Thesis (M.S.)--Central Connecticut State University, 1999. / Thesis advisor: Dr. Cassandra Broadus-Garcia. " ... in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science [in Art]." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 65-68).

Thesis (D.A.)--Illinois State University, 1999. / Title from title page screen, viewed July 31, 2006. Dissertation Committee: Marilyn Provart Newby (chair), Susan F. Amster, Linda M. Willis Fisher, Edward R. Hines. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 94-99) and abstract. Also available in print.

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Projective tree drawing techniques are used by clinicians and therapists to assess the personality and emotional state of patients. This study compares the results of administering a computerized projective tree drawing technique with the results obtained by a pencil and paper counterpart. Both techniques are based upon the tree drawing component of the House-Tree-Person technique and related tests. With Compute-A-Tree, subjects created tree pictures from a menu of preselected imagery while subjects taking the conventional form of the technique produced spontaneous tree drawings. A post-drawing questionnaire (PDQ) employing a Likert scale was used to measure subjects attitudes regarding their tree images. The mean score for computer rendered trees was higher than the mean score for conventionally rendered images. Similarities were found between responses to the images obtained through the two forms of administration.

Visual Purple is based on the author's experience with the Old Pasqua Youth Artists (OPYA) which is a biweekly, after-school program for Yaqui youth ranging from five to fifteen years of age. The paper seeks to relate the primary experiences of seeing and drawing linking them to cultural concepts, socialization patterns, and community setting. The Yaqui children's perceptual understanding acquired through learning and development co-varies with their cultural environment and upbringing. Through a content analysis of the OPYA artwork with special attention paid to the children's interactions, she contends that this understanding manifests as a set of aesthetic principles, the knowledge of core cultural symbols, and shared interpersonal behaviors based on cooperation, watching, and learning. The data suggests that the rich symbolism of Yaqui culture aesthetically socializes the children giving them an eye for detail and the ability to pick up and readily relay visual concepts.

This thesis surveys 171 undergraduate art students at the University of Arizona to evaluate the effect their high school art teachers had on their career decision to enter a college art program. The parental influence is addressed. Student responses are viewed by gender, classification and major. Findings indicate the teachers influence less than 50% of their students and that parents have a greater influence in the decision process. There are definite gender differences, males talked with their parents more than females but females expressed more support from parents once in an art program. Students in commercially viable studio programs, graphic design and photography, report greater parental support.

The purpose of this qualitative study was to look at the attitudes of fifth grade students and those who may influence their views toward picture books and try to derive meaning from those views in relation to visual literacy. The development of visual literacy is becoming increasingly important for all members of society and picture books are a medium with the potential for developing this competency. / To achieve the purposes of this study, the researcher conducted interviews with sixteen participants, as part of a multi-case study approach, in three phases. Six fifth grade student participants were the focus of the study. Also interviewed were the parents, teachers, media specialist and administrator of the students. All participants were interviewed first in relation to background, next in relation to their views on picture books and visual literacy and last in relation to response to the focus picture book, Agatha's Feather Bed: Not Just Another Wild Goose Tale (Deedy, 1991). / Methodologically, the researcher was the key instrument for data collection, accumulating data via audio-cassette tapes and journal notes. Participant observation and data triangulation techniques were also implemented. / As a result of data analysis in this particular qualitative study, the following conclusions were derived. Participants believe: (1) size takes precedence over the quality of a book with bigger being better and picture books not being big enough (2) picture books represent early childhood and descriptive terminology validates this view and (3) picture books can impede the reading process. These participant views, combined with the fact that visual cues were often eschewed during the reading of the focus picture book, indicate a potential impediment to visual literacy founded on and encouraged by adult views and perpetuated by fifth grade students. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 55-01, Section: A, page: 0067. / Major Professor: Carol Lynch-Brown. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1994.

America's consumer society runs on desire. The mass media are instrumental in feeding this desire, transforming common objects and experiences from peanut butter to political candidacy into signs of things people covet most: security, health, beauty, love, and so on. They successfully commodity our most basic instincts in this way. With the current proliferation of mass media advertising, it seems appropriate that art education, dealing as it does in visual imagery, should prepare students to intelligently address advertising imagery. The purpose of this study, then, was to develop a conceptual framework and model to teach secondary students to understand commercial print advertising. It is thought that the value of this lies in helping students become informed participants rather than manipulated subjects within the larger social context. / A review of literature provided the data for the study. First, an overview of advertising theory and history established advertising's philosophical foundations and reasons for being, and advertising philosophy's relationship to the methods it uses to portray visual imagery in a printed format. Second, teaching and learning theories were examined that potentially provide qualitative thinking skills necessary for critically studying advertising imagery. Third, educational art criticism methods were reviewed, analyzed, and evaluated to determine their effectiveness and appropriateness in both addressing advertising imagery and in promoting critical thinking skills. A synthesis of the information led to the formation of a critical model composed of nine stages: receptiveness, reaction, contextual information (Option I), description, formal analysis, characterization, interpretation, contextual information (Option II), and synthesis. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 53-10, Section: A, page: 3429. / Major Professor: Tom Anderson. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1992.

The purpose of this research was to conceptualize an art criticism format appropriate for extracting aesthetic meanings from works of art. Two tasks required doing: (a) the determination of an adequate framework for understanding the development of visual art concepts in an educative context; and (b) the determination of an appropriate art criticism format to structure that development. / The theoretical underpinnings of the research draw from (a) the phenomenological aesthetics of Eugene Kaelin (1968, 1986); (b) John Dewey's (1933) model of reflective thinking; (c) Lev Vygotsky's (1962) cultural-historical theory of conceptual development; and (d) an understanding of artistic symbols and aesthetic meanings deriving primarily from the writing of Philip Phenix (1966), Benedetto Croce (1909), Marylou Kuhn (1980, 1984), Harold Osborne (1966, 1982), and Philip Smith (1966a, 1966b). / It was established that we comprehend a language of art forms through the expressiveness of art symbols. Further, it was established that aesthetic meanings are found in works of art through a type of semiotic analysis; in instances of visual art such analyses seek to point out the isomorphic structural similarity between paintings, say, and their 'meanings'. As such, isomorphisms may be considered to result at intersections of analytic and analogic modes of knowing. / A format for visual art criticism, titled Critical Art Reflection, was devised to parallel Dewey's model of reflective thinking and to incorporate Kaelin's aesthetics. The criticism format evolved in classroom use, as a dialectic of theory instructed by practice. The model includes instructional aspects that attend to the development of students' language about aesthetic qualities. Methodology includes format as approach, questioning strategies on three levels, and selected art criticism activities intended to parallel visual and verbal expression. / The theoretical portion of the research is informed by and illustrated with material from a piloted demonstration of its working. Using reproductions of works of art in classroom art criticism, transcribed excerpts of classroom dialogue are presented to exemplify the aspects and components of Critical Art Reflection. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 50-01, Section: A, page: 0056. / Major Professor: Marylou Kuhn. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1988.