Visible models of assessment of senior secondary studio art in Britain and North America are analysed and compared. In Britain, The General Certificate in Secondary Education (GCSE), specifically, the London East Anglian Examining Board (LEAG) assessment model is examined, and in North America, Advanced Placement(AP), Arts PROPEL, and International Baccalaureate(IB). Assessment structures and criteria for assessment are examined in order to reveal art educational values inherent in assessment practices. The problem is threefold: The subjective nature of studio art has rendered assessment difficult; problems have been associated with methods adopted for assessing studio art, and with determining the purposes of art education. Findings are that similar structures characterize the qualitative studio art assessment strategies studied: Criteria are delineated; norm referencing through rank ordering occurs, and assessments depend on professional judgements by art educators. In all cases except for Arts PROPEL, judgements occur intersubjectively through moderation, enhancing reliability. With regard to values implicit in assessment criteria, all the strategies focus on understanding of form. LEAG and IB assessments are similar in their emphasis on linking art and design, form and function, historical, critical, and contextual understanding. LEAG, IB, and Arts PROPEL assessments focus on evidence of process as well as product. All the strategies are personally relevant to students in that they determine the thematic nature of their studio inquiries. The assessment approaches examined are adaptable to varied teaching contexts, and thus are suitable models for regional or national assessment. Because of its grassroots support nationally, and its sophisticated accommodation of contextual and multicultural understandings of art, LEAG emerges as a worthwhile model to emulate. / Education, Faculty of / Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of / Graduate

This thesis is a comparative study which examines the formal art curriculum guides of Hong Kong and British Columbia. The rationale for this study lies, in part, with the documented demographic change that has taken place in British Columbia schools over the past decade, in particular, the significant numbers of Hong Kong immigrant students who have enrolled in four of British Columbia's five largest school districts. The study examines the Hong Kong and British Columbia education systems overall, places the art curriculum for each jurisdiction in respective context, and surveys the content of the guides themselves. The study then examines in comparative fashion the guides with regard to general content of the guides, conceptual frameworks for the curriculum, the presentation of expected learning outcomes, curricular content, and assessment and evaluation. The findings within these topics are summarized in terms of similarities and differences. The findings are also analyzed relative to traditional Chinese conceptions of education and the extent to which they reflect the histories and traditions of art education in Hong Kong. The curriculum guides are also analyzed according to the three conceptual orientations of curriculum posited by Miller and Seller: transmissional, transactional, and transformational. The thesis finds that while there are a number of similarities between the art curriculum guides of Hong Kong and British Columbia, the differences between the two sets of documents are significant in terms of 1) how art curriculum is conceptualized, 2) implied expectations with regard to teaching and learning styles, and 3) the specificity of curricular content. The thesis also suggests that the Hong Kong art curriculum guides reflect a transmissional orientation to curriculum, while the British Columbia guides reflect a transformational, if not transactional orientation. The thesis concludes by pointing to the need for comparative observation of art education in Hong Kong and British Columbia in order to more concretely identify the similarity or differences in the actual art educational experiences of students within each jurisdiction. / Education, Faculty of / Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of / Graduate

The world is becoming progressively interconnected through technology, politics, culture, economics, and education. As educators we strive to provide instruction that prepares students to become active members of both their local and global communities. This dissertation presents one possible avenue for engaging students with art and multifaceted ideas about culture, community, and politics as it explores the possibilities for creating a community-based, art education curriculum that seeks a merger of global and local, or "glocal" thinking. Through curriculum action research, I explored the process of writing site-specific curriculum that focuses on publicly available, local works of art and encourages a connection between global experiences and local application. I have completed this research for two communities, one in Ohio and one in Texas, and investigated the similarities and differences that exist in the process and resulting curriculum for each location. Through textual analysis, interviews, curriculum writing, and personal reflections, I identified five essential components of a community-based, glocal art education curriculum: flexibility, authenticity, connectedness, glocal understandings, and publicly available art. Additionally, I developed a template for writing glocally focused, community-based art education curriculum and produced completed curricular units for each of the communities. Finally, I have made suggestions for the future study and development of glocally focused, art education curriculum.

This study is concerned with providing a strategy for teaching basic art concepts of line and shape at sixth grade level to the disadvantaged child through the use of kits as a supplement to classrooms instruction. Twelve kits were devised. The materials and information necessary to do the assignment were included in each kit. They were tested by disadvantaged sixth graders in a Dallas school for one month. The kits were evaluated using the children's work as compared to control assignments, as well as behavior checklists and frequency of uise counts. The game kits were particularly effective. Kits proved to be a viable strategy for enriching the art curriculum for disadvantaged children and improving classroom discipline.

No description available.

The definition of discipline-based art education presented in this thesis includes all domains of art learning and practice: art history, art criticism, art production, and aesthetics. The study develops a series of art history lessons for adolescents at the junior high and high school level. Activities are designed to present instructional strategies appropriate to the educational needs and concerns of these groups of students. These lessons primarily focus on art history, and art criticism as a means for approaching studio production concepts. One instructional unit includes a day-by-day description of art history learning activities covering a period of 10 days, or two regular school weeks. Also included is a description of the order in which the art history, art criticism and production activities occur for each lesson. Specifics regarding media, materials, artists to be studied, styles, reproductions and the vocabulary terms and images to be used for each day are also included. (Abstract shortened with permission of author.)

No description available.

published_or_final_version / abstract / Education / Master / Master of Education

This study is concerned with pre-existing beliefs or preconceptions teacher candidates bring to their methods classes. It specifically addresses students in art education methods classes at a middle sized midwestern university and the population of generalist teachers the classes serve. The research question is particularly important because of the emergence of a new theory for delivering art education, discipline-based art education (DBAE) (Greer, 1984), that has challenged the existing art education paradigm. The study draws heavily on curriculum enactment research (Doyle, 1978). Through interviews with two groups of students, one entering and one exiting the teacher education program, the research seeks to identify and analyze the persistence of students' preconceptions about art and art education. The study's analytical framework is drawn from two bodies of research: (1) science and math studies concerning preconceptions held by students about subject matter; and, (2) studies of teachers and teacher candidates regarding the effect of their implicit beliefs on instructional choice and activities. The study finds that students have various preconceptions. Students believe that art is significantly different from other subjects. Instruction and evaluation are not deemed appropriate. Students believe that providing instruction or setting limits in an art activity is likely to restrict their students' creativity, and that any evaluation is a threat to students' self satisfaction. Entering students believe that talent is a genetic trait and can be improved very little by instruction. A prevalent preconception about observing and analyzing art is that all explanations for an artwork are equally valid since only the artist knows the real meaning behind the work. Despite a curriculum that was designed to teach students a discipline-based approach to art education, a model that emphasized the value of instruction, analysis and evaluation, many of the students' perceptions persisted. Most surprisingly, and importantly, preconceptions concerning talent and training, and instruction persisted. Although students moved toward a DBAE paradigm in some of their beliefs, in most respects students' preconceptions remained unchanged by the art methods classes.

Gardner (1985) defines intelligence broadly as the ability to solve problems and create products as well as to find or create new problems. He also suggests that every normal individual has the capacity to develop abilities in seven different areas or types of intelligence. Maker (1992, in press) hypothesizes that gifted individuals competently solve problems of all types, that is, problems ranging from well-defined to ill-defined. In this study of spatial intelligence, the theories of both researchers were tested. The primary purpose of the study was to describe behaviors that could be observed, processes subjects reported using, and characteristics of products subjects created as they solved the series of spatial problems. A secondary purpose of the study was to determine if careful observation of processes subjects employed, combined with the subject's report of processes used and an evaluation of products produced could, indeed, paint a clear picture of the subject's spatial abilities. Six research questions guided the study. The three primary areas of investigation were (a) the similarities and/or differences of behaviors observed, processes reported, and characteristics of products across tasks for individual subjects, (b) the similarities and/or differences of behaviors observed, processes reported, and characteristics of products across subjects for each task, and (c) the similarities and/or differences of behaviors observed, processes reported, and characteristics of products to Gardner's description of spatial intelligence. The researcher delineated eight broad categories of observed behaviors, two broad categories of processes reported, and nine characteristics of finished products. She noted both similarities and differences in behaviors, processes, and products across subjects for tasks and across tasks for subjects. Subjects reported that they used processes similar to those described by Gardner (1985); Gardner does not establish behaviors that can be observed as subjects solve spatial problems, nor does he clearly establish characteristics that might be included in products subjects created. Therefore, the behaviors noted and the characteristics of products created by the subjects in this study allowed the researcher to further define spatial intelligence. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)