While graffiti is revered as an art form to some, it is often seen as an unwanted nuisance by others. While vibrantly rich in history, graffiti has a controversial past, present, and future that will likely continue to be the subject of debate, especially with the insurgence of street art, an art form that often overlaps graffiti art in subject matter, media, aesthetic appearance, and placement as a public form of art. Distinguishing between street art and graffiti art proves quite challenging to the undiscerning eye, yet through a series of interviews and thorough investigation, I questioned the contexts of street art and graffiti art. By introducing non-traditional forms of art that are engaging to adolescent students, street art and graffiti art can expand the secondary art curriculum by helping students become more cognizant of current social, visual and cultural aesthetics in their own visual world.

This arts-based study will discuss using a sketchbook journal to enhance creativity and promote the cultivation of the artist’s visual voice. The paper attempts to define creativity, as well as the usefulness of the sketchbook as a creative tool. The results of this study will demonstrate how the effectiveness of the sketchbook journal in the development of the artist can also transcend to usefulness when considering the sketchbook as a curriculum tool in elementary art education.

This study is an auto-ethnographic examination of reflections of a novice itinerant art teacher. The teacher taught at four schools within her first two years of teaching. Reflections of her first two years are recorded, then analyzed, and suggestions for other novice itinerant teachers are provided

The research conducted in this thesis is centered on the ESOL Hispanic student population, in the art classroom in Georgia. The information contained in this paper is meant to serve as a guide and resource for art educators with high populations of ESOL students in their classrooms. A review of current ESOL best practices in several content areas is included. Based on the research, guidelines and suggestions for accommodating these learners in the art room were developed, as well as a sample unit that includes three lesson plans, PowerPoint presentations and assessment rubrics.

This study examined the intentions of a group of individuals who created the sitcom Aliens in America broadcast on the CW Network in 2007-2008 and the ways in which three separate groups (bloggers, TV critics and local television viewers) perceived the show. In doing so I attempted to uncover the pedagogical implications of these intentions and perceptions for visual culture studies. I used a qualitative approach to conduct this study. I gathered interviews the creators of the show gave to media outlets in 2007 and 2008. I also gathered data from three other distinct groups for this study. First, I conducted focus group interviews with 13 individuals who watched and discussed their perceptions of Aliens in America. Second, I surveyed the perceptions of bloggers through a narrative analysis of postings published on the CW network website in 2007-2008. Thirdly, I sampled reviews of the show by TV critics to learn about their perceptions of the show. This study uncovered three key findings. First, the existence of a gap or disconnect between the ways in which the show was intended by its creators and how it was perceived by selected audiences. The second major finding was the unexpected level of engagement with the show exhibited by bloggers and focus group participants and their deep connection with some of the characters. The third finding involved the use of audio cues in some episodes of the series and its possible influence on viewers to react in a certain way to specific situations. These findings have specific implications for visual culture studies. First, the show presents an immense potential for use with seasoned educators during workshops. Second, these findings indicate that the use of audio cues in TV shows is problematic for younger audiences and requires more media literacy to take place in the art education classroom. Third, teacher education programs could use the show to train pre-service teachers and help them relate to the type of television programming their students are engaging with on a daily basis.

In the pre-Internet age, people desired remote education upon graduation from school or college usually took courses through in-class, radio, TV or postal correspondence. However, it now seems relevant to include the Internet in educational research because the computer network medium is now widely applied to, and available in, many walks of life. The purpose of this research is to apply computer technology towards distance learning, bolstering conventional teaching methods as well as stimulating students¡¦ motivation, and increasing the chance of success in their studies. This sample is taken from the 2nd grade 72 students in Chung Hwa School of Arts, and it is mainly focused on their chromatic study. Students answered two survey questions, one before and one after the experiment. The research approach was to examine differences between two survey answers in regards to both learning satisfaction and academic performance. There are conclusions after analyzing the survey answers. 1. Academic performance of students participating in the distance-learning courses was found to be superior. 2. The majority of the visual arts students were positive toward the combination of in-class learning and distance-learning. Apart from the above two conclusions, the suggestion to teachers, parents, and the Art Education Bureau is that distance learning might be useful in popularizing art education.

The purpose of education is to help students to prepare for solving problems. The traditional teaching methods, however, let teachers ignore this part and make students learn by rote without applying the knowledge in lives. Problem-Based Learning (PBL) is different from the traditional teaching method. The course is centered on the students who decide what to learn themselves. By using group discussions, it initiates students¡¦ motivations to seek for knowledge actively, and improves their learning efficiency. This study was focused on the ¡§Family and Human Relations: Guided Reading of Classic Plays¡¨ provided by the Center for General Education of National Sun Yat-sen University in the second semester of 2008 academic year. It uses the students who took this class as examples to investigate which curriculum action is the most effective way to initiate their learning spirits, and what are the benefits for them in the PBL teaching method. The study will also raise some suggestions to improve the curriculum. In order to accomplish these purposes, the researcher applied the action research in this study and served as a teaching assistant to help the course design as well as to observe the students¡¦ behaviors. The study also adopted questionnaire survey, focus group interview, and students¡¦ learning portfolio to collect data. The research found: 1. the students in Taiwan consider that PBL can improve their self-learning sprits and promote multi-thinking characteristics; 2. the best way to utilize PBL teaching method and increase students¡¦ learning motivations is ¡§collecting and reading extracurricular materials,¡¨ and the most efficient ways to achieve this curriculum goals are ¡§problem discussion,¡¨ ¡§role playing,¡¨ ¡§characters¡¦ defense,¡¨ and ¡§extracurricular reading¡¨; 3. ¡§Family and Human Relations: Guided Reading of Classic Plays¡¨ is suitable for different genders and colleges¡¦ students together to form a diversified environment, which can promote the students¡¦ learning effectiveness and encourage their social abilities; 4. this curriculum can cultivate students¡¦ abilities of multi¡Vthinking, interpersonal intelligence, and solving problems. This course conforms to the principles of Taiwan¡¦s general education that emphasize to foster students¡¦ core competencies, and to breed their humanistic spirits and holistic care personalities.

<p> Internet Memes transverse and sometimes transcend cyberspace on the back of impossibly cute LOLcats speaking mangled English and the snarky remarks of Image Macro characters always on the lookout for someone to undermine. No longer the abstract notion of a cultural gene that Dawkins (2006) introduced in the late 1970s, memes have now become synonymous with a particular brand of vernacular language that internet users engage by posting, sharing and remixing digital content as they communicate jokes, emotions and opinions. </p><p> For the purpose of this research the language of Internet Memes is understood as visual, succinct and capable of inviting active engagement by users who encounter digital content online that exhibits said characteristics. Internet Memes were explored through an Arts-Based Educational Research framework by first identifying the conventions that shape them and then interrogating these conventions during two distinct research phases. <?Pub _newline>In the first phase the researcher, as a doctoral student in art and visual culture education, engaged class readings and assignments by generating digital content that not only responded to the academic topics at hand but did so through forms associated with Internet Memes like Image Macros and Animated GIFs. In the second phase the researcher became a meme literacy facilitator as learners in three different age-groups were led in the reading, writing and remixing of memes during a month-long summer art camp where they were also exposed to other art-making processes such as illustration, acting and sculpture. Each group of learners engaged age-appropriate meme types: 1) the youngest group, 6 and 7 year-olds, wrote Emoji Stories and Separated at Birth memes; 2) the middle group, 8-10 year-olds, worked with Image Macros and Perception memes, 3) while the oldest group, 11-13 year-olds, generated Image Macros and Animated GIFs. </p><p> The digital content emerging from both research phases was collected as data and analyzed through a hybrid of Memetics, Actor-Network Theory, Object Oriented Ontology, Remix Theory and Glitch Studies as the researcher shifted shapes yet again and became a Research Jockey sampling freely from each field of study. A case is made for Internet Memes to be understood as an actor-network where meme collectives, individual cybernauts, software and source material are all actants interrelating and making each other enact collective agencies through shared authorships. Additionally specific educational contexts are identified where the language of Internet Memes can serve to incorporate technology, storytelling, visual thinking and remix practices into art and visual culture education. </p><p> Finally, the document reporting on the research expands on the hermeneutics of Internet Memes and the phenomenological experiences they elicit that are otherwise absent from traditional scholarly prose. Chapter by chapter the dissertation was crafted as a journey from the academic to the whimsical, from the lecture hall to the image board (where Internet Memes were born), from the written word to the remixed image as a visual language that is equal parts form and content that emerges and culminates in a concluding chapter composed almost entirely of popular Internet Meme types. </p><p> An online component can be found at http://memeducation.org/</p>

The boundaries of art education are growing and encompassing new artistic practices and contemporary discourses. Many art educators are advocating for the inclusion of popular visual culture into the school curriculums. This study investigates what might be learned from the effects of adding a unit of instruction on popular visual culture, in the form of comic book art, into a beginning level high school art curriculum. / text

This case study used ethnographic data collection tools to focus on the educational models and approaches used by the Tall Pines Quilt Guild (TPQG) in Huntsville, Texas. In this study I strove to explore the transfer of quiltmaking knowledge in a community-based art education organization, a quilt guild, and how those educational methods and models could be adapted to the museum setting. I became a member of the Guild and took on the research role of a participant observer to witness how the TPQG perpetuates the quilting craft for its members. Through observing various Guild events, such as monthly meetings, workshops, and bees I found the members frequently participated in cooperative and collaborative social learning. The rationale for undertaking this study was that there are many publications on how to make quilts, the history of quilt patterns, indexes of quilt patterns, quiltmakers' stories, quilt research, and quilt exhibition catalogues. However, proper documentation of the educational approaches used by women in quilt guilds has not been researched. Quilt guilds provide an environment where adults can learn and expand their knowledge about the quilting craft in the form of lifelong learning. By looking into how the Tall Pines Quilt Guild acts a community-based art education organization, the identified educational models used by quilt guilds could be employed at museums displaying quilt exhibits with potential program models and characteristics to inform the public about quilts, quiltmaking, and quilters. / text