“In what ways does teaching with folk arts inspired visual arts-based instruction enhance community building among elementary students in a Title I school?” was the primary research question in this study. Agreeing with past and present day research that the construct of community is vital to social and cultural capital, this research attempts to determine how the notion of community benefits both students and teachers in the elementary art classroom. Folk art was utilized because this genre was accessible in terms of locality and familiarity among students and teachers. The purpose of this investigation was to produce teaching strategies and methods that show how community can be formed in the art classroom. The participants were elementary students, Grades 2 and 3, in a Title I school located in Denton, Texas. This investigation was conducted under an action research methodology. This approach to research is intended to be transformational, emergent, and accommodating. I recorded observations, field notes, and conversations from the participants. Emergent themes were discovered through content analysis and conceptual maps. Results from this investigation concluded transformation is only possible if the person wants change to happen. Data also showed that community and art education are symbiotic. Transformation, growth, and cultivation are demands that must be met in order for this relationship to flourish. In addition, data suggested that the role of folk arts-based lessons played a significant role in building community among second and third graders.
This descriptive study uses a qualitative, content analysis to examine the middle school visual arts and core Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) to determine the potential common learning activities that can be aligned between the two. By performing an alignment of the potential common learning activities present in the middle school visual art TEKS and the middle school core TEKS, I demonstrate that there is a foundation for curriculum integration in the Texas middle school visual arts classroom.
As a doctoral student, I was asked to teach a course based on emerging technologies and postmodern methods of inquiry in the field of art education. The course was titled Issues and Applications of Technology in Art Education and I developed a method of inquiry called animated autoethnography for pre-service art educators while teaching this course. Through this dissertation, I describe, analyze, interrogate, value, contextualize, reflect on, and artistically react to the autoethnographic animated processes of five pre-service art educators who were enrolled in the course. I interviewed the five participants before and after the creation of their animated autoethnographies and incorporated actor-network theory within the theoretical analysis to study how the insights of my students’ autoethnographies related to my own animations and life narratives. The study also examines animated autoethnography as a method of inquiry that may develop or enhance future teaching practices and encourage empathic connections through researching the self. These selected students created animations that accessed significant life moments, personal struggles, and triumphs, and they exhibited unique representations of self. Pre-service art educators can use self-research to create narrative-based short animations and also use socio-emotional learning to encourage the development of empathy within the classroom. I show diverse student examples, compare them to my own animations, and present a new model of inquiry that encourages the development of self by finding place in chaos, loving the unknown, embracing uncertainty, and turning shame into a celebration of life.
This auto-ethnographic study focuses on Houston’s art car community and the grassroots movement’s 25 year relationship with the city through an art form that has created a sense of community. Art cars transform ordinary vehicles into personally conceived visions through spectacle, disrupting status quo messages of dominant culture regarding automobiles and norms of ownership and operation. An annual parade is an egalitarian space for display and performance, including art cars created by individuals who drive their personally modified vehicles every day, occasional entries by internationally renowned artists, and entries created by youth groups. A locally proactive public has created a movement has co-opted the cultural spectacle, creating a community of practice. I studied the events of the Orange Show Center for Visionary Art’s Art Car Weekend to give me insight into art and its value for people in this community. Sources of data included the creation of a participatory art car, journaling, field observation, and semi-structured interviews. The first part is my academic grounding, informed by critical pedagogy and socially reconstructive art practices. The second part narrates my experiences and understandings of the community along with the voices of others. Dominant themes of exploration include empowerment, community, and art. I examine the purposes for participation by artists, as well in the practices of audiences and organizations that provide support for this art form. My findings have significant implications community-based art education and k-12 classroom educators. Relational and dialogic approaches to making art, teaching, and researching are tied to problem-posing education as a recommendation for art education.
This collective case study explores the confluence of educational policy and professional praxis by examining the ways art teachers in one public school district make decisions about creating and implementing curricula. Through various interpretations of one district's formal and informal expectations of art teachers, some of the complexities of standards, instruction, and assessment policies in public schools are described. The research shares how art teachers are influenced by local policy expectations by examining how five K-12 art teacher participants negotiate their ideological beliefs and practical knowledge within the professional context of their local setting, and presents an art teacher decision-making framework to conceptualize the influences for praxis and to organize analysis. Case study data include in-depth interview sessions, teaching observations, and district policy artifacts. Themes emerge in the findings through coding processes and constructivist grounded theory analysis methods. The research describes how participants interpret and negotiate expectations, finding curricular freedom and participation in public exhibition as central policy factors. Contributing the perspectives of art teachers to the literature of policy implementation and fine arts education, the study finds that balancing autonomy and mandates are primary sites for negotiating praxis and that informal expectations for student exhibition contribute to a culture of competition and teacher performance evaluations. The study presents implications for policy makers, administrators, and art educators while sharing possibilities for future research about policy expectations. The research describes how participants interpret and negotiate expectations, finding curricular freedom and participation in public exhibition as central policy factors. Contributing the perspectives of art teachers to the literature of policy implementation and fine arts education, the study finds that balancing autonomy and mandates are primary sites for negotiating praxis and that informal expectations for student exhibition contribute to a culture of competition and teacher performance evaluations. The study presents implications for policy …
The purpose of this phenomenographical case study is to explore the ways in which a group of MFA students conceive of their learning as they are enmeshed within an MFA community. The research follows along two guiding research questions: 1) What does artistic learning involve for graduate students in an MFA community? 2) How is one's artistic practice shaped by one's active participation in an MFA community? The findings of this study have been presented as lines of artistic learning and help to show the various conceptions that MFA students have of their learning as artists while in an MFA program of study. Ultimately, it is in better understanding one's lines of artistic learning that MFA students can be better supported in their journeying to become professional, practicing artists.
Regurgitating test answers, needing more time to digest a reading, or being spoon fed information are just a few of many digestive metaphors currently used in education. In taking seriously the use of these metaphors, I suggest that humans recognize a connection, on some level, between the mental act of taking in and processing knowledge and the physical act of digestion, yet in educational discourse, these processes are more often than not cast in a negative light. The following philosophical exploration begins with a close look at two digestive practices, rumination and regurgitation, in non-human animals such as ruminants, seed-eating birds, and honey bees. By looking to these animals, it becomes possible to rehabilitate an affirmative human version of rumination and regurgitation in which our physical and mental selves are intrinsically intertwined in and through bodily education. The works of Giorgio Agamben, Tyson E. Lewis, Nathan Snaza, and Vinciane Despret support a theoretical framework which moves beyond human-centered education towards the development of an inhuman biopedagogy that embraces digestion rather than discriminates against it. I offer practical applications of rumination and regurgitation, shedding light on moments when rumination and regurgitation are already present in education, and introduces slight adjustments to these practices to enhance their positive digestive dimensions. The multi-species practices of rumination and regurgitation invite students and educators alike to slow down, return to material that needs to be rechewed, and ultimately to embrace an embodied experience of education.
This research examines the personal narratives of two contemporary non-native artists living and working on the island of Oahu, Hawaii. Issues related to narratives, power structures, artistic processes, insider/outsider dynamics, Hawaiian culture, island life, surfing, and the researcher's own experiences are woven together to formulate realizations surrounding alternative knowledge systems and the power of multiple or hidden narratives to the practice of art education.
The goal of my study is to develop a mobile application to enable all visitors, including blind and low-vision visitors, to autonomously gather and share information about interpretations of art and to have a fully independent museum-going experience. With an application, blind visitors have more access to opportunities and tools in the museum, which empowers their museum experience. My study used a qualitative, mixed-methods approach to research how blind and low vision museum visitors might increase their independence in the museum space and discover ways to equalize their access without relying on museum educators. In carrying out my study, I conducted interviews and collected data based on observations and transcribed and analyzed them using a grounded theory approach. I used Freire's theory of pedagogy of the oppressed and hooks' theory of education as the practice of freedom to frame my study.
This study examined two art museum and school partnerships in order to learn how partnerships enable an integration of goals, participants' beliefs and values, and learning objectives. This study examined the partnerships through a social constructivist lens and used narrative analysis as way to interpret participants' stories about collaboration. The research found three major themes among participants' stories. Participants: a) valued good communication to establish relationships between partners, b) believed partnership offered students experiences that educated the whole person, and c) felt that students making meaning by interacting in the museum environment was an indicator of success. The study closes with discussion of the researchers' own constructions as they developed throughout the study.
This dissertation is "A Collective Case Study of Veterans Inside an Arts and Crafts Room and Their Perceptions Regarding Empowerment." This research examined to what degree art making, and in what ways a community of learning contributed to veterans' self-worth and empowerment through their creative activities and interactions inside an arts and crafts room at the VA hospital in Dallas, Texas. Furthermore, an essential reason for this study is to examine veterans in the arts and crafts environment to explore whether their experiences were important, meaningful, and empowering, and especially important in this regard are the interactions among veterans. Empowerment in this context is defined as gaining self-esteem and motivation within oneself. This includes becoming more confident and positive, as well as gaining the ability to learn about one's own identity. It also described how the interactions between the participants are shaped by the social contexts within which they come together. Using post-modern feminist theory, narrative inquiry and care theory, this dissertation describes the ways that the processes and products of creative activity bring empowerment through dialogue and personal stories while using the component of caring during teaching and learning.
My autobiographical research focuses on creating digital heterotopias through social media platforms, providing safe spaces which allow art teacher candidates the opportunity to reflect upon their practicum experiences and question the status quo of institutional myths and inherited discourses in teacher fieldwork. Functions of heterotopic space link together and reflect other pedagogical sites, including institutional spaces. Heterotopias are often designed to be temporal and hidden from public view but are necessary enclaves for exploring non-hierarchical paradigms. Such temporary communal spaces can lead one to a personal praxis in uncovering what sometimes is never fully explored, our own autobiographical narrative of teaching. By creating a digital space utilized by art education student teachers in the midst of their practicum, I recalled my forgotten autobiography of student teaching, where memories of inequities and suppression of difference emerged. Through the lenses of critical theory and resistance theory, this study examines possibilities of crafting digital spaces as forms of artistic resistance and identity reconstruction zones. As such, the goal of examining the student teaching practicum concerning; power inequities, evaluation methods, standardization of teaching, evolving teacher identities, and the social environment of teaching, is to illustrate hegemonic processes and visualize spaces of possibility to deconstruct self and (re) imagine alternative ways of being teachers. Weaving in multiple stories of fieldwork experience allowed for a collocation in visualizing a space of unfolding inquiry, recognizing multiple genres of knowing through the qualitative and emergent methodologies of narrative inquiry and arts-based research.
This dissertation is about new materialism as it relates to art education. It is a speculative inquiry that seeks to illuminate the interconnectivity of things by considering the ways in which things participate in generative practices of perceiving and making. To do so, the dissertation pioneers an arts-based methodology that allows for broad considerations about who and what can be considered an agent in the process of art making. In this inquiry, the researcher is an artist-participant with other more-than-human and human participants to construct an (im)material autohistoria-teoría, a revisionist interdisciplinary artwork inspired by the work of Anzaldúa. The term w/e is developed and discussed as new language for expanding upon Braidotti's posthumanist subjectivity. New theories called thing(k)ing (including found poetry) and (im)materiality are discussed as movements towards better understanding the contributions of the more-than-human in artmaking practices.
This study developed new mapping techniques and methodologies for understanding creativity in terms of connectivity and interaction between human and non-human actors in a design classroom. The researcher applied qualitative methods of data collection combining both observation of classroom activities and focus group interviews in order to map a creativity network. The findings indicate that creativity is a complex weather-like system (or what I call "creative climate") composed of many sub-networks and diffused networks. Four interactions emerged from the study: (a) the creative climate is composed of the circulation of bodies and objects forming networks and sub-networks, (b) centers and corners/edges are a measure of connectivity and interaction in classroom space design, (c) roundness is a measure of classroom style and the space of connectivity usage, and (d) plugs-in creativity is a measure of technology consolidation. This study attempted to fill the gap in the literature on creativity and classroom design by explaining the role of non-human actors in shaping the creative climate in the classroom, especially the role of the classroom space itself as an actor. The implication of this study in art education opens a new opportunity for research in designing innovative classrooms. Also, it will allow future investigation of the phenomenon of creativity as a climate system based on the interaction between human and non-human actors.
Text component of a doctoral dissertation, which references the full dissertation content in a multi-media web-based format. It includes a background statement, acknowledgements section, printed navigation guide and site map for the website, and a full list of references.
The primary question of this study is: How does the disruption of African art discourse influence a group of university students’ perceptions of African aesthetics? This inquiry developed from previous studies on the exclusion of modern and contemporary African art in Western art museums. Through the theoretical lens of Postcolonial Theory and Critical Multiculturalism, this research conceptualizes the dominance of traditional African art in art museums, art history, and art education as a Western hegemonic discourse that normalizes perceptions of Africa and African aesthetics as the fixed primitive Other. Thus, this research applied Action Research (AR) methodology coupled with Transformative Learning Theory (TL) to disrupt the discourse of African art; with the purpose of affecting positive changes in perceptions of African aesthetics. The participants for this study were 10 students in a course (Art 1301 Honors Art Appreciation) I instructed at the University of North Texas in the fall (September–December) 2013 semester. Data was collected, analyzed, and interpreted from participants’ assignments and my research journal. This study comprised a dual enquiry on: 1. Discourse and Meaning-making; and 2. Disruption and Transformation. First, the study analyzed students’ perceptions of African aesthetics from their learning experience of traditional African art in an art museum. The findings affirmed traditional African art at the museum as a discourse of Africa as the Other of the West. Secondly, the study analyzed how students’ perceptions were influenced from their experience (in my classroom) of learning histories of modern and contemporary African art that disrupt the authenticity of traditional African art. The findings revealed that 80% of participants developed positive transformations. This research demonstrates how art education grounded in critical theory and transformative learning subverted African art as the discourse of the Other, developed students’ understandings of the multiple realities of Africa and African aesthetics, and encouraged …
This study explores the way that visual culture and identity creates understanding about how the women in my family interact and teach each other. In the study issues of identity, liminality, border culture, are explored. The study examines how underrepresented groups, such as those represented by Latinas, can enter into and add to the discourses of art education because the women who participated have learned to maneuver through the world, passing what they have learned to one another, from one generation to the next. Furthermore, the study investigates ways in which visual cues offer a way for the women in my family to negotiate their identity. In the study the women see themselves in signs, magazines, television, dolls, clothing patterns, advertisements, and use these to find ways in which to negotiate the borderlands of the places in which they live. Although the education that occurred was informal, its importance is in creating a portal through which to self reflect on the cultural work of educating.
This study is concerned with the roles and relationships between artists-in-residence, community audiences, and program coordinators/art educators as they engage together in community arts programs. This study takes place at Project Row Houses (PRH), a community arts organization located in Houston, Texas and focuses on the artist-in-residence program, which commissions a group of national and international artists for a 6-month period to create art installations in relation to the community and its African-American heritage. This ethnographic case study is based on the activities and events surrounding the 2008 PRH exhibition, Round 29, Thunderbolt Special: The Great Electric Show and Dance, after Sam Lightnin’ Hopkins and employed qualitative data gathering methods of participant-observation, conducting semi-structured, open-ended, in-depth interviews, and through document collection, and contextual information. Observations were recorded through field notes, photographs, and video. Interviews were conducted with 3 artists-in-residence, 3 community audience members, and 3 program coordinators or staff members involved with the program, regarding their experiences at the site and experiences with each other. My analysis presents the roles of artist, community audience, and program coordinator/art educator through three sections on cultural work. Within these sections I discuss topics related to the power of voice, situatedness, and creativity, as it relates to the artists and community audiences. For the role of program coordinator/art educator, I focus more closely on her role in the process of mediation. Topics of power, social dynamics, identity, and representation are also framed within these discussions.
The purpose of this study was twofold: (1) to examine the knowledge, skills, and experiences in the enameling arts and the attitudes and perceptions of in-service (n = 12) and pre-service Kuwaiti art teachers (n = 170), art supervisors at the Ministry of Education (MOE) (n = 3) and art education faculty members at the College of Basic Education (CBE) and Kuwait University (KU) (n = 8) about what they believed pre-service art teachers should know and be able to do in order to teach the enameling arts, and (2) to use this information to inform and guide the development of a content outline for an enameling course for pre-service Kuwaiti art teachers that is educationally (how to perform enameling arts skills and how to teach what they know), practically (safety issues, workshop management, etc), and culturally (its relation to Islamic culture) suitable. Both quantitative and qualitative approaches were used. Most of the respondents revealed limited knowledge and skills and modest experiences in the enameling arts. All interviewees in the study expressed positive perceptions and attitudes about the enameling arts. Most agreed that a revision to the current art education curriculum at the CBE was needed and made suggestions about how the curriculum should be revised. It was clear that there is a disconnection and miscommunication between the MOE and the CBE with regards to the information about enameling that should be covered and taught in the art education classes. All respondents expressed support for the inclusion of a course in enameling in the art education curriculum at the CBE. Because of the limited knowledge of the participants in the study, they were not able to provide guidance in shaping the content for a course in the enameling arts. The researcher had to rely on the literature review and his …
This research is a nomadic inquiry into the ethics and aesthetics of three makers’ social and material practices. Deleuze’s concept of the nomad operated in multiple ways throughout the process, which was embedded in performative engagements that produced narratives of becoming. Over four months, I built relationships with three people as I learned about the ethico-aesthetic significance of their daily practices. The process started by interviewing participants in their homes and expanded over time to formal and informal engagements in school, community, and agricultural settings. I used Guattari’s ecosophical approach to consider how subjectivity was produced through spatial assemblages by spending time with participants, discussing material structures and objects, listening to personal histories, and collaboratively developing ideas. Participants included a builder who repurposed a missile base into a private residence and community gathering space, an elementary art teacher who practiced urban homesteading, and a young artist who developed an educational farm. The research considers the affective force of normalized social values, the production of desire by designer capitalism, and the mutation of life from neoliberal policies. Our experiences illuminate the community-building potential of direct encounters and direct exchanges. The project generates ideas for becoming an inquirer in the everyday and reveals possibilities for producing pedagogical experiences through collective and dissensual action. Ultimately, the project produces hope for performative and anti-disciplinary approaches to education, rupturing false divisions that fragment the force of thought, to produce, instead, aesthetic experiences that privilege processes and are based in direct and collective engagements with life.
This is a concurrent, mixed methods study of the impacts of Austin, Texas’s cultural plan, CreateAustin. In the study, trend analysis and a t-test were used to examine variables before and after the cultural plan was in place. At the same time, interviews with cultural planners were used to uncover other effects. My research addresses a gap in the literature between understanding the desired and actual outcomes of a cultural plan. Cultural plans are being developed by many communities in an effort to attract creative workers but they are rarely evaluated. Evaluation using a mixed methods approach is necessary to capture all the outcomes of a cultural plan, rather than the limited scope of impacts that are captured by qualitative or quantitative analyses alone. My analysis of the quantitative variables showed some significant differences between when the plan was in place and the years prior to its creation. Interviews with key stakeholders revealed the formation of new networks as a powerful outcome of the planning process. The results allowed me to gauge the overall impact of CreateAustin and make some observations about the cultural planning process in general, as well as uncover new directions for future research.
This study examines the ways visual culture influences a child's drawings. The child is my 9-year-old daughter Nada, who was born in Saudi Arabia and is a fourth-grade student temporarily living in the United States. The study uses qualitative methods of data collection and exploratory case study research design as a methodology. The data were analyzed in light of Althusser's theory of ideology, specifically the notion of interpellation, along with visual culture theories. In addition, gender performativity theory, specifically the work of Judith Butler, was used to consider gender issues when these concerns emerged from the study. Nada has been exposed to two diverse cultures, those of Saudi Arabia and the United States. Both cultures may impact Nada's interpretations of her visual surroundings in various ways. Therefore, recognizing and examining how she interacts with US visual culture might help to uncover how such interactions constitute the basis of her perceptions, identities, and critical thinking. Drawing is not only a means of self-expression but also an important function of communication, identity formation, and represents possible ways of being in the world that are related to culture, community, and society as a whole. The study begins with the premise that there is a gap in understanding between the importance of visual culture and its insufficient application in Saudi Arabian art education. The implications of this study may be informative for Saudi Arabian educators, individuals, or groups interested in visual culture education and children's drawings; potentially, the Saudi Arabian educational system may also use this study to enhance its appreciation of the impact of visual culture on the creation of art and knowledge.
This study explored the perceptions of 74 activity directors responsible for the intergenerational programming that is currently taking place at shared-sites, facilities where older adults and young people receive services and programs simultaneously in a co-located space. Data for this study was collected through a national survey of 149 shared-sites collected from the Generations United data base. the questionnaire asked respondents about their facility’s intergenerational programming, demographic information, and perceived sense of community exhibited by participants in the intergenerational program. Descriptive data regarding the location, primary emphasis, ages and number served, and specific program characteristics, including visual art programming, at IGSS facilities were collected and analyzed. Results from the analysis were reported with limitations. There was a statistical significance suggested in the association of the frequency and duration of art activities with some of the sense of community variables. the study is valuable in determining the current demographics of IGSS facilities that offer visual art programs. Further research needs to be conducted to answer questions regarding the specific role that the visual arts play in creating a sense of community among intergenerational participants at shared-site facilities.
This qualitative inquiry explores a community-based art partnership called the semester programs that took place between Artpace San Antonio and Louis W. Fox Academic and Technical High School from 2004 until 2006. This narrative inquiry used interviews with artists and former Fox Tech art students involved in our program, along with my teacher/ researcher reflections, to make meaning from the data. The artists involved in the semester programs were Gary Sweeney, Daniel Guerrero, David Jurist, and Ethel Shipton. Former students interviewed include Eloy McGarity, Rosa Leija, John Contreras, and Jennelle Gomez, while I, Maria Leake represent the voice of the art teacher. Our stories of experience were analyzed and connections between situated learning theory, creativity theories, community-based art education, and memory research were all recognized as being exhibited during our community partnership programs. There were seven patterns and themes that were noted as occurring within each semester program, as well as notable distinctions. The patterns and themes from the data analysis suggest that our community partnership reflected the following: learning and creative expression went beyond the individual; networks of support and communication were available to all participants; challenges were acknowledged; empathy between participants was an unintentional outcome; working together as a community of practice facilitated personal interactions and connections; learning and creative expression went beyond the traditional curriculum; and educational benefits were realized by all participants.
The world is becoming progressively interconnected through technology, politics, culture, economics, and education. As educators we strive to provide instruction that prepares students to become active members of both their local and global communities. This dissertation presents one possible avenue for engaging students with art and multifaceted ideas about culture, community, and politics as it explores the possibilities for creating a community-based, art education curriculum that seeks a merger of global and local, or "glocal" thinking. Through curriculum action research, I explored the process of writing site-specific curriculum that focuses on publicly available, local works of art and encourages a connection between global experiences and local application. I have completed this research for two communities, one in Ohio and one in Texas, and investigated the similarities and differences that exist in the process and resulting curriculum for each location. Through textual analysis, interviews, curriculum writing, and personal reflections, I identified five essential components of a community-based, glocal art education curriculum: flexibility, authenticity, connectedness, glocal understandings, and publicly available art. Additionally, I developed a template for writing glocally focused, community-based art education curriculum and produced completed curricular units for each of the communities. Finally, I have made suggestions for the future study and development of glocally focused, art education curriculum.
How does it feel to be creative? Such a question, when approached from a phenomenological perspective, reveals new understandings about the embodied experience of creativity, and how it feels as it is being lived. This investigation begins with a provocative contrast of two environments where creativity is thought to manifest itself: school art classrooms, where creativity is often legislated from an authority figure, and New Orleans Second Line parades, where creativity is organically and kinetically expressed. A thorough review of the literature on creativity focuses on education, arts education, creative economies, psychology, and critical theorists, collectively revealing a cognitive bias and striking lack of consideration for community, freedom, and the lived experience of being creative. Further discussions in the literature also neglect sites of creativity, and the impact that place (such as a school classroom) can have upon creativity. The phenomenological perspectives of Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, Bachelard, and Trigg support a methodological lens to grasp embodied knowledge, perceptions of placedness on creativity, and the interdependent frictions between freedom, authenticity, movement and belonging. The research method includes investigations in New Orleans in archives, examination of visual and material culture, participation in cultural practice, and formal and informal interviews. Further, the phenomena of walking and wandering became a methodology for embodied data collection that clarified the emerging rich experiences and descriptions of how it feels to be creative, especially how it feels to be creative in a creative place. What is also revealed are intense frictions, such as the tension between perceptions of personal freedom and a high demand for authenticity in terms of New Orleans traditions, that opens the space and fuels the inspiration for the abundance of creativity found in New Orleans culture.
One can argue that embracing technological models may produce students who are illiterate in the "proper" methods of communication. With rapid technological change, some fear traditions in their "original" form may be lost. Practices such as trying to recapture the artist's intent should be abandoned as a way of opening up literacy discourse to multiple narratives. Failing to critically explore the possibilities of emerging models of thinking, teaching, and learning in a technological culture can produce a loss equal to the loss of tradition. An a/r/tographer works toward a fluid practice between the domains of artist, researcher, and teacher in order to negotiate emerging forms of visual/tactile/auditory communication which include the body as a networked organism situated recursively within the larger structure of society. This study occurred during two separate semesters of an art education course for pre-service elementary teachers. Through interaction with hypermedia, social networking, installation art, and mash-ups, the teacher and students became artists, researchers, and teachers in a community of practice. A new form of teaching practice was envisioned that opens the possibility for both collective and individual understandings in the formation of curricula. A set of guiding principles was invented through practice as a way of producing a deeper understanding of culture and self. The following principles were derived from engagement with emerging technologies: In<SCRIPT>ion, Flip the Script, (H)Activation, Sample, (Re)mix, and Avatar. (H)Activation produces a learning environment that disrupts the flow of teaching, learning, literacy, art, technology, etc., as a way of programming practice for the inclusion of multiple narratives. Utilizing bricolage or a Do It Yourself approach, an apparatus for programming emerged, "image"/"i"/"nation". The term "image"/"i"/"nation" is a play on the concept of the imagination. Through reflexive application the imagination is split allowing connections and disconnections through practice. By engaging in its application the …
In this self-study inquiry, I studied my graphic design practice in a professional setting, focusing on my Arabic typographic skills and knowledge. My roles as researcher and design educator indivisibly intertwined throughout this research. I worked to understand the value of calligraphy in art and design education, highlighting its power as an art form while also emphasizing its pedagogical potentials. I utilized two theoretical approaches suited to investigating and understanding the Arabic letters as text and image, Ibn Arabi’s science of letters, or 'ilm al-hurûf, and semiotics. I applied my theoretical framework to three distinctive artworks to investigate their uses of the Arabic letters, contemplating their roles in modern and contemporary Arab art. Essential to my research was learning Arabic calligraphy through two approaches: 1) I attended a calligraphy workshop, and 2) I conducted three self-study experimentations. I analyzed my experience through visual representations, commentary, and narrative inquiry to assess Arabic calligraphy’s significance for graphic design education. As such, my experimentations confirmed Arabic calligraphy’s aesthetic and educational value. I employed my findings to create a contemporary Arabic typography curriculum suitable for university-level students. This curriculum is built on learning theories such as visual culture analysis, semiotics, constructivist theory, play principles, and critical thinking, aiming to situate Arabic calligraphy as a modern learning model significant for typography education. Finally, I constructed a basic course for Arabic typography to support students’ development of Arabic typography fluency.
By engaging in collaborative arts-based and arts-informed narrative inquiry with my six-year-old daughter, we explored self-guided materials in art museums in the North Texas area. Though the field of art museum education is becoming increasingly participatory, most academic research related to self-guided materials has fallen short of exploring visitors' experiences with these materials. Furthermore, the perspectives of children have been long overlooked in academic and, at times, institutional research about family experiences in museums. Over the course of nine months, my daughter and I visited art museums and engaged with their self-guided materials, ranging from audio tours to interactive galleries. During this time we created collaborative works of art based on our experiences, which acted as both data collection and analysis in preparation for writing narratives. Our narrative explorations allowed us each to better understand our collective experiences. Though this research specifically targets self-guided materials in art museums, any educator interested in intergenerational or collaborative family learning may find both our methodologies and our conclusions to be helpful in better understanding how narratives are essential to this type of learning.
This is an enterpretivist cultural study on how the lively idea of assessment is enacted by the art teachers, students and administrators in Denton school art education, North Texas, the United States. This ethnographic research aims to extend understanding on assessment as vivid cultural and social dynamics that both reflects and enlivens varied and interconnected values promoted and shared among the people involved. Through a perspective of the culture of assessment, this study is expected to facilitate insights on art education as lived, purposeful experience bearing suggestions on a certain social environment and historical implications. Such insights as sought further illuminate specific understandings on art education in different cultural societies, such as China. From a Chinese native viewpoint, the researcher broadens her horizons on connection and independence important for informative performance of art education in the discourses of modern nation and schooling, as well as globalization. It is hoped that this study will interest other art educators, teachers, and researchers to make multiple and continuous efforts in further exploring the culture of assessment with cultural and historical consciousness and knowledge.
This narrative study explores how two Taiwanese college art teachers’ lives and teaching experiences illustrate the ways they cultivate resilience and motivation to sustain professional commitments amidst challenges in their teaching careers. I use the life story interview as my methodology and a three-dimensional space approach to code and analyze my data to retell their stories about how resilience and motivation have guided them as they negotiated dilemmas in teaching. The participants’ stories demonstrate that in order to be motivated, teachers must satisfy their basic needs, which, in the language of Maslow’s need theory, include secure income, safety, love and belonging, respect, and personal accomplishment. To be resilient, art teachers need to facilitate self-efficacy as an essential belief to face challenges, and they also must gain support from family members, students, school administrators, and fellow members of professional organizations as external support resources. This study also illuminates the significance of international educational exchanges, the teaching knowledge constructed through layers of life and professional experience, and the importance of creating dialogue to address teachers’ challenges. Recommendations for future study include exploring further the relationship between motivation and resilience, specifying how gender difference affects the ways participants tell their stories, investigating how teachers in diverse cultural and geographical settings develop motivation and resilience, considering how teachers construct career-affirming memories from both positive and negative life experiences, and exploring uses of social media to engage a broader audience, sharing participants’ stories without the limitations of time and space.
The purpose of this action research study was to determine how a critical theory curriculum implemented in a college-level art appreciation course impacted student understanding of an encyclopedic art museum. A critical theory-based curriculum unit was designed and implemented, and students were given assignments to assess their learning. The most significant assignment centered on a self-guided student visit to the art museum in which students made detailed observations of the museum spaces and responded to articles critiquing museum practices. These documents, together with class discussions and my personal observations, were analyzed and described in this research study. The data revealed that students had a high level of regard for and interest in art museums, were capable of understanding how history and context influences museum practices, detected multiple instances of bias in art museum galleries, and self-reported high levels of cognition and empowerment based on their experiences. The data suggested that, in college students, both art appreciation instructors and museum educators have an ideal audience in which to facilitate sustained, higher-level, critical theory-based museum learning experiences.
This qualitative critical ethnography examines how visual culture impacted the identity and art of four Hopi artists. Sources of data included a personal journal, artists’ interviews, group discussion, art work interpretations, and historical research of Hopi art, visual culture, and issues of native identity. In particular, my analysis focused on issues of power / knowledge relationships, identity construction, and the artist as co-constructor of culture through personal narratives. Implications for art education centered on the concept of storytelling through mythic archaeology situated in identities of past, present, and future.
In this narrative study, I explore the transformative visual cultural dialogue behind the sight of the veil or veiled women in Denton, Texas as a Western culture. The narrative is constructed from the experiences of three Western non-Muslim women participants who wore the veil publicly in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, especially Denton, Texas, for about two weeks, in the spring of 2014. The main question for this study is: How do veiled Western women incite transformative visual cultural dialogue and ideas concerning veiled women? To gather rich data to answer the study's question, I utilized qualitative narrative inquiry to explore the transformative dialogue that the veil, as a visual culture object, can incite in non-Muslim Western women's narratives. The study involves three participants who are non-Muslim American women who voluntarily wore the veil in public and recorded their own and other's reactions. The participants' interviews and diaries demonstrated that the veil incited a particular perceptive dialogue and often transferred negative meanings. For example, the sight of the veil suggested the notion of being Muslim, and consequently, the ideas of not belonging. The reactions the participants received were either negative verbal interactions or physical ones, both of which are limited in this study to face gestures or some form of negative body language that is meant to be a message of disliking. In summation, this study shows that the women's veil is a visual culture symbol that transfers negative meaning in the DFW area in Texas.
The issue of alternative certification teacher training has greatly affected art education over three decades. As a result of training through alternative certification, many art educators enter the profession unprepared and unable to cope with the realities of teaching. This study attempts to understand and represent the experiences and struggles of four alternatively certified art teachers, including myself. By reading these stories, others within the education community can empathize with and provide support for struggling novice teachers. This creative thesis uses a graphic novel format to represent participants' stories. By combining text and imagery, the graphic novel format provides different meanings, interpretations, and insights into the teachers' lives. This medium offered a unique and rich perspective on the stories of what it is like being an alternatively certified art teacher.
It is the fundamental insight of phenomenology that meaning is first and foremost - not something which we intellectually reflect on. It is not a product of the mind reworking raw, perceptual experiences. Rather meaning, and our connection to the world, are perceptual phenomena. Thus, to understand the ways in which children find meaning demands a turn toward perceptual experiences - how children see and feel. In this theoretical dissertation, I explore questions of perceptual experiences through a phenomenological framework that I refer to as the perceptual rite of passage (PRoP). The conceptual framework, which centers on attentiveness, labors to help us understand the ontology of perception for preadolescents and how meaning emerges through everyday encounters.
Technology offers opportunities for museums to expand the ways in which cultural perspectives relevant to objects on display can be exchanged and understood. Multimedia content offered online in an environment with user input capabilities can encourage dialogue and enrich visitor experiences of museums. This action research project using narrative analysis was an effort to develop the use of web technology in museum education practice, with an emphasis on constructivist learning. Concepts including the visitor-centered museum and multiple narratives led the researcher to collaborate with a pre-service art teacher education classroom and a local Hindu community to create content that might better develop understandings of one museum's Hindu sculpture collection that are personal, cultural, and complex.
This qualitative inquiry explored how art educators might broaden their views of place through critical encounters with art, local visual culture, and working with older artists. I combined place-based (PB) education and intergenerational (IG) learning as the focus of an art education curriculum writing initiative with in-service art educators within a museum setting to produce PBIG art education. This study engaged art educators in cooperative action research using a multi-modal approach, including identifying and interviewing local artists to construct new understandings about local place and art to share with students and community. I used critical reflection in our cooperative action research by troubling paradoxes in local visual culture, which formed views of place including Indigenous cultures. Using Deleuze's Logic of Sense (LOS) theories of sense and event, enabled concept development through embracing the paradoxes of this research as sense producing. LOS theory of duration complements IG learning by clarifying the contributions of place and time to memory and experience. Duration suggests that place locates the virtual past, which is actualized through memories--one of the shared experiences of IG learning. Rethinking IG relationships as a sharing of experience and memory while positioning place as a commonality, dismantles ageist notions by offering alternatives to binary thinking about old and young. By triangulating participant data based on the extended epistemology of cooperative action research and Deleuze's pure event, I assess the credibility of participant learning. Critical reflection in cooperative action research combined with LOS theory is significant because the reflective aspect of action research aligns with Deleuze's pure event. Vital curricula and teacher praxes resulted when participants integrated localized experiences of place through older artists' memories and art.
Using portraiture methodology and social practice theory, this study examined the identity work of young people engaged in a teen arts internship program at a contemporary arts center in post-Katrina New Orleans. This research asked four interrelated questions. Through the lens of a teen arts internship at a contemporary arts center in post-Katrina New Orleans, 1) How do contextual figured worlds influence artist identity work? 2) How does artist identity work manifest through personal narratives? 3) How does artist identity work manifest in activities? 4) What are the consequences of artist identity work? The findings of the study highlight how sociocultural factors influence dis/identification with the visual arts in young people and provoke considerations of in/equity in the arts.
This two-part study included a content analysis of an AP art history text and a survey together with interviews with AP art history teachers that embraced both quantitative and qualitative research methodologies. The first phase of the study examined one of the more popular art history survey texts in the AP art history program, Gardner’s Art through the Ages, in terms of how inclusive it is in addressing issues of sexual orientation and, particularly, same-sex perspectives. In addition, the text was examined for evidence of sexual orientation ignored – particularly same-sex perspectives ignored and for heteronormative hegemonies. The second phase investigated the understandings and opinions of AP art history teachers toward the inclusion of sexual orientation and same-sex perspectives in their curriculums and classrooms. Recent recognition of gay, lesbian, and same-sex perspectives in the study of art history has challenged art educators and art historians to begin to consider opening up their curriculums and writings to include these perspectives. These ignored perspectives produce important understandings that enrich and deepen the discourse of art history. The inclusion of gay and lesbian content and same-sex perspectives to the study of AP art history, not only effectively serves the needs of AP art history teachers, but it provides a more equitable and comprehensive visual arts education to students. The implications of this study are broad and complex. If students are to be well and comprehensively educated in the history of the visual arts, including discussions about the sexual orientation of gay and lesbian artists as well as artworks depicting same-sex perspectives is important. Similarly, their teachers must be well-informed and believe that including such material in the curriculum is important. There is definitely a need for designing more balanced and equitable AP art history programs that include gay and lesbian artists as well …
This dissertation describes the effects of a somatic mindfulness project on the way participants interact with and respond to works of art in a gallery setting. The study begins with a critique of Descartes' philosophy, Cartesianism, which emphasizes the role of the mind over that of the body and senses and argues that this thought continues to affect education even today. By contrast, phenomenology and mindfulness practices attempt to overcome Descartes' legacy by focusing on the importance of the body in lived experience. In particular, this study uses a phenomenological framework to conduct mindfulness on the relationship between the body and the perception of art. To do so, I utilized several phenomenological techniques for gathering data, including observations, video, and interviews, and I also created a unique method to analyze the data using a phenomenological verbal (written) description and visual (through photographic paintings) description. These techniques worked together to express the moment of reversibility between the meditative body and the artworks in the gallery setting. In sum, the findings of this study show that meditation changes the perceptual experience for different people in different ways. Another finding is that different forms of meditation may work better for some people than others. The findings of this study suggest that if art teachers are interested in using meditation, they need to be familiar with multiple forms of meditation. Also, they need to consider the role of the environment, as well as that of the artworks, in creating a wholistic meditative mood.
This a/r/tographic dissertation offers opportunities to interrogate curator identity and curator ways of being in both public and private spaces. Instead of an authoritative or prescriptive look at the curatorial, this dissertation as catalogue allows for uncertainty, for messiness, for vulnerable spaces where readers are invited into an exhibition of disorderly living. Stitched throughout the study are stories of mothering and the difficulties that accompanied the extremely early birth of my daughter. Becoming a mother provoked my curating in unexpected ways and allowed me to reconsider the reasons I collect, display, and perform as a curator. It was through the actual curating of familial material artifacts in the exhibition Dress Stories, I was able to map the journey of my curatorial turns. My engagement with clothing in the inquiry was informed by the work of Sandra Weber and Claudia Mitchell, where dress as a methodology allows for spaces to consider autobiography, identity, and practice. It was not until the exhibition was over, I was able to discover new ways to thread caring, collecting, and cataloging ourselves as curators, artists, researchers, teachers, and mothers. It prompts curators and teachers to consider possibilities for failure, releasing excess, and uncaring as a way to care for self, objects, and others.
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