This dissertation inquires about the situation of the arts in education by suggesting an alternative perspective on the way we see art. It does so through the illumination of three distinct yet complementary ways. First, this study explores what a primordial sense of art would look like. I argue that we can understand art as a knowing-making disposition where wondering with the artwork and relating with its inherent elements becomes one and the same activity. Second, this investigation proposes the notion of respiration as a lens that allows seeing art as a fact that assumes and surpasses similar and contrary interpretations of the artwork' meanings. Finally, this research proposes the notion of exercise in possibility as a way to further expand what art can look like in education. I claim that by developing resemblances of human life, art can operate as a standard of possibility. After characterizing each of these notions, I move on to refine their practical implications for students' and teachers' tasks.

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This dissertation is an autobiographical study that explores how my past experiences related to art and education inform my teaching, and how my teaching informs how I theorize about art. Through the research process, I investigated issues about art and education by "drawing on" personal experience. The study supports the notion that personal experience is the basis of knowledge and assumes that to understand teachers' knowledge it is beneficial to observe it from a teacher's perspective. It touches on issues of teacher knowledge, the role of personal history and attitudes, and identity. / The research involved observation of my teaching in a summer camp setting, layered with the autobiographical project of writing stories based on experiences related to art and education. The methods used to collect data consisted of established approaches to researching one's own practice, such as narrative writing, video documentation, and observation, as well as an arts-based approach to memory work that combined collage and narrative. The experiences that I addressed include my observation of two quilting guilds, my memories of making art as a child at summer camp and in elementary school, my graduate school experience in a Master of Fine Arts program, and my reflections on art that I see in galleries and museums. / Although the original goal of my study was simply to understand my teaching more fully, the process of research has done more than allow me to understand how my lived experiences inform my teaching. The study points out the complex interrelationship between the notion of "place" and my beliefs about art. Autobiographical research has been a process of challenging my beliefs and finding meaning through my own thinking; it has provided a way for me to develop a critical awareness of my practice, to question the taken-for-granted nature of my understanding of art and to imagine other possibilities for practice.

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Purposes of this study were to explore philosophical implications of existential-phenomenological thought for art education and to experimentally investigate, in the art classroom, an adaptation of basic participatory techniques of existential psychotherapy. The philosophical study considered two related areas: existentialist implications for strategies facilitating individual development toward free choosing in self-actualization of unique potential, and expansion of student-teacher empathy through existential-phenomenological approaches to the total aesthetic event, which expresses individually discovered value truths as beauty in a communicative art product.Existential aesthetic growth of individual students was seen as resulting in qualitative attitudinal changes toward concepts concerning self-and-others. Theoretically, these changes ought to be reflected as approximately equal qualitative changes in student art production.The experimental treatment had teachers freely disclosing personal values by becoming producing artists in company with students. Evidence from existential psychotherapy and humanistic psychology supported the notion that open disclosure of teacher values and creative struggles should elicit reciprocal openness from students, thereby facilitating mutually empathic relationships. The questions of whether or not this expanded mutual understanding could influence direction, intensity, and acceleration of student attitudinal changes toward self-and-others, and whether or not these changes showed relationships to qualitative changes in their art production, became the problem of the research.Experimental groups were exposed to the treatment for ten weeks; control groups were not exposed. Research procedure included pre-post administration of identical semantic differentials to measure concept attitudinal changes as related to presence or absence of the treatment, and use of a similar instrument to measure qualitative changes between first and last art production. Three-factor analyses of variance, with repeated measures, computed difference scores. Relationships between these d-scores were established by use of product-moment correlations. Review of the data resulted in the following major conclusions, inferences, and recommendations:(1) The writer's experimental thesis, that the experimental treatment had the potential of accelerating concept attitudinal changes in those exposed to it, was modestly, but generally, supported.(2) Product-moment correlations did not support the notion that attitudinal changes would be reflected as a qualitative changes in art production. This apparently resulted from a too-short experimental period.(3) Teaching styles of teacher-experimenters were a powerful variable mediating effects of the experimental treatment, which had to be taken into account in analyses of data.(4) Judges subjectively responded most definitely to art works from both groups of two teachers having strongly directive or non-directive teaching styles.(5) Concept d-scores showed all subjects tending to evaluate self-in-relation-to-others in objective terms, with little depth of feeling or strength of conviction. This appeared to result from conditioning too entrenched to be overcome in ten weeks.(6) Short duration of the experimental period appeared to be mainly responsible for weak intensities of results. It was inferred that replication of the experiment should have considerably longer duration.(7) The study showed definite trends, tending to support the writer's ideas about experimental treatment effectiveness and about relationships of qualities of art production to attitudinal changes. Presumably, these trends would have developed into more definitive results with a longer time period. Further study of the possible effectiveness of the experimental teacher-as-student strategy, in various teaching and environmental situations, with a diversity of teaching approaches, and with a considerably longer experimental period, is recommended.

This is a study carried out in British Columbia in the spring of 1962. The information was gathered with the use of a questionnaire which was administered to 606 students enrolled in the course Art 91. The questionnaire asked for information which the researcher used as the basis for discovering the attitudes of the students. A person's behaviour was considered to be a valid indication of his attitude and so the four chapters which comprise the bulk of the paper deal with each of four behaviour expressions: reading, activities, personal earnestness and realism and artistic experience and the desire to communicate it. The questions whose answers revealed the student's attitudes in each of the categories were tabulated, compared with answers to other questions and discussed. Smaller groups of students within the Art 91 group were then taken apart from the rest and their scores on the questionnaire were compared with the Art 91 average. In the comparison between art club members and the larger group, it was found that there was a more positive attitude response to all the questions but one, which were compared. While more art club members kept a sketchbook, attended the lecture of a guest artist, and gave more 'original' answers to the subjective questions; it was found that art club members had experienced the use of fewer art media than the average for Art 91 students. Although the scores of art club members did seem better than those for the average among Art 91 students, it was decided that the difference was not great enough. A comparison of the academic achievement for art club members showed that the proportion of academic 'A' and 'B' students was far higher and that of academic 'D' and 'E' students much lower than those found in the Art 91 group as a whole. Three other groups of papers were then taken apart from the rest. In the question asking how students felt art would be useful to them after graduation, the students whose answers indicated that they planned an art career formed one sub-group. Those whose answers showed that they felt art would be useful to them in a non-art profession formed the second and those who felt that art would be of no use after graduation formed the third. It was found when comparing the answers of these students to both the subjective and the objective questions that group one scored consistently much higher than average, that group two scored slightly above average and that group three scored exceedingly low. When the academic achievements of these students were compared to the average for Art 91 students, it was found that there was no definite pattern but the students answering that art would be no use to them did show a slightly higher percentage of low academic achievers than did the Art 91 group as a whole. / Education, Faculty of / Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of / Graduate

Field research methodology was employed to describe how the personal practical knowledge of three art teachers has helped shape their junior secondary artrooms. Through interviews, photographic analysis, and participant observation a description of each site is provided to show that some aspects of each teacher's practical knowledge find expression in the artroom environment. Each artroom had its own distinctive features, but what held these three sites in common was the way in which practical knowledge functioned in the design of the flexible elements of the room's environment. Each teacher employed specific coping strategies to manage the classroom and increase their sense of comfort in their professional role. An image of an artroom was held by each teacher which both directly and indirectly influenced their decisions about artroom design. The findings were used to construct a conceptual framework relating practical knowledge and the artroom to the teacher's personal history and the limitations imposed on the artroom by school life and the room's physical limitations. / Education, Faculty of / Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of / Leaves 275 to 280 do not exist / Graduate