Art educators perceive a state of disjuncture in the field when what is persistently practiced in elementary schools as art stands in opposition to basic tenets about the teaching and learning of art. Two reasons are given to explain this sense of disjuncture. First, art education orientations and research associated scholarship are posited to be less than successful in disclosing to teachers what is educationally relevant. Neither a child-centered nor a discipline-centered orientation seems to have considered the adjustive effort teachers make in translating intended purposes into classroom practice. Second, a school art orientation is perceived to be in opposition to art education ideals. Recent studies suggest that features of the classroom setting and the strategies teachers use to make them comprehensible may have an impact on the outcome of instruction in art. Guided by a theoretical stance developed from the literature on commonsense knowledge, I adopted a method of approach to investigate teachers' interpretive accounts of the teaching and learning of art. Observation and interview strategies were used. I discovered two guidelines teachers consulted, and I examined the context in which the guidelines and events mutually elaborate one another. 1. When properly programmed, an art task guides the synchronization of an aggregate of recognizable and approved action, and 2. The use of the art classificatory scheme of structured and experimental art activities in practice is contingent on maintaining this programmatic course of action. Teachers' accounts revealed four features useful in making their work recognizable and approved: pacing and phasing of action, physical conditions, thematic content, and effort. The features elaborated a proper programmatic effect and structured art activities over experimental ones as a way of achieving this effect. This kind of activity was described as school-like and successfully addresses the problem of how to regulate the efforts of an aggregate of children over a specified period of time with due respect for order. The prescription for a preformulated content and stylistic form of art determined acceptable effort. Ideally, experimental art activities were understood to heighten personal awareness by encouraging the child to be more of a task determiner. With less opportunity to rely on stock responses, because the relevance of idiosyncratic action had to be determined anew whenever this kind of activity was undertaken, teachers chose to set this kind of activity aside until conditions became ideal. The difficulty children had in deciding what was intended by the invitation to experiment was not recognized as significant. Choice of structured art activities appears to be attributed to two related factors: a taken-for-granted conception of the requirements for organizational control and an unresolved conception of experimental art activities in the context of this organizational structure. This in-school orientation does not seem to indicate a rejection of formally approved art education orientations, but rather an unquestioning acceptance of the practical necessity of organizational control acquired as a result of teaching experience. These demands determined what is possible in art. Basic tenets of art education intended to have educational consequences have been indefinitely set aside, unwittingly reducing children's involvement in art and teachers' responsibility to assist children in interacting with the discipline. Reified conventions such as freedom of expression and experimentation have made art education remote by creating a chasm between theory and practice, implying that art education can be dealt with at a theoretical level without consideration of how teachers handle everyday experience. Reasonable conclusions to be drawn from evidence provided in this study are that educators need an approach to art education that will not artificially produce the gap that structured art activities have come to fill. It would have to bridge the gap in a manner that recognizes art education orientations (theory) and what teachers do with them (practice) as aspects of the same thing. The present study is a first step toward reflective intervention in the taken-for-granted ways teachers and art educators think about what they do. If it is important for children to interact with the developed structure of the art education discipline, and if teachers are to take responsibility for ensuring that the art education experience takes place, then change would have to be urged by apprising teachers, art educators, and others of the state of disjuncture reported here, and how factors associated with it have come to complement and contradict the interchange between the goals of art education and the school as a workplace. / Education, Faculty of / Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of / Graduate

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This thesis reports an action research project which was undertaken to study, understand, and improve a teacher/researcher's pedagogy of art criticism in a grade two class, through implementation of Johansen's art criticism model. Concurrently, Johansen's art criticism model was tested for its suitability in the context of primary teaching. Data for this study was collected within an operationa grade two class through eight art criticism lessons, three semi-structured interviews, students' journal writings, and entries in the teacher's field diary. Results from this study indicate that Johansen's art criticism model is suitable for guiding second graders through the art criticism process provided it is appropriately implemented. The study also found that, on the whole, the subjects are at the second stage of aestheti development as proposed by Parsons (1982). The study concludes with recommendations as to how Johansen's art criticism model can be effectively implemented within a primary class and what generalist teachers need in order to incorporate art criticism into their art program to bridge the gap between theory and practice.

This thesis reports an action research project which was undertaken to study, understand, and improve a teacher/researcher's pedagogy of art criticism in a grade two class, through implementation of Johansen's art criticism model. Concurrently, Johansen's art criticism model was tested for its suitability in the context of primary teaching. Data for this study was collected within an operationa grade two class through eight art criticism lessons, three semi-structured interviews, students' journal writings, and entries in the teacher's field diary. Results from this study indicate that Johansen's art criticism model is suitable for guiding second graders through the art criticism process provided it is appropriately implemented. The study also found that, on the whole, the subjects are at the second stage of aestheti development as proposed by Parsons (1982). The study concludes with recommendations as to how Johansen's art criticism model can be effectively implemented within a primary class and what generalist teachers need in order to incorporate art criticism into their art program to bridge the gap between theory and practice. / Education, Faculty of / Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of / Graduate

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.

The purpose of this study was to determine if beauty was important to elementary age children when exploring and making aesthetic judgements about works of art and to determine the criteria elementary students used in judging beauty in works of art. This study also explored beauty as a concept that could be used as an organizing idea for designing a thematic unit with the purpose of introducing elementary students to postmodern art and issues. One hundred and sixty first grade and fourth grade students looked at 20 pairs of art reproductions and picked the artwork they considered the most beautiful. The criteria elementary students use for determining beauty in artworks was found to be color, realism, subject matter and physical appearance of the subject of the work of art.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the creative arts program of the first four grades in the Bowie Public Schools to determine the extent to which it meets, or fails to meet, criteria developed for a creative arts program in a democratic form of education.

In this research, the author has undertaken to investigate what relationship, if any, exists between academic achievement of the child in the upper-elementary grades and his achievement in both or either, of the two- and three-dimensional arts.

The purpose of this study was to develop and evaluate a learning sequence involving copy related activities and to provide clarifying evidence regarding copying effects on personality and artistic development. Improvement in selected aspects of creative behavior was hypothesized. The aspects of creative behavior selected for the study were: Figural Fluency, Flexibility, Originality and Elaboration as identified by researchers in creative behavior, and two drawing tasks developed by the investigator. In addition, improvement in self-concept ratings was also hypothesized.Three intact groups made up of 58 fourth grade students from the Milwaukee Public Schools comprised the sampling. A random cluster sampling procedure was used to identify three schools from the population of 123 elementary schools in the system. Random procedures were used to identify the specific class within the schools and also to assign specific classes to treatment and control groups. The intact groups represented broad socio-economic and cultural backgrounds and were representative of racially balanced schools in the system.The Copy Activity Group of 18 subjects received the copy treatment, a second group of 20 subjects received an art activity treatment, and the third group of 20 subjects, a control group, received no treatment. All groups received pre- and posttests consisting of the Fluency, Flexibility, Originality and Elaboration categories of the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking, Forms A and B, and two drawing tasks designed by the investigator. The drawing tasks included an imagination or memory task (IDT) and an observational task (ODT). The tasks were rated by experienced judges on a rating scale designed specifically for the study. In addition, all groups received a posttest only administration of the Piers-Harris Children's Self-Concept Scale. Five treatment sessions were administered to the Copy Activity Group and the Art Activity Group on five consecutive days between the pretest and posttest sessions.Two similar yet different treatments were used in the experiment. One utilized structured copy activities designed to promote the mastery of specific concepts, and the other stressed similar concepts and subject matter but utilized more traditional, open ended art activities. Both treatments made use of similar art media and were of identical length. The copy activities provided information which was abstracted from the natural environment and artist's interpretations of the environment. Subjects were instructed to attend to points of maximal information, peaks of curvature, distinctive features, naturally occurring elaborations and artist's interpretations of the visual world in the context of the treatment. The activities, structured from simple to complex, involved tracing, dot-to-dot activities, copying, and coloring activities.The data were subjected to analysis of covariance during the hypotheses testing. The statistical results indicated improved overall performance on all instruments in favor of the Copy Group over the Art Activity Group. The data analysis also indicated that the ability to perceive and subsequently delineate perceptions may have been positively influenced by the copy treatment. While clearly significant differences were noted in the analysis of the self-concept data in favor of the Copy Group, generalizations as to cause-effect relationships were considered to be hazardous and therefore subject to further analysis.