In many ways, traditional arts in schools bear the bruises of the early years of multicultural education, and the failed practices that created what has been termed a tourist curriculum, comprised of the superficial study of folktales, festivals, foods, and facts. Consequently, the use of art forms of cultures is often approached with caution by teachers, or avoided altogether. This thesis re-frames the use of traditional arts in the classroom through current research and knowledge, defining their efficacy and role in today’s classroom. Traditional arts are examined through the lenses of arts integration, culturally responsive pedagogical practice and creative processes. A qualitative, research portraiture methodology was employed, and executed through the lens of four case studies in order to more coherently incorporate the arts-based nature of this research. The research sites include classes studying Maori visual arts, waiata (song), and haka (dance) in Christchurch, New Zealand, chant, hula, and plant weaving at an Hawaiian charter school, and social dance and song of the Oneida tribe in the US. Research results indicated that when teachers facilitate experiences in traditional arts in such a way that students are exposed to entry points for their own interaction with the forms, students respond with self reflection, engagement, and a tendency to elevate the status of affiliation with the culture undertaken. While students and teachers do not become conversant in the culture as a result of such study, working with traditional arts in this way may serve to break down culturally bound ways of seeing the world. When traditional arts are employed in classrooms, they may engage students in a creative process that takes the form of embodied or physicalized, interpretive, or improvisational interactions with the forms. When traditional arts are employed in this way, relying on creative process, they also meet goals for culturally responsive learning, legitimizing how students experience and make sense of the world. Traditional arts provide a critical, under-utilized, strategy for embedding culture in the educational setting. In order to best meet the goals of the learning setting, traditional arts must incorporate creative processes. Hybridization of the forms, while increasing accessibility for teachers and students, must be carefully undertaken. Traditional arts utilized in this way hold potential for addressing broader curricular content.

Children’s experiences are the cornerstone of all that matters in elementary schools. It is therefore the purpose of this study to shed further light into what those experiences might be, particularly as they are present in arts-infused education. Over a period of almost two school years I followed a group of primary grade students in and out of their classrooms at Central Arts Elementary School in an urban mid-Western Canadian school district. Through conversation, recordings, artwork, scripts, and visual images, as teacher-researcher-artist, I collected a series of moments that I believe best describes the nature of these students’ experiences in arts-infused education. Concepts of identity, place, imagination, and self were explored. I considered the lived curriculum of the classroom, and also the ways in which the children’s experiences with the arts resonated alongside my own artistic endeavours. The study is a multi-method inquiry informed by arts-based, narrative, and ethnographical research practices. There are elements of ethnodrama, in the ways in which some events are portrayed through scripted descriptions in a concluding chapter of the work. Children’s art, and the art of classroom life are revealed through both image and text. Puppets, masks, and a variety of other artistic media are brought forward for the purposes of consideration and discussion. In all, the work is unique in its attention to the words of children, and extended researcher engagement. Implications of the study include the importance of listening to children when they speak, continuing to offer the arts as pathways to greater awareness in schools, and considering children’s relationships as powerful mentoring experiences for one another.

The theme of this thesis is History of School of Applied Arts studios in Prague between 1885 and 1910. The thesis focuses mainly on style development at the crucial point of turning of the century. This period was the turning point when advanced school's art manifested and also time of generation change that transformed overall school atmosphere. A specific contribution of this thesis lies in outlining less known specialized schools, with inclusion of female element, which are factors that were not previously described elsewhere, as well as in attempt to find methodical and development analogies between Prague and Vienna School of Applied Arts. The aim of my thesis was to assess exceptional status of the school, especially in context of Czech educational system of decorative arts, and to evaluate historical context based on detailed archive research. I included in the thesis a comprehensive list of students of general and specialized schools of decorative arts, thus creating a foundation for future researchers on individual artistic personalities. Study of development of School of Applied Arts is an analytical synthesis presenting the specific role of decorative arts and crafts in pre-WWI era.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-12-17T14:36:49Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 LuizANS_DISSERT.pdf: 2674428 bytes, checksum: 6ca59e4c3517730a1f66854f126c76b7 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-02-27 / Coordena??o de Aperfei?oamento de Pessoal de N?vel Superior / This research reflects the relationship between Master and Disciple original from the Martial Arts, and anchors their focus on sensitive education that emerges from this relationship. The interest here is knowing how the tradition of millenarian teachings is passed through the years, and how it gives from the relationship of Master and Disciple. To that end, I lean me in that context and also reflect on my experience as a Disciple of the Martial Arts, to that end, I lean me in that context and also reflect on my experience as a Disciple of the Martial Arts, and is from the immemorial fund that can give voice to that experience, through my body attached in the world of significations in which the experience lived is narrated by the story. Anchored from the phenomenological attitude from the philosopher french Maurice Merleau-Ponty, I think this research on three central pillars to guide our study categories, namely: the lived experience, body and liberty. Still, as a form of highlighting this sensitive work, beyond the texts of the philosopher Merleau-Ponty, we bring our dialogue of the cinema, literature and the writings of some the Masters of Martial Arts. For that, I think this research as a journey, where it, Master and Disciple march together in the ways of Martial Arts, baptizing and celebrating this sensitive education from that relationship affective and empathic / Esta pesquisa reflete a rela??o Mestre e Disc?pulo origin?ria das Artes Marciais, e ancora seu enfoque na educa??o sens?vel que emerge dessa rela??o. O interesse aqui ? saber como a tradi??o de ensinamentos milenares ? perpassada ao longo dos anos, e como isso se d? a partir da rela??o Mestre e Disc?pulo. Para tanto, debru?o-me nesse contexto e reflito tamb?m sobre minha experi?ncia enquanto Disc?pulo de Artes Marciais, e ? a partir do fundo imemorial que consigo dar voz a essa experi?ncia, atrav?s do meu corpo atado a esse mundo de significa??es, no qual a experi?ncia vivida ? narrada pela hist?ria. Pautado a partir da atitude fenomenol?gica do filosofo franc?s Maurice Merleau-Ponty, penso essa pesquisa sobre tr?s eixos centrais que ostentam nossas categorias de estudo, a saber: experi?ncia vivida, corpo e liberdade. Ainda, como forma de enaltecer essa obra sens?vel, al?m dos textos do fil?sofo Merleau-Ponty, trazemos para nosso di?logo o cinema, a literatura e os escritos de alguns Mestres de Artes Marciais. Para tanto, penso esta pesquisa como uma jornada, onde nela, Mestre e Disc?pulo marcham juntos pelos caminhos das Artes Marciais, batizando e celebrando essa educa??o sens?vel a partir dessa rela??o afetiva e emp?tica

Whole language approach.

There is very little theoretical literature about theatrical improvisation as it connects to ideas and practices of relating and specifically to ideas and practices of social work relating. This thesis involves efforts to theorize moments of relating – of being with others – in improvisation. A group of hospital social workers and a group of PhD social work research students participated in the study. The participants took part in improvisational workshops designed specifically for the study, as well as one-on-one and group interviews. This thesis explores what was created between research participants in improvisational workshops: the response-ability to and for others; an experience of grappling with the desire for control; and an embodied apprehension of interdependence. The study demonstrates an embodied and uncomfortable experience of the dominance of individualism in our relating. The study also demonstrates ways in which the art of theatrical improvisation can allow us to take up the transformative promises of social constructionism in social work relating. The thesis aims to make living space for central social constructionist concepts such as mutual constitution and interdependence – to explore and consider what happens when we fully recognize and carry these out in our practices of relating. Providing a different way into these central social constructionist concepts, this study contributes to arts-informed research, teaching and practice. More specifically, the research shows how the art of improvisation can provide transformative possibilities for social work pedagogy and the social work classroom. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This thesis involves efforts to theorize moments of relating – of being with others – in improvisation. A group of hospital social workers and a group of PhD social work research students participated in the study. The participants took part in improvisational workshops designed specifically for the study, as well as one-on-one and group interviews. This thesis explores what was created between research participants in improvisational workshops: the response-ability to and for others; an experience of grappling with the desire for control; and an embodied apprehension of interdependence. The study demonstrates an embodied and uncomfortable experience of the dominance of individualism in our relating and provides an analysis of engagement in improvisation as an alternative to a framework of independence in social work. The study contributes potential for arts-informed research, teaching, and practice, as well as social work pedagogy as it demonstrates ways in which the art of improvisation can allow us to take up the transformative promises of social constructionism in social work relating.

This thesis investigates conditions from an aesthetic and ethical viewpoint under which an artistic expression such as dance can exist in the realm of general education. In the thesis dance and education are regarded as acts of transgression and change. Efforts are made to define spaces where the acts of dancing and education take place and to enquire whether dance and pedagogy can share such space gainfully. The focus of the study is on dance in its own right, as an artistic mode of knowledge and expression, and as a manner of being with others. Dancing in teaching and curriculum learning activities is left outside the scope of this study. Research questions are asked about the essence and distinctive character of dance, its possibilities to bring about experiences of aesthetic and ethical nature and to provide a space in education for people to come together, dance and be with each other while finding knowledge and meaning in doing so. Questions are asked to the learner, i.e. the child, the pupil, the student, in this inquiry to two groups of students in teachers’ education, to describe their encounters with dance in a designed experiment. The accounts are analysed from an aesthetic and ethical angle and conclusions are drawn with implications for pedagogy and the educator. The theoretical framework to the study is informed by John Dewey’s and Maxine Greene’s thinking on arts and experience and on aesthetic education and literacy, in dialogue with Gert Biesta’s post-structural thinking on education and subjectivity, as well as the stances of Merce Cunningham and other creators in postmodern and contemporary dance. The empirical study consists of a field study at a teacher education program at Södertörn University. Data were collected, transcripts from two student group conversations concluding a series of instructional seminars in creative dance within a freestanding course on children’s existential questions. Methodologically, discourse analysis with Wetherell and Potter’s analytic tool interpretative repertoire were applied. The results of the study, analysed in accordance with the method, indicate that the participants through their utterances, making use of a variety of linguistic tools and metaphors, constructed meaning in their experiences of dancing primarily in terms of relational actions. Spaces were created in which these actions unfolded, characterised by presence, concentration, togetherness, speechless communication, proximity, trust, consideration, receptiveness and intensified perception. Creating dance appeared to be experienced in Dewey’s sense of aesthetic experience, and the relations described could be understood as ethical in line with Arendt’s and Levina’s philosophical thinking applied to education, fundamental in Biesta’s and Greene’s visions of education as a space for new beginnings and possible change. Resistance was experienced and dealt with in a range of manners and strategies. The creative aspect of dancing was experienced with great affect and an awareness of an intersubjective and disjunctive space of action. Conclusions of aesthetic and ethic nature may suggest that conditions can be provided to have people come together in an educational setting and dance and appear in front of one another, when consideration is taken to both the specific demands of dance and pedagogy as art expression and transgressing discipline, entailing the need of a clear and conscious design for the activities and the pedagogue’s readiness to guide the children and young to explore their individual dance expression, emotions and lived experiences.  Further implications and issues for continued research are to which extend dance as free expression can be maintained and granted a space in education when addressing specific urging social and ethical issues of coexistence and plurality in a rapidly changing global world, how academic and artistic research can cross-fertilise each other, how practical professional artistic and pedagogical knowledge and theory can inform one another, and to further investigate adequate research methods, designed experiments and appropriate linguistic means for research in the intersection of arts and science, dance and pedagogy.

Writing instruction that reflects the variety or represented pupil intelligences and learning styles in a special day classroom can significantly increase a child's opportunity for success. Attending to these areas while simultaneously taking into account student strengths, interests, and desires can facilitate the academic process. Written language skills and achievement must be addressed in a supportive and encouraging climate motivating children and maximizing their willingness to undertake new concepts.

Reading and writing curricula in more than 50% of America's schools have not been successful in assisting students to meet mandated academic performances for a number of reasons, including lack of student motivation and self-esteem. Research studies indicated that music can influence student motivation and academic performance in subjects such as language arts and that a music-infused curriculum could generate the positive difference between academic failure and academic success. For this qualitative case study with a constructivist paradigm, the purpose was to observe, document, and analyze music-infused lessons used by 4 teachers from prekindergarten to 5th grade with the goal to enhance students' language arts skills. The study examined teachers' perspectives and the instructional tools they used to stimulate and motivate students to strive toward academic success. It included interviews, a focus group, and observations with the participants. Data were coded, transcribed, analyzed, and evaluated for the final documented results, which revealed the benefits teachers experienced and the positive changes they noticed in their students from using music infusion in language arts. Findings revealed that students were more motivated, exhibited better attitudes, and had sustained attention and better retention of lessons taught with a music-infused structure. A recommendation is that administrators allow teachers more opportunities and flexibility to collaborate and assist with developing music-infused lessons to align with their language arts curriculum. Overall, the implications for social change were significant for educators, administrators, and students by providing an alternative method to teaching language arts that can increase motivational levels and academic success of struggling students.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between mobility and the standardized testing environment. The project focused on nine students who had a pronounced need for movement while learning and/or being tested. The study was conducted to determine whether the achievement scores of these nine students would be influenced by the denial or availability of movement while they were administered a standardized reading test. Twenty-one second grade students were the subjects. Two forms of Level B of the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test were used. All subjects were tested in a traditional environment with no movement allowed. The same subjects were then tested at a later time in a mobile environment with movement and change of location permitted. The Wilcoxon Matched-Pairs Signed-Rank Test was used as the statistical base. Results showed a .05 significance. Of the nine mobile students, six scored equally as well or better when placed in a mobile testing environment.