Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Motivation And Retention Of Instrumental Music Students In A Suburban School District, Megan M. Dray

Multidisciplinary Studies Theses

The purpose of this study was to investigate the motivation of students to join and remain in instrumental music in suburban school districts through the analysis of quantitative and qualitative data. The goal was to seek which area of motivation in each grade level and school building had the highest impact on student involvement and retention. Areas of motivation studied include teacher/student relationships, intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, approach success/avoid failure, competition/ego, peer involvement, parental support, and financial issues. The sample included 205 students from a suburban school district in New York. Students were broken into groups based on school buildings …

Artist Practice In The Elementary Classroom: Redefining Art Teaching Through Artist-Teacher Philosophy, Ashley Smith

Art Education Theses

Presently, there is confusion about the definition, role, and pedagogy of artist-teachers and how their practice influences the way art is taught in a K-8 public school setting. In this paper, I present my motivations for pursuing this topic of research, provide a brief history of Western conceptions of artist-teacher, and describe pedagogical characteristics of artist-teachers along with an examination of the teaching environments they create.

I used Arts-based research to conduct a multi-site case study in which I first investigated my artist practice and then studied how I translated what I learned into the elementary art classroom. I completed …