Art Education Commons^™

Typographic Interventions: Disruptive Letterforms In Public Space, Clark A. Goldsberry

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

We are surrounded by typography—on billboards, aluminum cans, pill bottles, and pixelated screens—but artists and art teachers, seeking out the materiality of their lived environments, should be able to look at text in different ways. Many artists utilize letterforms as a medium of juxtaposition and recontextualization (Gude, 2004) by placing text in places we don’t expect to see it, or they subvert the messages we expect to read. Typographic interventions can be seen everywhere, by all types of artists, makers, activists, and dissidents. These interruptions could be framed as forms of socially engaged art (Helguera, 2011; Mueller, 2020) that “suspend …

Riverology: Promoting Stewardship Of Rivers Through Youth Participation In Science And Art, Robin R. Dunbar

Institute for the Humanities Theses

This project focuses on mentoring children to help reduce marine debris in their local river by implementing one of ten lessons from an inquiry-based Riverology curriculum to empower youth voice, increase geo-literacy, and spatial thinking. Eighteen participants aged seven and eight, piloted Riverology Lesson 2: What Do I Know or Imagine about the Elizabeth River? that includes six steps: inquire, visualize, draw, share, act, and reflect. The children were asked to make drawings before and after viewing an Elizabeth River Story Map presentation (Dunbar, 2021a). The drawings were then compared to see if the participants included marine debris, stewardship solutions, …

Artistic Leadership In Minnesota Community Theater, Darlene Olson

Doctorate in Education

Minnesota artistic directors working in community theater benefit the communities they serve. The purpose of this narrative research and case study was to understand how the artistic director furthers equity and diversity in their leadership roles. Artistic directors see their practice as transforming and supporting diversity. The artistic directors' voice and viewpoints were from their own contextual situation and experiences in the field of education, leadership, and theater arts practice. The primary unit of this interpretative study was the community theater sites, its context, and the artistic directors' leadership experience. The semi-structured interviews were scheduled via Zoom during the 2020-2021 …

Local To Global: A Model For Engaged Activism And Student-Led Inquiry, Elisabeth Gambino

Early College Folio

Crafted during the Bard Early College Fellowship, this set of teacher guides and resources encourages engaged activism and stewardship within both the local and global communities, as exemplified through an arts and ecology curriculum.

Layers Of Inclusion: Arranging Music For Multi-Leveled Ensembles, John Myers

Early College Folio

This paper describes the author’s practice of “layered arranging” in music education. As a response to the range of ages and skill levels of students at Bard Academy and Bard College at Simon’s Rock, this pedagogical approach allows for experienced students to work with level-appropriate material while less experienced students may participate supportively through simplified chord progressions.

How A Shift To Choice-Based Visual Arts Pedagogy Affects All Learners In The Classroom And Visual Arts Educators, Amanda Mesenbring

Graduate Teacher Education

This paper reviewed fifteen primary research sources on how a shift from Discipline-Based Art Education to Choice-Based Art Education affected student intrinsic motivation, behaviors in the classroom, diverse learning needs, and visual arts educators. The purpose of this paper was to provide art educators information about choice-based art education with findings on potential benefits and drawbacks to a shift in pedagogy. Benefits found in the research may include increased intrinsic motivation among students and decreased negative behaviors in the classroom. Choice may have benefited students of different learning abilities through the chance for them to create at their learning level …

Material Encounters: Making Memory Beyond The Mind, Ariel Wills

Masters Theses

Can acts of making carry the memories of our embeddedness within the world? This thesis explores how making things can nurture a sense of kinship that cuts across the organic and inorganic, erasing the distinction between living and dead, material and spiritual. Through handwork such as art-making, sewing, knitting, cooking, woodworking, and beyond, the burden of remembering and of archiving is shared across human and non-human bodies, cultivated through practices of making, and through the materials themselves. By recounting the stories of my family’s experience as Jewish immigrants in the United States, I aim to reveal how their domestic practices …

Art Can Empower Children And Lead Them To Think Seriously About Significant Critical Issues, Jialu Gao

Masters Theses

This thesis is an investigation of how students can benefit through art and how visual arts educators can engage students in thinking about critical issues that are happening within contemporary society. Raising people’s awareness of the value of art, and especially urging to practice art better in schools’ curriculums are the starting point. This thesis includes looking at selective literature from Elliot Eisner, Charles Fowler, Mika Munakata and other educators and authors. The author also examines select contemporary practices in art education that occur in different settings, for example, in school, in gallery, in museum, and in community. The author …

Cognitive Development & Art Education: Relationship, Suitability, And Future Implications, Zheng Yao

Masters Theses

In this thesis the author sought to discover linkages between Art, Philosophy, Aesthetics, and Cognitive Science through a review of scholarship surrounding the integration of cognitive theories, art, and education. There have been numerous studies that claim that art education in elementary and secondary schools improves students' academic performance, interpersonal skills and improves attitudes to life. Nations meanwhile constantly modify standards and frameworks for teaching and learning in the visual arts. However, despite these changes, the author wondered to what extent, if at all, new standards-based visual arts curriculum frameworks were responsive to concepts within cognitive theory. This qualitative study …

When Art Education Meets Environmental Issues: The Interconnectedness Of Art And Science, Eunhyung Julie Chung

Masters Theses

In recent years, we have come to understand that the environmental crisis is no longer what we see in books or screens but it is what we are facing now. Along with the public's increasing interest in the environment post-COVID, this thesis explores the role of art in enhancing awareness of critical environmental issues. Through a literature review, the author examines theoretical concepts at the core of the history of art and science in search of ideas about the interconnectedness of science and art. The review explores why an interdisciplinary approach to education is vital to learning about environmental issues …

Building Empathy At The Intersection Of Art, Nature, & Culture: A Field Guide For Art Educators, Jasmine Gutbrod

Masters Theses

This thesis is an offering for those compelled to use art and design learning as a way to strengthen the resiliency of our collective cultures. By integrating intersectional place-based pedagogy into art and design learning, art educators can resist the idea that humans exist on a hierarchy with each other and other species. A deeper understanding of place can build empathy for both nature and culture, and can help educators imagine alternative classroom models that focus on building empathy within a learning environment. The importance of place is examined through a literature review, contemporary artist analysis, case studies, and interviews …

The Non-Traditional Student Enrolled Full-Time In Art School, Sarah Kathryn O'Brien

Masters Theses

The unique needs, experiences, and contributions to the classroom of non-traditional students enrolled in a full-time undergraduate art program have been under-addressed in academic research. In this thesis, the author surveys existing research and reports on a series of surveys and some follow-up interviews conducted with both students and their professors. This thesis aims to identify the unique circumstances of non-traditional students in higher education and particularly in art school. The author identifies specific opportunities for fruitful continued research and application.

Counting Pebbles Wasn't Even A Class In High School: Seeing Visual Arts Education Through A Process-Forward Lens, Em Xiangning Wang

Masters Theses

This thesis explores process-forward visual arts education in the Greater Providence arts education community. The researcher conducted interviews with arts educators as well as administrators working within organizations guided by a “process-forward” philosophy. Interview transcripts are analyzed to identify any emergent themes of intended and actualized student learning outcomes as well as other commonalities which exist among the interviewed organizations. This investigation found that, within these organizations, multiple, significant forms of student learning outcomes were identified that extended well beyond any particular aesthetic merits of the artistic products created by students

The author calls, in this thesis, for a recalibration …

Teachers As Global Transformers•Engaging Students Through Culturally Responsive Actions, Ana I. Berdecia, Med;, Caitlin Kosec, Mpp;, Kamili O. Leath, Ms;, Ashley Reid, Ma, Mdiv

Center for the Positive Development of Urban Children

Each cohort began with professional development to provide instruction around cultural competency and how to incorporate cultural pedagogy into the classroom. During the professional development institute, participants had to fill out pre- and post-assessments that measured knowledge of the core program concepts. To measure comprehension of these concepts we utilized a rubric allowing responses to fit into four categories: basic, competent, proficient, and advanced.

Analyzation of the pre-and-post assessments concluded that participants improved their comprehension of the Institute’s core concepts over the course of the Learning Institute (21 hours of professional development). According to the pretests, participants from all three …

Appointment Notes/On Unwanted Help And The Misuse Of Empathy, G. H. Greer

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

The pandemic has shed light on a number of injustices. In this context, I revisit a comic I wrote to sort through an experience of ableism in academia. I encourage readers to think deeply about what teachers mean when we offer help as members of a caring profession, and consider some ways that the misuse of empathy can impede impactful help. I end with a call for systemic organization and resources to support workers in caring professions.

Kid Smart: Relief Effort Through The Arts, Adam Leblanc

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this internship report is to analyze the nonprofit organization KID smART through the lens of my Arts Administration education and training. I will provide a breakdown of the organization’s structure and the components of my internship that occurred during KID smART’s programmatic response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Through my S.W.O.T. analysis, I connect KID smART’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to best practices of the Arts Administration industry. In conclusion, I offer recommendations of how KID smART can improve as it grows and continues to serve the New Orleans community

Assessing The Role Of Motivational Factors In Facilitating Artists’ Personal And Professional Development, Ece Gurler

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

Various factors exert influence on an artist’s impetus. If artists can learn about different ways to use these both external and internal factors to facilitate their personal and professional development, their creative process and productivity will be affected positively. According to the research, individuals display three types of orientation during the exploration and development process -and so creative process: The desire to be effective (White, 1959), autonomous (DeCharms, 1968), and related to significant others (Deci & Ryan, 1991). Effective-oriented personalities tend to be motivated by extrinsic rewards or punishment, whereas autonomously oriented people are more intrinsically motivated. However, understanding the …

What Would Gloria Ladson-Billings Do?: A Pedagogical Framework That Moves, Dominique Modory

SPACE: Student Perspectives About Civic Engagement

During my time as an elementary education major at Loyola University Chicago, I was offered a position as a K-2nd grade dance instructor at McCutcheon Elementary. After some students expressed disinterest in dance, I turned to culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP), a term that is coined by pedagogical scholar Gloria Ladson-Billings, to engage, educate, and inspire my students. I explain the criticality of practicing introspection on one's biases that may unconsciously hinder a student's academic growth. Further, one must brainstorm on how to insert education into the context of students' cultures. In the article, I ruminate how, through CRP, cultural competency, …

Student Perspectives On Interdisciplinary Skill Building, Equity And Empowerment Through Arts Education And Technology During A Pandemic, Joanne Osterberg

Education | Master's Theses

This qualitative research examined how the arts extend to serve as a tool for equity in supporting students of all backgrounds, language skills, and learning levels toward access and development of acumen for learning in all subjects and disciplines. This research is situated in a theoretical framework encompassing theories of learning styles (Dunn, 2000), art education and equity (Kalin, 2012), and pedagogical approaches to the use of technology (Strycker, 2020). Sixteen students participated in a peer focus group in which they developed, reflected upon, and then co-critiqued an art project that evolved through a six-phase process, and two faculty members …

Coherence Of Dysfunctions, Ayesha Rumi

Theses - ALL

"Colonization" is by far the most sophisticated word for the attempts made to make a society financially broke and culturally orphaned. My work is a product of thoughts that occur in the midst of cultural and linguistic existential crises left by the white man's burden . My focus on Pakistani society goes beyond its relevance as the culture I call home; my focus is intended to provide a microscopic view of how culture, traditions, and norms often work in concert to dictate the course of history and the future of nations. In my work I have used western philosophy to …

Coherence Of Dysfunctions, Ayesha Rumi

Theses - ALL

“Colonization” is by far the most sophisticated word for the attempts made to make a society financially broke and culturally orphaned. My work is a product of thoughts that occur in the midst of cultural and linguistic existential crises left by the white man’s burden . My focus on Pakistani society goes beyond its relevance as the culture I call home; my focus is intended to provide a microscopic view of how culture, traditions, and norms often work in concert to dictate the course of history and the future of nations. In my work I have used western philosophy to …

A Virtual Art Therapy Curriculum For High School Students During The Covid-19 Pandemic: Informed By Bronfenbrenner’S Ecological Systems Theory, Kendra Soule

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

During the 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic became a global health threat. In order to maintain public safety many schools had to transition onto a virtual space using online programs and classrooms. Not only did schools move to an online platform, but also mental health therapy moved to telehealth platforms to serve those affected by the pandemic. Art therapy is a form of therapy that uses the tangible art making process, art piece, and therapeutic relationship as aspects of therapy. With the move to the virtual setting, art therapists had to modify their work to fit the new setting. Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological …

Studio Expressive Arts Therapy: Towards A Classroom Method That Incorporates Art And Music, Michael Greenberg

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

This thesis explored the ways in which expressive arts therapy (ExAT) could be incorporated into a small therapeutic high school’s visual arts program. Through the development and implementation of a method, intermodal exchange between visual art and music was integrated into both the school’s art program and its group counseling offerings. Informed by a literature review of studio art therapy (SAT) as related to ExAT, three different interventions were used to fit within the frameworks of the high school’s offerings. The first intervention focused on making music with a few students within art classes while the rest of the class …

Exploring Tactile Art-Making With Deafblind Students And Their Families: An Opportunity For Creative Play, Alice Rodgers

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

The impact of a deafblind diagnosis on an individual’s mental health and the well-being of the family involved can be profound. However, current research and available literature for the mental health treatment and therapy practices of deafblind persons and their families is limited (Kyzar et al., 2016; “WFDB Global Report 2018,” n.d.). This thesis used the Leeds Family Psychology and Therapy Service principles (Leeds FPTS) and the Expressive Therapies Continuum with established deafblind teaching strategies to facilitate an original arts-based community project entitled: “Things We Like.” This project provided an opportunity for deafblind students (ages three to 22) and their …

The Notions Of Freedom Of The Will And Ethical (Moral) Choice In The Work “Sharh Al-Aqeed” Of Sadeddin Taftazani, Mirzaqul Norqobilov

The Light of Islam

The article provides an in-depth analysis of Sadeddin Taftazani’s philosophical and ethical views on kalom (a popular speculative discipline of the medieval Muslim literature that provides any reasoning on religious and philosophical topics) on the basis of rational thinking. In particular, it aims at looking through one of the important issues of kalom philosophy – freedom of will and ethical (moral) choice of man which are widely discussed in the work “Sharh al-Aqeed” written by the great thinker.

In his work Taftazani describes such features of the Creator as kindness and good deeds which originally appeared from His creativity and …

Formally Trained Musicians’ Perceptions Of Music Performance Anxiety In Informal Contexts: A Phenomenology, Smith R.K. Waylett

Masters Theses, 2020-current

While researchers have explored concepts relating to both Music Performance Anxiety (MPA) and informal music learning, few have related the two subjects to each other. The purpose of this study was to explore formally trained musicians’ experiences with MPA in informal contexts. Specifically, I examined informal musicians’ learning and performing environments, and the relationships they share with musicians’ perceptions of MPA. Primary data included two rounds of recorded interviews. Findings revealed that physical venues, audience size, audience makeup, financial factors, audience reception, interpersonal relationships among bandmates, creative ownership over music they performed, and motivation to prepare for performances all played …

Happy Faces, Lisa Tucker

Master’s Theses and Projects

“Happy Faces” is a series of sculptural masks which explore the layered facades people construct to hide their vulnerabilities or to please others. Each mask represents a vice; these are the unhealthy habits that allow people to escape their everyday lives and pressures. I have created these masks out of found materials which relate to each vice in question. Through this work, I examine the concepts of escapism and duality. My studio investigation influences my pedagogical approach in the way I interact with my students and manage my classroom, both in how I embrace process and experiment with my use …

In Search Of Ourselves, We Find Each Other, Kalyn Fay Barnoski

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

in search of ourselves, we find each other is a fully collaborative, multi-platform exhibit centered on developing and locating relationships to both self and community. Challenging societal individualism, the exhibit focuses on collective, relational creativity using Indigenous methodologies for community. It is about me. It is about you. It is about us.

Developing Creativity In The Seventh-Grade Art Classroom, Zachary Dane Wallerius

Masters Theses

This thesis describes a methodology for developing artistic creativity in seventh-grade students through the implementation of a curriculum that fosters authentic engagement with the creative process. In it I explore how student’s waning interest in the arts through middle school despite the value of creative expression for adolescents can be addressed. The research in this paper explores relevant aspects of artistic creativity as well as the psychological needs that must be met in order for students to successfully engage in a creative practice. The paper makes recommendations for how to foster common traits of creative people and proposes how behavior …

Students, The Complete Canvas: Building A Sel-Based Art Education Curriculum, Kaci Vanmeter

Masters Theses

Human beings are complex in their structure, requiring a variety of components to create the whole. Why is it then, that the majority of the nation’s schools lack educational standards for social-emotional learning? When student’s walk into our classroom, is there a silent request that they leave aspects of themselves at the door so as not to intrude on data-driven education? Where there is pressure in the form of funding and job security to strictly teach standards in core classrooms, luckily that pressure doesn’t exist in the art classroom. This thesis takes the National Visual Art Content Standards and directly …