<p> This study looked at the impact of a weeklong visual art program informed by clinical art therapy on empathy development with two groups of adolescents in their school setting. The study used a mixed-methods approach to uncover any quantitative change in empathy as well as identify emergent themes seen through qualitative data. Quantitative outcomes indicated no change in empathy development as seen through analysis of a survey measure. Qualitative analysis uncovered several key findings seen through observations, participant interviews, and visual art data; most specifically, participants illustrated beginning levels of empathy by way of increased self-awareness and several cognitive functions involved in empathy development.</p>

The aim of this thesis is to explore and analyse the role of the Royal Scottish Academy in teaching and supporting aspirant professional artists in Scotland between 1829 and 1910. It will examine the background and legacy of art training and art institutions in the run-up to the academy’s creation, not only in Scotland but in Britain as a whole and worldwide.  This introduces a highly complicated network of organisations and personalities that sometimes operated in partnership and sometimes in opposition, and this will be a recurring theme in the thesis. Two chapters will investigate the phases of practical teaching undertaken by the academy and identify its achievements and limitations. Other chapters will explore alternative means whereby the academy sought to facilitate art training, for example in the presentation of the best of contemporary art and in assisting artists to study from old masters, a long-established academic tradition. The use of casts was also central to academic training and the RSA’s attempts to facilitate this will be explored alongside the development of a reference collection of books, prints and photographs.  The academy’s role in assisting foreign travel for study and its attitudes to European art and art teaching will also be explored. In 1902 a governmental investigation served as a catalyst for change.  As a central player the RSA was actively involved in this examination, the result of which was the creation of Edinburgh College of Art. This started a shift in the academy’s function from one of a participator in teaching to one of a facilitator, a role that has been maintained throughout the twentieth century.

<p> Due to federal laws requiring standardized testing of only a select few of the core subjects, many students have been divested of fine arts instruction (Chen, 2008; Garcia, 2010; Jacobsen &amp; Rothstein, 2009; Maxwell, 2008; Suzuki, 2009). Moreover, school officials have reduced funding allocated to non-tested content areas as one means of balancing district budgets in a poor economy (Chen, 2008; Garcia, 2010). This mixed method study examined music educators' and curriculum directors' perceptions of how federal education laws have affected public school fine arts. Analysis of data from interviews of six music educators and six curriculum directors were conducted concurrently with the distribution of a Likert online survey. The interview and survey methodologies provided descriptive data of educators' perceptions regarding the consideration of fine arts as a core subject in policy and practice, the role of public school fine arts in the education of the whole child, the overall value of the fine arts in light of brain research, and the controversy surrounding the standardized assessment of the fine arts. The findings of the study revealed that even though all curriculum directors and music educators agreed the fine arts should be included in a child's holistic education, music educators possessed stronger beliefs regarding the fine arts being considered a core subject, Curriculum directors indicated their districts valued the fine arts as a public relations tool and as a means to boost achievement in other subjects, while music educators in the same district spoke of feeling devalued, indicating a disconnect in communication between administrators and staff. Finally, though many educators oppose the standardized testing of the fine arts, the assessments would provide valuable data.</p>

This study is an experiment in landscape art where artists put large pieces of fabric in personally significant places to be marked by the land. Landscape art is a site of power that can challenge embedded assumptions regarding national identity within tensions among local, national, and global scales. This research ruptures the Canadian myth of wilderness nation through the creation of an alternative landscape art that is informed by a theoretical discourse on the threshold as a site of difference and of learning. Inspired by the creative processes of the participating artists, Peter von Tiesenhausen, Pat Beaton, and Robert Dmytruk, I consider pedagogical implications for art education when pedagogy is structured on the powerful premise that learning is an uncertain, relational, and continual process. Using my understanding of the methodology of a/r/tography, I create and poetically analyze art that offers opportunities for personal reflection into the nature of transformative educational practices. This form of arts-based research is influenced by the notion of assemblage, as presented by Deleuze and Guattari (1984), as well as practices of narrative, action research, and autoethnography, all of which echo the research method of currere (Pinar & Grumet, 1976). Within a/r/tography, image and text are creatively juxtaposed to inspire new understandings about the pedagogical thresholds among my roles of artist, researcher, and teacher. Arguing that social change must begin from a personal awareness of one's tacit values, I posit that a/r/tography can be an educational opening into reflection of such values due to the embodied, personal nature of art-making. Through a philosophical discussion of subjectivity and community following the work of Jean-Luc Nancy and Jacque Derrida, I take the participants' and my local, significant places as sites from which to reverse the binary of landscape and artist, following an artistic version of deconstruction. From this a/r/tographical inquiry into elements of the land that serve as structural and heuristic supports, I critique the neoliberal subject position within nationalism, education, and landscape art. I draw on understandings of identity as theorized and performed from the premise that it, like learning, is an unpredictable, relational activity of emergence that is alway slocated on the threshold of difference between one person and another. Thus, I examine the educational, ontological, and social importance of what it means to exist within community in the land. In doing so, I raise questions regarding the normative structures of our educational institutions and suggest that social transformation could begin through art practices as a creative form of pedagogy.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Washington State University, 2006. / (UMI)AAI3242123. Adviser: David A. Gruenewald. Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-11, Section: A, page: 4070.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2008. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-05, Section: A, page: 1621. Adviser: Luis Miron. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 216-223) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 142-152).

abstract: Adolescents' clay sculpture has been researched significantly less than their drawings. I spent approximately six weeks in a ceramics class located at a high school in a suburb of Phoenix, Arizona in order to explore how gender affected subject matter preference in students' three dimensional clay sculpture. Gender studies on children's drawings reveal that males favor fantasy, violence, aggression, sports, and power, while females favor realism, domestic and social experience, physical appearance, care and concern, nature and animals. My three main research questions in this study were 1) How did gender affect subject matter in adolescents' three-dimensional clay sculpture? 2) What similarities or differences existed between females' and males' subject matter preference in sculpture and their subject matter preference in drawing? 3) Assuming that significant gender differences existed, how successful would the students be with a project that favored opposite gender themed subject matter? I found that although males and females had gender differences between subject matter in their clay sculptures, there were exceptions. In addition, the nature of clay affected this study in many ways. Teachers and students need to be well prepared for issues that arise during construction of clay sculptures so that students are able to use clay to fully express their ideas. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Art 2011

<p> While there is growing research about the positive impact of teaching artists (TAs), these professional arts educators are an underused resource. As a TA, I have more than a decade of experience implementing spoken word and hip-hop as a pedagogical approach in urban public school classrooms. By conducting this autoethnographic study, I sought to explore insights from these 10 years of lived experience for understanding and documenting the critical principles of my practice as a TA. This autoethnography of my life as a TA tells stories from urban public school classrooms during my formative years as an educator. The research explored the impact my artistic practices have had on developing my pedagogical approach, including the emotional and financial challenges inherent to working on the margins. By interpreting and analyzing ethnographic material from five residencies, this research resulted in complex narrative accounts, which provide insights for the field of arts education, with a specific focus on TAs. Moreover, this study offers a visionary context for a liberatory educational praxis of spoken word and hip-hop in classrooms and communities.</p><p>

<p> This exploratory study utilizes a qualitative, ethnographic approach to locate and contextualize Latino/a Artist Educators (LAEs) in Miami, Florida. Foundational and cutting-edge, it brings together many distinct perspectives to illuminate the power and promise of a newly imagined yet group of individuals to build and sustain alternative democratic spaces. Building on critical educators Paolo Freire, bell hooks, Henry Giroux and Howard Zinn, as well as extending the framework of critical theorists Gloria Anzald&uacute;a, Cornel West and others, this research begins to sketch the influence of the LAEs interviewed in Miami from 2003-2013. As a sociocultural ethnographic study positioned at the crossroads of many fields, this research is hopefully the first step toward understanding the central value of LAEs&rsquo; work in Miami. </p><p> Through semi-structured interviews, participant observation, field notes, and archival data, the perspective of 52 individuals who self-identify as &ldquo;Latino/a,&rdquo; &ldquo;artist,&rdquo; and &ldquo;educator,&rdquo; are brought into view for analysis and discussion. Open-ended interview questions included queries ranging from motivation and inspiration, to identity, to perceptions of the Latino/a artist (LAE) community, to opinions on schooling and educational processes, to mentoring and how they sustain themselves. Sample questions included: &ldquo;How does your ethnicity, background and culture shape or impact your art/work/teaching?&rdquo; and &ldquo;What can the art world learn from the &lsquo;culture of education&rsquo; and vice-versa?&rdquo; </p><p> The demographic breakdown of the 52 individuals participating in the research study included 30% Cuban, 26% Puerto Rican&mdash;with the real story in the remaining 44% representing a panoply of many Latino nations. LAEs averaged 36 years old at the time of interviews, with males outnumbering females, 56% to 44%. The average LAE has lived in Miami for 20 years. Although the preponderance of LAEs are performing artists (rather than visual artists), nearly 40% claim to be &ldquo;multidisciplinary&rdquo; or &ldquo;interdisciplinary&rdquo; and practice multiple artistic pursuits. Paradoxically, what LAEs have most in common is their diversity and divergence. </p><p> However, not all analysis yielded a divergence of results. LAEs resonated with synchronicity and strength around the expression of four themes&mdash;necessity, urgency, fluidity and agency. All stated explicitly that their creative endeavors were an inextricable part of their identity, providing expression, connection, mental challenge, and healing. None of the LAEs interviewed saw their art (and to a lesser degree, their teaching) as &ldquo;optional.&rdquo; This necessity, this insatiable, non-negotiable need to create and educate was accompanied by a palpable sense of urgency. Each LAE expressed with enthusiasm and intensity their works-in-progress and the realization that the situation with our youth is both pivotal and critical. Perhaps the most exemplary quality of LAEs in Miami is their astounding flexibility or fluidity, the ability to shape-shift, integrating and capitalizing on the specific milieu as it changes over time and space. Finally, these three combined&mdash;necessity, urgency, and fluidity&mdash;result in a powerful sense of agency; LAEs believe that their creative and educational investments are powerful influences in affecting the health and vitality of our youth, our schools, our communities and our society. </p><p> Many additional findings illuminate the range of LAEs teaching styles, motivational sources, philosophical and political views, and their characterization and critique of the LAE communities where they live, work, and create. These findings could be applied in countless ways to continue this trajectory of research and discovery&mdash;better supporting and understanding LAEs, clarifying the conflicted yet active role of resistance that artists play in the gentrification process, and even understanding how schools and our society need to evolve in order to support, nurture and protect democracy at its core&mdash;creating spaces for diverse views, dissent, dialogue, debate and maintaining the deepest respect in the process. </p><p> Future research should include more detailed analysis of collective and individual efforts of the activities of artist/educators involving gender implications, other ethnicities, and the importance of place by including other big cities. Additionally, other variables might be considered more thoughtfully: the central role of music in the creative process, as well as the impact of audience members, venue owners and emcees/hosts in co-creating alternative democratic spaces. </p><p> LAEs&rsquo; creative and educational work has impacts beyond our scope of measurement; to this day, numerous LAEs continue to create the fabric of the artistic, edgy, latino/a/caribeno/a, bohemian aesthetic&mdash;the &ldquo;image&rdquo;&mdash;that is so alluring internationally, and forms the basis for tourism and wealth in Miami, and the prerequisite for imagining the development of Wynwood. (Abstract shortened by ProQuest.)</p><p>