Education Commons^™

An Action Research On Enacting Play-Based Pedagogy In A Pre-Service Teachers' Art Classroom, Yuting Ye

Theses and Dissertations

As a school-based art educator, I advocate for an educational environment that embraces and values concepts of play and play-based pedagogy and encourage understandings of the significant role of play in teaching and learning and its relation to art, artifacts, and multiculturalism. This thesis documents an action research project, reflecting a dialogue about play-based art education in a college classroom. As a social constructivist and an advocate for multiculturalism, I introduced knowledge on play-based pedagogy and its benefits to college students and studied my practices in relation to student learning, especially those students in pre-service teacher education programs. Concepts associated …

Artist Teacher, Amy Elizabeth Wolfe

Theses and Dissertations

144 Pages

This arts-based research project uses qualitative and autoethnographic methods to explore the concept of artist-teacher. The author/artist journaled for three months about her artmaking process while undertaking five discussions about her work with peer advisors, both of whom were practicing artists. The author discovered that that key themes that ran through her artmaking process included the use of found objects (chance and organization), intuition, metaphor, politics and spirituality, other artists’ influence, reflective practice, engagement with nature, and the effort to understand and address her audience. For three months, the author made notes about her teaching practice. These notes …

Investigating Spirituality Through Elementary Art Lessons: A Case Study, Kimberly Ann Mchenry

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this case study was to investigate the inclusion of spirituality in a five-week art unit. Spirituality was defined as the interconnectedness with nature and all living things, with human beings and with a higher power. This study was conducted within two Central Illinois public schools, working specifically with third and fourth grade students. Eleven students participated in the study by completing the unit, sharing their sketches/artwork, and participating in an audio-recorded interview conducted by the teacher/researcher. Daily teacher observations/reflections were also used as data.

The spirituality unit consisted of students exploring the subject of light in the …

Recovery From Design, Cassandra J. Ellison

Theses and Dissertations

Through research, inquiry, and an evaluation of Recovery By Design, a ‘design therapy’ program that serves people with mental illness, substance use disorders, and developmental disabilities, it is my assertion that the practice of design has therapeutic potential and can aid in the process of recovery. To the novice, the practices of conception, shaping form, and praxis have empowering benefit especially when guided by Conditional and Transformation Design methods together with an emphasis on materiality and vernacular form.

Synergy: Game Design + Qur'an Memorization, Sultana Jesmine Moulana

Theses and Dissertations

The rise of digital technology has transformed nearly every part of our daily lives, including the way we learn and memorize. Such transformations raise interesting questions for one of the most long-standing and demanding memorization tasks in the world: the memorization of the Islamic holy book, The Qur’an. For Muslims, The Qur’an is a timeless, sacred text, cradling within its covers many profound images, stories, and parables. Despite rigorous research in the fields of game design and memorization techniques, very little work has been done in combining these two areas of research to create a game-based memorization experience of The …

'The Writing Writes Itself': Deleuzian Desire And The Creative Writing Mfa Degree, Ginger Walker

Theses and Dissertations

This post-qualitative inquiry project investigated subjectivity (sense of self) among graduates of creative writing Master of Fine Arts (MFA) programs. The project asked how subjectivity is involved in the creative writing process and how that process fuels further writing after a creative piece (such as the MFA thesis) is completed. A post-qualitative, thinking-with-theory approach was used to explore the role of subjectivity among four anonymous graduates of creative writing MFA programs who provided writing samples describing their creative writing processes. Following the thinking-with-theory approach, the data were analyzed using Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of productive desire. Study findings are presented …

Korean Popular Music (K-Pop), Youth Fan Culture, And Art Education Curriculum, Aelim Kim

Theses and Dissertations

The advent of digital technologies has allowed the multi-directional distribution of cultural products and blurred boundaries between national popular cultures. This sociocultural condition opens up a global public sphere for youth so that they can actively participate as part of a transcultural audience of popular culture and communicate with their peers from all over the world. K-Pop (Korean popular music) is an example of popular content that has reached across the globe and attained a worldwide fandom through digital media platforms. The K-Pop industry proactively applied various strategies to utilize this media condition and target global youth. Considering the cultural …

Understanding The Expressive Cartoon Drawings Of A Student With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Michael S. Collins

Theses and Dissertations

This study focuses on the highly expressive comic drawings of Amy, a child with autism. This study connects larger fields of research: the study of how people with autism spectrum disorder [ASD] process faces and emotions; and, research about artists with ASD. Amy's understanding of emotion was analyzed by asking her to view and identify humans and cartoon characters expressing different emotions. Her ability to illustrate emotion is tested by asking her to respond to various drawing prompts. The study concluded that Amy has difficulty identifying the emotions of humans and cartoons, but she does have the ability to illustrate …

Read-In Arts, An Liu

Theses and Dissertations

As interior designers, we strive to design everything for our clients, from complex environments to the joinery of a chair. We rarely consider inviting our clients or the users to join us in finishing the space.

Read-In workshop is not a school, but a kind of home, a home belonging to children, which provides the possibilities for children to play, to learn, to occupy, to personalize, and to share. An emotional space that will not limit the user, but keep inspiring them. It helps children notice, think, and grow.

Half of the interior space will be a fixed design, designed …