Women of Our Worlds: Women Raising Voices Against Violence

In a high school painting and drawing course, students investigated what contemporary women artists were making, saying, protesting, and changing in multiple art worlds. Group dialogue centered on generative themes in which students chose interconnected topics of combating domestic violence, affirming diverse body expressions and family relationships to launch a painting on canvas project. Students took leadership in activism to invite community workers into the art room resulting and in-school interventions such as, installing art exhibit in the school office, and projecting text and imagery in school cafeteria walls. Expanding into the community, students produced and installed info-art-posters in sites where they knew women needed access to information such as nail salons, homeless shelters and the employee break rooms of low-wage employment retail stores. This led to students teaching painting classes at a local women’s shelter. The study of contemporary women artists empowered students to reconsider what counts as art, and re-envision their role as art-makers in their worlds.https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/cstae_resource_high_school/1000/thumbnail.jp

Living in Two Worlds: A Critical Ethnography of Academic and Proto-Professional Interactions in a Human-Computer Interaction Design Studio

Thesis (Ph.D.) - Indiana University, School of Education, 2014Studio pedagogy has been used broadly in traditional design disciplines for over a century, functioning as a signature pedagogy. This pedagogical approach is increasingly being adopted in non-traditional design disciplines, often without an understanding of why this pedagogy is effective from an instructional design perspective, or how its theoretical structures may function in disciplines outside of the design tradition. In this dissertation, I investigated a Master's program at a large Midwestern university in human-computer interaction (HCI), one of these emergent design disciplines, capturing the occurrence and underlying structures of communication as they emerged in informal dimensions of the pedagogy as experienced and enacted by students. To produce a critical ethnography of this site, I collected data as a participant observer for two academic semesters, compiling over 450 contact hours, thousands of photographs, hundreds of hours of audio, and 30 critical interviews that were semi-structured, focused on specific topic domains. Almost two-thirds of the contact hours were located in a non-classroom studio space, where I interacted with students as they worked and socialized. The remaining contact hours were spent in classroom observations during the second semester of data collection, in order to compare and enrich my understanding of the student experience of the formal pedagogy. Through an analysis of the structures of informal communication between students, I identified system relations that allowed for the constitution of student-led interactions in the studio space and encouraged reproduction of these interactions. Beneath these system relations, I discovered that students worked within two different fields of action: one oriented towards the academic community and related typifications of classroom and professor behavior; and a second oriented towards the professional community. The structure-system relations led by students took place within the proto-professional field, indicating a relationship with the professional community, even while the pedagogy placed students in the student role. Implications of this relationship between students and the professional and academic communities are explored through the lenses of studio education in HCI and instructional design, indicating a need for more research on adaptation of the studio model in new disciplines, and the evolving identity of students in relation to the professional practice of design

Enriching teaching practice through place, arts and culture: resources for in-service teachers of the Bering Strait School District

Master's Project (M.Ed.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2017The SILKAT (Sustaining Indigenous and Local Knowledge, Art and Teaching) project joins together the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the Bering Strait School District in an effort to celebrate the rich cultural arts and Indigenous knowledge of northwest Alaska and bring the knowledge and ingenuity of local artists and culture-bearers to the forefront of teaching practices and curriculum. This work presents the content and format of one teacher professional development module based on one of seven arts and place-based core teaching practices-the ability to elicit student thinking and facilitate reflective thinking in students. It also examines the development of two Art and Culture units, grade 3-Natural Landforms, and grade 5-Responsibility to Community, both rooted in the cultural values and knowledge of artists and culture-bearers from the region. The research completed for this project examines the supporting literature that forms the backbone for both the professional development module and the Art and Culture units, including core practices, the implications of place and culture-based arts education, Visible Thinking routines, protocols, Studio Habits of Thinking, and Understanding by Design. Following the research is a synopsis of the methods used to create the PD module and Art and Culture units, as well as the plans for dissemination within the Bering Strait School District to enhance the skills and knowledge of in-service teachers in arts and culture

Examining Formative Critique In The High School Visual Arts Classroom

Formative assessment techniques are integral to high school visual arts teachers’ curricula, but are not clearly delineated by state and national organizations. Additionally, formative assessment in the high school visual arts classroom, defined in this study as formative critique, had not been examined as extensively, and most research investigated either high school core content practices or critique procedures in higher education settings. This qualitative phenomenological study sought to understand commonalities in the implementation of formative critique by high school visual arts teachers in central Kentucky. In this study, six veteran high school visual arts teachers were interviewed, using open-ended questions and a conversational approach. All interviews were conducted via video conference and digital materials used by participants were collected for analysis. This study found that despite a lack of pedagogical guidance on the use of formative critique from art education organizations, participants’ approaches were remarkably similar. Participants favored an individualized, conversational approach, and used questions to guide student work. Teachers in this study built relationships with their students, creating a supportive classroom atmosphere which lead to positive experiences in visual arts courses. According to participants, formative critique led to student growth and the production of more advanced artwork. Interviewees indicated that students were more willing to take risks and put forth effort when formative critique was used to build constructive environments. Participants indicated that formative critique is used for positive daily interactions with students and focuses on artistic processes. Additionally, summative assessment could be viewed in a formative context under certain circumstances. These findings could be instructive for policy implementation when designing visual arts standards for high school classrooms and could be used to guide administrators’ assessment of teacher practice. Finally, limitations and suggestions for further research are presented

Contours of Inclusion: Frameworks and Tools for Evaluating Arts in Education

This collection of essays explores various arts education-specific evaluation tools, as well as considers Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and the inclusion of people with disabilities in the design of evaluation instruments and strategies. Prominent evaluators Donna M. Mertens, Robert Horowitz, Dennie Palmer Wolf, and Gail Burnaford are contributors to this volume. The appendix includes the AEA Standards for Evaluation. (Contains 10 tables, 2 figures, 30 footnotes, and resources for additional reading.) This is a proceedings document from the 2007 VSA arts Research Symposium that preceded the American Evaluation Association's (AEA) annual meeting in Baltimore, MD

Designing a Toolbox to Improve Creative Output: A Guide for Cultivating Critical, Creative, and Conceptual Thinking Skills in an Increasingly Distracted Society

Frequent digital distractions can hamper undergraduate design students’ ability to perform the kind of deeper level thinking needed for creative problem solving and creative output, yet there are tools that can help students focus on the present and delve deeper into their creative work. This paper focuses on the details of a pedagogical toolbox created for educators of undergraduate design students to target critical thinking, creative thinking, and conceptual thinking (the 3Cs) in order to improve creative output. I explain how critical, creative, and conceptual thinking work holistically to develop and promote creative output. By demonstrating 3Cs tools and activities, I provide educators with ideas and methods for challenging students to be present, think creatively and critically, and build conceptual awareness. Through testing, refinement, and adaptation of the tools, I collect data through student surveys and compare creative output results between control groups for one particular tool. I aim to prove that creative output is not fixed, but can be developed and strengthened with practice, time, and the right tools. Customization of the toolbox tailored to what is most effective for individual educators’ pedagogy, course content, and students’ critical, creative, and conceptual thinking abilities is explained. This paper also acknowledges our reliance on digital technology and how it can be leveraged to engage creative thinking in the virtual spaces where students spend their time

Interdisciplinary Infusion in the Discipline Based Middle School Art Classroom

This research has a primary focus on the middle school setting and how schools, students, and art educators might benefit from an interdisciplinary art curriculum. In this thesis I outline how cross-curricular inclusions in art lessons have the potential to be a fantastic advocacy tool for fine arts departments. I also investigate the differences between interdisciplinary inclusions in the visual art classroom and arts integrated school models as well as the beneficial relationship that can exist between these two pedagogical approaches. Additionally, I examine through literary review and curriculum development, some of the positive and negative influence in academic subject areas and more importantly art disciplines. My final and primary aim in examining various methods of cross-curricular inclusion is to shed light upon the immense potential for student development via dynamic interdisciplinary art curriculum

An Unfinished Canvas: A Review of Large-Scale Assessment in K-12 Arts Education

Reviews the status of and current practices in statewide standards-based arts assessment for K-12 education accountability. Examines the approaches and criteria of several models of large-scale arts assessment and five states' assessment programs