "course quality-sustained engagement-emotional resonance-aesthetic expression and creativity" and "opportunities for arts practice-active participation-perceptual immersion-aesthetic perception and appreciation."Data were collected through a structured questionnaire, yielding 483 valid responses from 500 distributed questionnaires.Reliability and validity analyses and structural equation modeling were conducted using SPSS and SEM.The results demonstrated that the measurement model showed satisfactory reliability and validity, and the structural model achieved an acceptable fit.Aesthetic education course quality was significantly associated with students' aesthetic expression and creativity through sustained engagement and emotional resonance.In contrast, opportunities for arts practice were significantly associated with aesthetic perception and appreciation through active participation and perceptual immersion.These findings indicate that different aesthetic education contexts correspond to distinct developmental pathways: course instruction is more closely related to processes of understanding, reflection, and creative expression, whereas arts practice is more closely related to perception, immersion, and aesthetic appreciation.This study contributes to a more differentiated understanding of aesthetic literacy development by revealing the intermediate processes through which aesthetic education conditions are associated with student development and provides practical implications for the coordinated design of curriculum-based and experiential aesthetic education in higher education.