Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Cultivating A Democratic Community In The Elementary Art Classroom, Kelly Fergus

Theses and Dissertations

Cultivating a more socially just, democratic classroom community is a best pedagogical practices qualitative case study. This study is designed to explore how three Virginia elementary art teachers define and create a democratic classroom community, inside their art rooms, through the implementation of various instructional strategies within the physical, social-cultural, and pedagogical spaces of their classrooms. Such instructional strategies may include a shift in power dynamics, student-centered art, choice-based art, and a big idea/real-world issue-orientated curriculum (ex: visual culture, social justice, democratic pedagogies). Each of the three selected participants were interviewed and asked to describe their classroom practices as well …

Crescendo, Jeffery A. Pabotoy

Theses and Dissertations

Artist Statement

I have always found comfort and warmth in my family. When I am not with them, I find myself clinging to the objects they leave behind as a substitute in their absence. As I began to re-create these objects through paintings and ceramics, I realized that I was creating symbolic portraits of my family. These portraits are tangible family moments preserved in pigment and clay.

In recent years, my siblings were deployed to war and I began to represent them as various instruments. These instruments, both musical and tools of war, chronicle who they were and who they …