published_or_final_version / abstract / Education / Master / Master of Education

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No description available.

No description available.

Several independent African states promote teaching of a national culture as one culture and learning about ethnic cultures as separate and distinct aspects of other cultures of the nation. This is often articulated in development philosophies and political discourses that complement both being modern and being ethnic with almost equal emphasis. This dissertation is about learning African culture in the school system in Kenya. / The dissertation reviews the historical development of learning about culture in Kenya and particularly about material culture and the arts from pre-Christian and colonial times to post independence. This last period covers the presidencies of Jomo Kenyatta (1963-1978) and Daniel arap Moi (1978-1996). Exemplification of this learning is investigated first at the general national level and then at three particular regions comprising an all Christian, third and fourth generation school-going agriculturist community, a first generation school-going pastoralist nomadic community and a multi-ethnic urban community. In the three regions, the study examines the present situation as it is in the classroom at the level of contact between the art teacher and the pupil in primary schools during the formative years of children's growth. This also spans the period described as the golden years of children's art. / Through qualitative and quantitative material and analyses of political discourses and educational and cultural policy documents. The thesis demonstrates that the art and craft curriculum follows the presidential philosophy of Nyayoism. In theory this philosophy promotes modernization and maintenance of indigenous traditions but in practice leans towards modernization, in actual terms, Europeanization. Modernization is attempting to create one Kenyan national culture using schools as a vehicle. / The research demonstrates how the present national cultural heritage curriculum focusing on material culture is not likely to be an effective arts educational tool and a medium for transmission of indigenous aesthetic knowledge in three school sites representing three broad cultures and traditions of Kenya i.e. agriculturist, pastoralist and multi-ethnic urban.

This thesis is a critical examination of postmodernist pedagogy currently used in the education of visual artists. It is particularly concerned with the teaching of the traditional disciplines of painting and drawing within a postmodern context. My hypothesis is that the teaching of visual arts within a postmodern orientation more or less relies on an anti-aesthetic stance that is content-centered, with an insistence on critically and politically aware art. The overall objective of this thesis is twofold: First, to generate some questions and ideas that could be of assistance to post-secondary art instructors. Second, to establish a framework for an extended qualitative research that will address the impact of postmodernism on education of artists. The title "beyond the anti-aesthetic" does not necessarily present itself as a negation of the postmodernist paradigm. It identifies a need to revitalize visual art instruction within the postmodern model, to re-address the interplay between form and content in visual art and enhance critical thinking.

This study looks at art education as an essential component of education and the place of values education within it. My observations in a Grade 5/6 art class within an elementary school in a working class district of Montreal attempt to identify some of the factors that contribute to value awareness. I observed children at work over a period of seven weeks, and use the data to present a picture of the ways in which art activities influence value awareness in the classroom. General discussions on some theories on values and art education initiate my study. The finding is that art activities contribute to an awareness of personal, social, cultural, aesthetic, and moral values and validate my claim that art education can be used to develop value awareness.

There is no abstract available for this thesis.

The purpose of the study was to present the differences between the opinions of prospective teachers and experienced, certified teachers concerning the relationship of the cognitive and affective dimensions to teacher evaluation. Comparisons were made with the total prospective-teacher responses and total established-teacher responses; elementary prospectiveteacher responses and elementary established-teacher responses; secondary prospective-teacher responses and secondary established-teacher responses; male prospective-teacher responses and male established-teacher responses; female prospective-teacher responses and female established-teacher responses; total male responses and total female responses; total prospective-teacher responses and responses of established teachers with three to nine years of experience; total prospective-teacher responses and responses of established teachers with ten or more years of experience.The study was limited to the prospective teachers enrolled in student teaching during the spring quarter, 1971, at Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana. It was further limitedin that only those experienced and certified educators teaching in schools which held membership in the Upper Wabash Valley School Study Council in Indiana were utilized.The population for the study was composed of 187 randomly-selected elementary and secondary student teachers from Ball State University and 200 randomly-selected elementary and secondary established teachers teaching in schools within the Upper Wabash Valley School Study Council.The instrument for the study was developed, based upon the review of literature, the opinions of selected established teachers, as well as the judgments from faculty in the Teachers College, Ball State University. An opinionnaire-questionnaire composed of predominantly cognitive and affective statements was then constructed.Sixteen null hypotheses were developed. Two-by-two contingency tables were constructed to enumerate the "yes"-"no" responses of the two groups to the affective and cognitive statements. Chi square was then applied to test the degree of significance between the responses of the prospective-teacher group and the established-teacher group.The results of the study can be generalized in that similarities do exist between prospective teachers and established teachers in their responses to predominantly cognitive teacher evaluation statements. Again generalized, the similarities do not exist between prospective teachers and established teachers in their responses to predominantly affective teacher evaluation statements.

The purpose of this investigation was to develop instructional methods to affect the visual perceptual abilities of young children.Eleanor Gibson has described visual perception as the process by which we obtain firsthand information about the world around us. According to Gibson visual perception is a complex process of handling a multitude of visual bits of information or cues, so that a response to the information can be made. With these ideas in mind a series of language tasks were developed to encourage children to attend and respond to visual stimuli in order to investigate the extent to which language may modify or enhance visual perceptual ability.The sample for this study was comprised of ninety-four fourth grade students in four intact classes in the Eastbrook Community School Corporation, Marion, Indiana. Three groups were randomly assigned to the experimental treatments and one to the control condition. One group received in-process language training while viewing and discussing color slides of paintings; a second group received language training by exposure to semantic differential scales while viewing the same paintings; a third group received a condensed and integrated version of the treatment received by the other two experimental treatment groups;while a fourth group served as a control section and received traditional art instruction, primarily working with common art materials without specific language instruction and without viewing color slides of paintings. The subjects in all four groups were pre and post tested using the Children's Embedded Figures Test (CEFT), the MotorFree Visual Perception Test (IrwPT) and the vocabulary subtest of the Stanford Diagnostic Reading Test (SDRT).Data collected during this investigation was subjected to analysis of covariance techniques and, when significant ratios were obtained, follow-up t-tests were conducted. In addition, correlation coefficients were obtained to evaluate possible relationships between the three sets of measures. The confidence level for testing the null hypotheses was set at an alpha of .05. Review of the data led to the following conclusions:(A) Subjects receiving a condensed and integrated version of the language treatment including in-process verbalization and exposure to semantic differential scales while viewing color slides of paintings achieved significantly higher Children's Embedded Figures Test scores than subjects in the Control Group. The resulting data indicated that treatment incorporating language training tasks was more successful in affecting perceptual performance than traditional art activities.(B) Data analysis of treatment effects on subject performance as measured by the Motor-Free Visual Perception Test was found to be inconclusive. The statistical evidence indicates that although scores achieved by the three experimental groups on the WPT did increase they were not significantly improved.(C) Group performance on the vocabulary subtest of the Stanford Diagnostic Reading Test remained virtually unchanged. The abundance of verbal stimulation had no apparent effect upon language skills as measured by this instrument.This investigation made no attempt to prescribe how subjects should respond to visual stimuli, nor did it infer that these responses were either desirable or inalterable. At the same time this investigation made no attempt to assess the aesthetic effects of languagethat the inclusion of language tasks may stimulate and increase perceptual activity and ability thereby aiding children in developing perceptual skills.The most important general finding in this investigation is the facilitating effect of the combination of semantic differential scales and auditory verbal in-process response as a mode of instruction to increase visual perceptual ability. This combination of language factors evidently influenced the subjects to process pictorial information more effectively, perhaps by directing their attention to the distinctive features of the paintings.