Education Commons^™

Bottling The “Secret Sauce”: Capturing The Heart Of The East End At Peter Paul Development Center, Melissa E. Abban, Melissa Buckley, Marie Garrenton, Latonja Y. Wright

Doctor of Education Capstones

Peter Paul Development Center (Peter Paul) submitted a Request for Assistance (RFA) to obtain support from a Virginia Commonwealth University Doctorate of Educational Leadership (EdD) Capstone team with documenting programming and principles and evaluating them consistently. To address this request, the team analyzed the context and problem of practice through document review, empathy interviews, partner discussions and site visits. The literature review helped the team design and conduct research, fieldwork, and data analysis to support Peter Paul in standardizing procedures and programs, fostering a culture of institutional knowledge, and effectively communicating impact to stakeholders. The team used a Convergent Parallel …

E Pluribus Unum: Increasing A Shared Understanding Of Mission At Marine Corps University, Edward Greiner, Kirstin Pantazis, Christopher Reid, Dominick White

Doctor of Education Capstones

E PLURIBUS UNUM: INCREASING A SHARED UNDERSTANDING OF MISSION AT MARINE CORPS UNIVERSITY

By Edward Greiner, Kirstin Pantazis, Christopher Reid, and Dominick White

A capstone project submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Education in the Department of Educational Leadership at Virginia Commonwealth University

Virginia Commonwealth University, 2023.

Capstone Chair: Beth E. Bukoski, Ph.D., Department of Educational Leadership

Mergers between higher education institutions present unique challenges to creating and maintaining a shared understanding of mission. Additionally, professional military education institutions with civilian faculty and staff must blend military and civilian cultures in the workplace. …

An Exploration Of Teacher Residents’ Perception Of Culture And Their Use Of Culturally Responsive Pedagogy, Jodi Larson

Theses and Dissertations

Urban teacher residency (UTR) programs place residents in urban schools labeled “hard-to-staff” or “under-resourced.” Enrollment in residency schools tends to be majority Brown or Black students from various cultures. Teacher residents are from diverse backgrounds and races who have a commitment to teach in Title 1 schools with the support of a residency program that coaches them how to teach using culturally relevant pedagogy. Their journeys are unique from typical student teaching experiences because they co-teach with an experienced teacher for a full school year while attending university classes on pedagogy and theory. This qualitative case study followed seven elementary …

Teachers' Views On The Intersectionality Between Culture And Student Behaviors, And Experience Using Culturally-Responsive Behavior Interventions, Toshna Pandey

Theses and Dissertations

Students belonging to racially minoritized groups experience more frequent and intense disciplinary consequences for similar rule violations as their White peers. Factors such as deficit-oriented perceptions and implicit biases among teachers have contributed to the disproportionate exclusion of racially minoritized students, thus negatively affecting their social, emotional, behavioral, and school success. Using semi-structured interviews, this study sought to explore elementary school teachers’ views on the intersectionality between race/culture and student behaviors. Additionally, it also examined their experiences using behavior interventions effective for racially minoritized students. Findings suggest that participants often attributed challenging behaviors to student-level factors such as family and …

An Implementation Evaluation Of The Let Me Learn® Process: Leadership Practices And Cultural Conditions That Support Implementation And Sustainability, Lisa Webb, Anna Hebb, Sarah Morris

Graduate Research Posters

In the 20 years since its development, the Let Me Learn Process^® has been implemented in over 75 grade pre-Kindergarten through 12 schools in the United States. The Let Me Learn Process^® is based on research in the field of neuroscience which explores the interface between the brain and the mind as it relates to learning (Bruer, 1997; Johnston, 2013). Throughout the twenty-year history of implementation, however, there has been no established approach to achieving implementation and sustainability of the Let Me Learn Process^®. The client for this implementation evaluation was interested in better understanding the …

The Relationship Between Teachers’ Levels Of Cultural Competence And The Nomination/Referral Process For Gifted Identification Of Culturally And Linguistically Diverse Students, Patrice C. Wilson

Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the extent to which teachers’ levels of cultural competence is a factor in the nomination/referral process for gifted identification of culturally and linguistically diverse students. Specifically, this study compared the self-assessed perceptions of second and third grade elementary teachers’ cultural competence to the various factors included in the gifted referral process. A quasi-experimental quantitative study was used. However, this study superficially included some qualitative exploration due to the nature of the open-ended survey questions and secondary data set analysis. Quantitative data were collected via an adapted version of the Cultural Competence Self-Assessment for Teachers survey created by …

A Cultural Lens Into The Story Underneath: A Resource Guide Of African American Art, Artists And Culture For Art Education, Valerie Graves

Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this study is to create a qualitative resource guide of African American culture, art, and artists for an art education curriculum. This project encompasses four main themes to reflect an area of African American culture via a work of art created by an African American artist. These themes are, Family with the sub themes African American Male, Matriarch, and Children; Spirit with the sub themes Faith, Spirituality, and Inspiration; Identity with the sub themes Artist’s Voice, Triumph, and Hope and Vision; Community with the sub themes Ancestors, Social Issues, and Cultural Voice. These themes constitute …

Multicultural Reservations, Hybrid Avenues: Reflecting On Culture In Art Education, David Gall

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

This paper examines the role of hybridity in culture as it relates to art education. Curriculum strategies in art education are based essentially on pluralist premises. Such strategies recognize diversity, honor differences, and try to redress the inequitable Eurocentric models of the past. Nevertheless, even in their most critical forms they reproduce a scheme of culture that subtly confirms the established order of Modern hierarchies, and fail to capture the fluid, hybrid, and uneven character of culture. Margaret Archer's theories of culture, society, and change are among the most insightful to date. Taking them on board will ensure that our …

God, The Taboo Topic In Art Education, Terry Barrett, Valora Blackson, Vicki Daiello, Megan Goffos

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

A serendipitous match of this journal's call for imagery "that lies outside art educators' accepted sphere"-"out of site/ sight/ cite" - and a (too) rare discussion among art educators talking about God within a secular classroom prompts this article. Concepts of God are generally withheld from the site of public school art classrooms in the United States; many teachers express wariness and fear of bringing artists' sights of God into their public school art rooms, although God and Gods are a frequent subject for artists through time and across place. Further, the topic of God is rarely cited in art …

Mars Rising: Icons Of Imperial Power, Miriam Cooley, Michelle Forrest, Linda Wheeldon

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

Political and news media imagery saturate the culture of our classrooms as thoroughly as the popular culture imagery that deliberately targets children and youth. Media images such as those of US president G. W. Bush's visit to Canada that we discuss in this paper have become ubiquitous in our culture. In our view they constitute a primary mechanism through which the powerful political and economic forces exert an unrelenting threat on populations around the world. We (1 + 1 + 1)* enter this discussion from the point of view of Canadians, one of whom holds duel Canadian / US citizenship, …

Reading Objects: Collections As Sites And Systems Of Cultural Order, Alice Wexler

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

The political nature of making personal and cultural meaning of objects (both ordinary and aesthetic) is the site where transactions between our innate need for order and environmental influences, such as consumerism, are made. Valuing objects leads to the phenomena of collection, a subject that has been of interest in education and psychology since the nineteenth century. I ask how the private collections of children, and later adults, lead to systems of labeling, grouping, and display of art and artifacts in the art and natural history museum. In the age of the meta museum, how do educators question the museum's …

Stranger Within, Anniina Suominen

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

I base my teaching philosophy on the continuous self-directed learning of an individual. My goal is to help my students to learn to problematize their perception, their ways of thinking, their understanding of themselves, and their satisfaction with achieved learning goals. I support my students in their journeys of becoming critical searchers and inquirers of knowledge, visuality, and perceived reality. Although it is apparent they have learned to question authority and pre-given role and behavior models, I watch them searching for shortcuts for the answers within the complex structure of too many potential solutions.

Abu Ghraib: (Un)Becoming Photographs: How Can Art Educators Address Current Images From Visual Culture Perspectives?, Nancy Pauly

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

On Friday, May 7, 2004 the front page of The New York Times contained two photographs and a headline: "From Picture of Pride to Symbol of Abuse" (Dao, 2004, p.1). In the top photograph Lynndie R. England appears in 2003, smiling, standing in a relaxed family setting, and wearing a blue" Authentic USA" hooded sweatshirt with red and white lettering. Until early May that photo had been displayed in the Mineral County West Virginia Courthouse with other photographs of local soldiers stationed in Iraq.

Art, Action Research, And Activism At Artpark, Carole Woodlock, Mary Wyrick

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

The authors have an ongoing interest in combining local history, culture, and environmental issues as topics for teaching. As newcomers to western New York, we became fascinated with the story of Artpark in Lewiston, New York. High on the edge of the Niagara Gorge, the site of Artpark has a complicated history that has been enlivened by Native Americans, the French, the British, contemporary artists, senators, toxic waste specialists, visiting art teachers, and local students. The passage and effects of time on nature, art, and culture have been an important influence on art production since the beginning of Artpark in …

The Perception Of Non-Perception: Lessons For Art Education With Downcast Eyes (Part One: Trompe-L’Oeil And The Question Of Radical Evil), Jan Jagodzinski

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

The Roman historian Pliny recounts a story that occurred during Periclean Athens. I will utilize this story, as a trope to undertake an interrogation of perception as it is commonly understood and currently practiced by art educators in schools. In order to deconstruct vision/blindness, or the perception/non-perception binary, I have examined the psychoanalytic paradigm of Jacques Lacan. His current interpreters provided the conceptual tools for such an undertaking. Given that the question of representation has become a key sign-post of postmodernism, art educators must conceptualize a trajectory for itself in the 21st century. Part One of such a trajectory questions …

Visibility And Invisibility In Art And Craft, Fiona Blaikie

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

The visibility and invisibility or censorship of art and craft is determined by individual and group ontologies. Their production has often been constricted and/or defined by gender, class, culture, race, religion, and politics. In this paper, I am concerned with the visibility of varieties of art, design, and craft. I will examine censorship based on three criteria; gender, culture, and class, with the censorship of artwork because of gender being the dominant theme.

Deep-Seated Culture: Understanding Sitting, Karen T. Keifer-Boyd

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

Similar to the way that our culture influences how we interpret the world, the way that we sit in a chair and the type of chair that we are in positions what we see and how we are seen. Environmental cues communicate information through which we establish context and define a situation (Rapoport, 1982, p. 56). In this paper I examined the ways in which chairs (defined as that which is underneath us when "sitting") and sitting (defined as the infinite ways that we sustain our bodies in a bent position ranging from squatting, kneeling, reclining, or the lotus position) …

Art Education And The Promotion Of Intercultural Understanding, F. Graeme Chalmers

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

The comparative study of art, of response to art, and the production of art forms which matter can help us to understand each other. Art has always been a powerful force in shaping our vision of the world. We need to understand each other's vision and keep our own alive. We need to combat any art-for-art's-sake attitudes that may be entrenched in schools because it is a rather peculiar notion of art and one that deters a full understanding of the role of art in a variety of contexts and cultures. In contrast, art educators who view art as a …

Popular Culture’S Revolt Against The Normalizing Consequences Of Tradition, Pat Rafferty

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

For several years there has been an ongoing debate regarding whether street art (graffiti) qualifies as art or could be more aptly described as vandalism. While this paper does not claim to resolve the issue, a discussion of the corollary of that - the extent to which we are willing to tolerate divergence from normative expectations, lends insight into the topic of the means and limitations of what is representable as art.

A Gender Exposition: Black And White Images In The Grey Chain Of Being, Jim Paul

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

It is interesting how the numerical demarcation of a decade spurs one to reflective stock-taking and visionary anticipation. We know that the beginning or termination of long-term social trends do not “naturally” fall into neat groups of tens. Still, as empirically-entrenched and categorically-minded consumers we must quench our never-ending thirst to link events until we have reduced them into man”age”ableness. We are more at ease when we can name where we have been and visualize where the future will be.

Self-Reflections In Organizations: An Outsider Remarks On Looking At Culture And Lore From The Inside, Michael Owen Jones

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

As apparent from the title of my remarks, I am an outsider to this organization. I teach folklore courses at UCLA, which is one of five institutions in North America offering both the M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in the study of folklore. I have been asked to speak in this session, in part because I give courses on folk art, aesthetics, fieldwork, and organizational culture and symbolism. As an outsider, as a researcher of organizational culture, and as the final speaker in this session, it seems to be my role to suggest a larger framework of study to which this …

Enculturation And The Visual Arts Curriculum, Nancy R. Johnson

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

An overview of some theoretical viewpoints on enculturation is presented. These viewpoints are relevant to the development of the visual arts curriculum. The perspective presented is a critical one that calls for an examination of the cultural constructs in which art educations embedded.

Folk Art In Art Education: Toward A General Theory Of Art As A Social Institution, James Noble Stewart

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

Art may be understood by considering it as a social institution in which particular artifacts are presented as candidates for appreciation. This institution includes the domains of production, distribution, and consumption, all of which are regulated according to rules and standards relating to both art objects and behavioral roles for those people involved. In the paradigm case all participants in the institution are of the same cultural group. This is important for art educators to understand because of the diversity of cultures represented in the classroom. Because a person's greatest opportunity for meaningful involvement in the arts comes from within …

Thought On Social Contextualism In Art And Art Education, Tom Anderson

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

Art as a manifestation and reflect ion of culture has been clearly established. Discussions of various depth on the subject are available in many general art education texts. However, the concept of art as a reflection of culture may take many forms and thus has the potential for ambiguity. Culture, as defined by the social sciences, is the complex of knowledge, beliefs, mores, customs, laws, and social institutions held by human beings as a part of society. Culture, in this sense, does not refer to what is commonly known as high culture, except as high culture is included in the …

The Arts, School Practice, And Cultural Transformation, Landon E. Beyer

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

Attempts at articulating and instituting socially responsive programs in art education are heartening and long overdue. The work of the Caucus on Social Theory and Art Education and the Bulletin as a reflection of the issues dealt with by the caucus, are laudatory and provocative. I seek to further these efforts in this essay by: 1) elaborating the social context within which schools function, and detailing how the political, economic, and ideological interests our educational system serves affect school policy, organizational structures within education, and school practice generally; and 2) suggest how the arts may be an effective force in …

Art Education And The Social Use Of Metaphor, Nancy R. Johnson

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

Human beings are greatly dependent upon social knowledge as a basis for directing their actions in the world and interpreting the actions of others. The dominant quality of social knowledge, or culture, is that it is symbolic. Consider the concept of culture offered by anthropologist Clifford Geertz: "(Cultura) denotes a historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life".

Why Art Education Lacks Social Relevance: A Contextual Analysis, Robert Bersson

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

Contemporary art education is individual - focused (i.e. self-centered) to the almost complete exclusion of larger social concerns. This is true whether the art education is child-centered, discipline-centered, Rockfeller (Coming to Our Senses) - centered, or competency-based. The primary concern, notwithstanding differences, is on individual artistic productivity and, to a lesser degree, on personal aesthetic response. The enormous untapped potential of art education - and ninety-nine percent of us will be viewers and consumers, not artists - is in the social dimension. Critical understanding of the dominant visual culture - often dehumanizing in its effect, multicultural understanding through art, and …

A Socially Relevant Art Education, Lanny Milbrandt

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

In view of the foregoing arguments for art education in a social context one might ask: do art educators bear a responsibility for the shaping of a society? If one agrees that such a responsibility is within our jurisdiction, the next question must be: what is our potential sphere of influence and activity in this realm of responsibility and how do we get on with the job? Art educators must develop a commitment to socially responsive goals and take active roles to enable those goals to be realized.

The American Public Art Museum: Formation Of Its Prevailing Attitudes, Marilyn Mars

Theses and Dissertations

The history of the art museum's growth in America is presented in this thesis to place the development of the public art museum in the proper context. The museum has absorbed its sense of worth and power from the people who shaped its policy and believed in its ability to accomplish positive feats. Its growth as a force in the art world was subtle and studied, but amazingly complete. The museum which doubts its ability to persuade, convince, educate and entertain does not long survive. Examining the people and their attitudes with whom the museums had the most contact and …