This collective case study explores the confluence of educational policy and professional praxis by examining the ways art teachers in one public school district make decisions about creating and implementing curricula. Through various interpretations of one district's formal and informal expectations of art teachers, some of the complexities of standards, instruction, and assessment policies in public schools are described. The research shares how art teachers are influenced by local policy expectations by examining how five K-12 art teacher participants negotiate their ideological beliefs and practical knowledge within the professional context of their local setting, and presents an art teacher decision-making framework to conceptualize the influences for praxis and to organize analysis. Case study data include in-depth interview sessions, teaching observations, and district policy artifacts. Themes emerge in the findings through coding processes and constructivist grounded theory analysis methods. The research describes how participants interpret and negotiate expectations, finding curricular freedom and participation in public exhibition as central policy factors. Contributing the perspectives of art teachers to the literature of policy implementation and fine arts education, the study finds that balancing autonomy and mandates are primary sites for negotiating praxis and that informal expectations for student exhibition contribute to a culture of competition and teacher performance evaluations. The study presents implications for policy makers, administrators, and art educators while sharing possibilities for future research about policy expectations. The research describes how participants interpret and negotiate expectations, finding curricular freedom and participation in public exhibition as central policy factors. Contributing the perspectives of art teachers to the literature of policy implementation and fine arts education, the study finds that balancing autonomy and mandates are primary sites for negotiating praxis and that informal expectations for student exhibition contribute to a culture of competition and teacher performance evaluations. The study presents implications for policy makers, administrators, and art educators while sharing possibilities for future research about policy expectations.

This research looks thoughtfully and deeply at the relationship between art education and signs, as defined by the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze (1964/1998). Signs, as articulated by Deleuze (1964/1998), are violent disruptions to our way of understanding the world, causing us to think again and/or re-consider what we once knew (or thought we knew). This study looks generatively at how these kinds of disruptive and disorienting moments might be mined for possibilities in art education and remind us of our own relationality. As a post-qualitative lived inquiry, it asks how might art education be-with apprenticeship to signs and what might art education do-with sign-encounters? Using the theoretical lens of transcendental empiricism and new materialism, this study considers how art educators might hold open the space of sign-encounters for oneself and one's students by turning towards the rhizomatic cut and staying with uncertainty. It is focused on the doing-with, making-with, and thinking-with of art, pedagogy, and philosophy/theory, investigating their deep entanglements in spaces of disruption and ultimately developing frame-works for engaging in this kind of work in the classroom. Drawing from Erin Manning and Brian Massumi's theory of research-creation, this research was experienced in an emergent, layered, and complex way over the last two years, including the construction of this dissertation presented as an assemblage all of its own.

The purpose of this research is to examine ways that the instructional use of voluntary risk-taking and multimodality might decrease preservice elementary educators' artistic trepidation and assist them to reconceptualize elementary art education. The study investigates participant-reported impacts and insights, and inspects ways that participants utilize multimodality during course assignments. This qualitative action research study was conducted in a semester-long arts methods and materials course with 23 participants who were university preservice elementary education students. Data were collected during instruction through open-ended questionnaires, researcher fieldnotes, participant fieldnotes, course culmination projects, participant artwork, written reflections, and participant-created elementary art lesson plans. A hybrid theoretical construct utilized both multimodal and reconceptualist theories. Participant self-reported comfort ratings during the study indicate increased artistic comfort in both making art and teaching art after instruction. Findings from the study suggest the need for educators to focus on arts integration during course instruction and to address the art apprehension held by some preservice elementary educators. Insights shared confirm that recognizing preservice elementary educators' multimodal skills contributes to educational possibilities for their own future instructional practice. By facilitating voluntary risk-taking and multimodality opportunities during the teaching of art education to preservice elementary educators, this study contributes to scholarship about successful instructional strategies and the importance of contemporary arts methods.

This study documents affective learning during a community-based art museum education program for military and veteran-connected families, which included gallery teaching, art-making, and a final exhibition of participant artwork. A review of literature on public pedagogy, affective learning, museum education, and community-based art education provides the theoretical framework for the study. Narrative ethnography and participant observation were employed by the primary researcher-educator to gather a diverse array of data and construct a holistic narrative of the development of and participant experiences within the art museum program. Data collected includes field notes, personal communications (such as meeting notes and emails), interviews, open-ended survey questions, curriculum artifacts (such as lesson plans and worksheets), and artworks created by military family members. Analysis of the educator goals, participant expressions, and personal interactions informs the final discussion of how affective learning took place within one museum program and how attention to this domain of learning can enrich museum programs for diverse community members.

This study constructs a theoretical framework for exploring the relationship between art education practice and the development of empathy in early childhood. In this study, I construct a schema for the experience of empathy in kindergarten-aged students, derived from the work of Martin Hoffman, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Vittorio Gallese, which acknowledges both the affective and cognitive dimensions of the experience of empathy. This schema is examined within the context of aesthetic and artistic experience, as distinguished from each other by John Dewey. I articulate several ways that art education’s cultivation of subtle aesthetic perception may encourage affective empathy, and its cultivation of imaginative cognition may encourage cognitive empathy. Suggestions are made for projects and practice in the early childhood classroom.

Teacher assessment is a hot topic in today’s high-stakes, test-driven, accountability-focused educational environment. My recent research addresses how high school art educators, under the umbrella of non-tested subjects and grades, are assessed in their classroom teaching practices in Virginia. Based on my findings, it is clear that while the teachers surveyed do not fear accountability, they are wary of being evaluated by those who lack the content knowledge in the arts, by methods that are subjective, and with criteria that is inflexible. This thesis addresses the need to develop open forums that include the educator’s voice in order to create better teacher assessments that focus on student learning achievement in authentic and holistic ways. By learning about and sharing resources regarding how teachers in non-tested subjects and grades are evaluated suggestions are made to organize resources that may help develop more authentic assessments for art teachers focusing on meaningful student learning and achievement.

The following question and sub-question guide this thesis project: 1) How does a service-learning approach in an arts-based technology course increase pre-service teacher receptivity to teaching technology? 2.) What are some barriers to teaching technology for pre-service teachers? A positive service-learning experience provides good learning models which have the potential to address the barriers to teaching technology for pre-service teachers by influencing their self-efficacy. Included in this thesis is a unit plan which responds to these research questions. There are many barriers to teaching technology for teachers including lack of funds, availability and quality of computer hardware and software, teaching models for using computer technology in instruction, time to learn to use computer technology, and teacher attitude (Rogers, 2000). A service-learning approach in an arts-based technology course could increase pre-service teacher receptivity to teaching technology by addressing these needs, the most important of which is providing pre-service teachers with a model for using computer technology in their instruction. Computer hardware and software availability is a problem which the teacher educator can address through writing a grant for funds, computer hardware and software, introducing the pre-service teachers to free and open source software, and negotiating with the partner school's administration and classroom teachers. Equally important is discussing this process with the pre-service teachers so they may learn from that experience. A positive experience teaching using computer technology has the potential to change pre-service teacher attitude about the ability of a teacher to influence students and their personal ability as a teacher (Wade, 1995; Root & Furco, 2001). Through service-learning, K-12 students and pre-service teachers have the opportunity to teach each other about digital art. It is through these unit plans that a mutual relationship is formed, which enables learning to occur on both ends. Throughout the unit plan, pre-service teachers are given time to reflect on their learning experiences and discuss what they are learning by working with the students. When teaching digital art to pre-service teachers, while it is important to give goals, guidelines and some basic instruction to lay the ground work for future discoveries, pre-service teachers and students alike need the opportunity to find the solutions to their own technical and artistic problems. The curricular ideas and unit plans contained within this thesis may serve as idea-generators for teacher educators interested in enriching their computer technology curriculum for pre-service teachers by incorporating service-learning into their practice. The big ideas were chosen to emphasize the idea of a learning community. Students and pre-service teachers develop a relationship over the course of teaching in which both learn from each other through the pre-service teachers' lessons and how the lessons are interpreted by the students. In effect, these unit plans are a beginning for future projects which integrate service-learning and the digital arts.

This grounded theory project researches and analyzes publications from 1990-2008 assessing the debate over aesthetics in/and VCAE in 21st century art education. Through a series of visual models, a working theory and its supporting evidence assess this contested subject. Within the context of Modern and Postmodern paradigm conflict, art educators’ debate over aesthetics in/and VCAE fundamentally deals with differing conceptions of identity and freedom. Although commonly sharing the goal of fostering the formation of student identity through the provision and exercise of freedom, art educators’ differing perspectives on identity and freedom result in differing prescriptions for 21st century art education. By presenting qualitative data analysis through grounded theory, I guide fellow art educators through this debate by providing snapshots of information as well as detailed portraits of the scholars and their multifarious rationales.

This thesis examines the strategies young children use to develop a common set of goals when collaborating on a group art work. Teachers at Sabot School spend a great deal of time in discussion of children's group work. By concentrating on one project in my preschool classroom, I reached a greater understanding of the way children work together on a group project. This understanding enriched my practice of teaching so that I could become a better facilitator of similar projects in the future. The information is valuable to me and the other Sabot School teachers when planning future group projects, especially when discussing strategies for supporting children's group processes. It is also be of value to teachers and education students who are interested in learning about the Reggio Emilia approach in American classrooms, social constructivism in the classroom, and the possibilities of art in early childhood. In this project, my four and five year old students worked together to create a clay sculpture of a wild area outside the playground fence at our school. I was interested in the way I could support this group project using Vygotsky's idea of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). In the ZPD a child can accomplish tasks they are not developmentally ready to master if they have the support of a teacher or more skilled peer. This study revealed that children and teachers can use words and actions to support cognitive as well as social-emotional learning while working together.

This qualitative case study describes the character of the Florida Arts and Community Enrichment (FACE) program, a community arts organization, and the role it plays in the lives and education of children and adolescents with at-risk tendencies. To gain an insider’s perspective of the organization, I conducted research as a participant observer. The participatory action research model enables participants and the researcher to share knowledge as equal partners in research, while the appreciative inquiry method focuses on the organization’s best qualities as a starting point for future improvement. To collect a variety of data, this study incorporated on-site interviews recorded on audiocassette, photographs, historical documents, student art, and observations recorded in the researcher’s journal. Based on two years of observation and data collection, I learned about FACE’s employees and students. Its employees do not earn a substantial amount of money, however, they do their jobs because of their love for the arts and the children. FACE’s students greatly enjoy attending their organization because it provides them with a safehaven, meaningful friendships, positive relationships with caring adults, and a place to explore their many talents. In addition to learning about the participants, four emergent themes developed. First, I learned the type of arts organization that best serves children with at-risk tendencies. Based on what I found at FACE, I argue that an arts organization should be child centered, located close to children’s homes, unique, offer comprehensive services, and operate as active learning centers. Second, I discovered the type of characteristics of a community arts organization’s leader. Third, I learned that FACE, like most child centered arts organizations, is more recreational than school. FACE balances fun activities such as structured play with educational activities to capture its students’ interests. Fourth, although FACE’s students attend an arts organization located on the grounds of a public housing project, some students had negative images of children living in project housing. Implications for educational practice showed that children like their art organization better than school because they felt more valued and respected at their program. Organizations like FACE capture their interests and make them feel good about themselves. With this in mind, arts organizations appear to be an inexpensive way to reduce risk factors in the nonschool hours to children with at-risk tendencies because they give them something meaningful to do with their free time. Learning lessons from what works well at FACE, schools can benefit their students with at-risk tendencies by integrating the arts into academic subject areas, incorporating the community into the classroom, giving children a choice of what they would like to participate in or how to create a project, and most importantly, providing them with a nurturing environment. / Dissertation / PhD