Elementary education has become increasingly divided into subjects and focused on the demand for high math and reading scores. Consequently, teachers spend less time devoted to science and art instruction. However, teaching art and science is crucial to developing creative and rational thinking, especially for observation and questioning skills. In this study, third grade students attending an urban school in Portland, Oregon received instruction of an art strategy using observational and quantifying drawing techniques. This study examines, "Will an art strategy observing the local environment help students make observations and ask questions?" and "In what ways are student learning and perspectives of science affected by the art strategy?" The independent variable is the art strategy developed for this study. There are three dependent variables: quality of student observations, quality of questions, and themes on student learning and perspectives of science. I predicted students would develop strong observation and questioning skills and that students would find the strategy useful or have an increased interest in science. The art scores were high for relevance and detail, but not for text. There were significant correlations between art scores and questions. Interviews revealed three themes: observations create questions, drawing is helpful and challenging, and students connected to science. By examining science through art, students were engaged and created strong observations and questions. Teachers need to balance unstructured drawing time with scaffolding for optimal results. This study provides an integrated science and art strategy that teachers can use outdoors or adapt for the classroom.

The goal of this thesis was to identify teaching interrelationships between art and other subjects in the elementary school curricula and thus indicate the usefulness of art education in the educational process.

This research problem represents an attempt to forestall the high school student's usual preoccupation with perceptive minutiae by placing an emphasis on the monumental or underlying structure of a work of art. The author, endeavoring to afford maximum success for the students, first stripped subject matter to its most pristine quality, the silhouette. Because it was felt that it is much easier to recognize and organize an underlying structure without the added complication of perspective, emphasis was placed on a depthless surface or decorative space to be organized into a coherent whole through application of the abstractions which are the elements and principles of design. This unit was offered to a class of high school students in an Art General class at Madison High school, Portland, Oregon. This is an elective class open to all students from freshman to senior year. Results of this unit were generally successful. Improvement was exhibited by all students. During these activities of experimenting and creating, students learned about design by doing, looking, and discussing. They became less concerned about minutiae, and they began to express an appreciation for paintings for themselves rather than for recognizable objects or superfluous delineation. It was concluded that students at this age level have the most difficulty when left to their own resources for subject matter. Many false starts were made before this particular problem was resolved. But, upon its completion, students felt that they had met a challenge of discovery, exploration, and creation on their own.

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The purpose of this paper is to compare a group of adolescents with the learning disorder of dyslexia and a group of adolescents without dyslexia in regard to their ability to make realistic drawings. Subjects selected for the study were from a suburban junior high school in which a random sample was taken of both dyslexic and non-dyslexic students. Each was given three standardized drawing tasks, including a still-life drawing, a contour drawing, and a perspective drawing. The drawings were judged by five evaluators on a continuum of realistic to non-realistic. The ratings were then analyzed by the application of the Mann-Whitney U-Test, which indicated that there are no significant differences in the abilities of the two groups to render drawings realistically.

While new approaches to displaying art free both the art and the viewer from overly didactic forms of curation, there have been very few attempts to examine how viewers negotiate meaning from art when no goal or directive is provided. While some see difference as the critical factor, others use similarity as a way to introduce new narratives. This dissertation research takes a close look at the kinds of things people observe in visual works of art to expose the specific ways that the offerings in the work are made knowable by its viewer and how different modes of presentation might affect the process. A paired design was developed to find out how juxtaposing works on dimensions of similarity and difference might affect what people see in individual paintings and whether the presence or absence of depictive content would be a factor. In three online experiments, participants were tasked with generating as many single words or short phrase responses as they could over a two-minute time period from a selection of modern and contemporary paintings – 32 abstract and 32 representational. In the first study, paintings were presented sequentially. In the next study, the same pictures were purposefully matched for color, composition, style, and thematic content. In the third study, the same pictures were re-paired to maximize difference. Pairing effected an overall decline in number of total comments for representational paintings compared to isolated single-view sequences. In contrast, significant increases were found for abstract art when the adjacent painting was also abstract. Significant consistency in response patterns for both art types across all three studies provide quantitative and content-based evidence for a normative level of engagement, with specific processing effects relative to art type.

How much art is projected into the home and community as a result of art experiences in the school is difficult to determine without some criterion as a standard for judgement. Based upon this premise, the author attempted, with the cooperation of the art committee of the Dallas Junior League, to test the aesthetic judgement of selected groups of children in the Dallas Public Schools by evaluating their reactions to an exhibition of common household articles currently available on the Dallas market.

The purpose of this study was (1) to investigate the changes in sociometric status that resulted when first grade children were taught some art or craft that they could teach to others in their class, (2) to note concomitant behavior changes as reported by their teachers and as noted by their experimenter, and (3) to compare the distribution and increase of decrease of votes received, votes given and mutual attractions in experimental groups with a control group.

This study considers the equipment needed for the art rooms of the three junior high schools of Corpus Christi, Texas. It discusses the special problems encountered by the teacher-committee that had to determine the minimum list of tools and other equipment necessary to carry out a well-rounded art program.