The overarching problems to which this study responds are the inadequacies of a traditional language arts curriculum for underserved middle school students and the ways such curricula fall short in providing these students viable means to succeed both academically and socially. The purpose of this study was to learn what happens when underserved middle school students were simultaneously engaged in literacy studies and visual arts learning based on the perceptions of four students, their teacher and the researcher. The questions that guided this study of an integrated literacy curriculum in a visual arts classroom were: 1) What were the perceptions of four underserved middle school students regarding their participation in an arts and literacy integrated curriculum? 2) What were the perceptions of a middle school teacher about student participation arts and literacy integrated curriculum? and, 3) What were the perceptions of the researcher who participated in arts and literacy integrated curriculum? This study incorporated ethnographic techniques of observation, interviews, and artifact collection and analysis as a basis for assessing and interpreting evaluating the real world experiences of students and a teacher. By using a case study methodology along with elements of autoethnography, the study explored primarily the perceptions of four underserved students, along with casual interaction with 24 other students, in class as they engaged in literacy activities in the art class. Results illustrate the students did not find the writing assignment relevant to the associated art activity. Although some students disliked the literacy exercise, some professed to understand its value. Most deemed it irrelevant or inappropriate. All preferred to only work on their art projects. The veteran teacher expressed interest in incorporating language arts into the art class but only did so on a limited basis. It appeared to the researcher that the potential for increasing verbal literacy was likely hampered by inadequate preparation for the lesson. The teacher may not have had a deep belief or motivation to fully utilize this technique. The potential for students to be exposed to deeper literacy integration in the arts class may not have been fully realized.

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To meet the future need of the vocational high school education in Taiwan, the Ministry of Education has redesigned the vocational high school curriculum and is going to implement "The Curriculum Guidelines of Vocational High School" in September 2006. The Guidelines are made with the intention to improve the vocational high school education. However, after studying on the content of the Guidelines, we find some incongruity between the curriculum design and the educational status quo. "The Curriculum Guidelines of Vocational High School" features the core curriculum of the vocational high school education and leaves a lot of space for individual school to develop its school-based curriculum. Nevertheless, while the society emphasizes greatly the value of academic degrees, the vocational high school students, generally speaking, consider their education in vocational high school as nothing but the step stone to their further education, instead of the necessary training for their future profession. Therefore, when designing a new curriculum, the management of the vocational high school has to consider both the Guidelines and the need of the students. Besides, the implementation of "The Curriculum Guidelines of Vocational High School" is going to influence not only the faculty and the students of vocational high schools, but also the supply of professional human resources in the society. Therefore, it is a great opportunity for us to reconsider the goal of vocational high school education. Whether to keep its traditional goal, or to make vocational prep high schools for college education, in my opinion, we need to make a dynamic adjustment of the curriculum to shape the future characteristics of vocational high school education. The objects of this research are the students of the Department of Data Processing of St. Paul's High School. Through interviews with students and questionnaires, the research is to find out a scheme, based on the Curriculum Guidelines of Vocational High School, the school-based educational environment, the study goal of students, for improving the curriculum of the department and hopefully for the reference of other schools.

As a conceptual study, this thesis aims to establish a holistic pedagogy of art integration that would address nurturing the whole child as the goal of education. Over the last few decades, art integration has become an important academic issue in curriculum studies, particularly at the early and primary levels of childhood education. Many have entertained various modes of art integration to promote their personal or institutional philosophies and goals of schooling. As a result, we see some popular arts-integrated programs which can be characterized as ‘interdisciplinary,’ ‘cognitive,’ ‘social,’ or ‘cultural.’ Those programs and approaches suggest, in one way or another, that there are good reasons why we need to be more active in including the arts into curriculum. Our schools would be better off with a well-thought-out arts-integrated curriculum. In this movement, however, there is a critical problem: many have come to believe that the arts are useful in so far as they are good for brain development and academic improvement. This mechanistic or cause-effect view of the relevance of the arts to education has gained solid support and is becoming the major focus when teachers and schools try to integrate the arts into their curricula. Facing this situation, this study proposes a holistic pedagogy of art integration through 1) refining the holistic curriculum with the help of process thought, 2) conceptualizing natural spirituality and its relevance to the whole child, 3) establishing the holistic ways of doing the arts in curriculum, 4) building holistic models of art integration, and 5) discussing some working programs and designing one that best exemplifies the holistic models. The holistic pedagogy of art integration to be established in this study is, then, intended to be one that would remedy some critical issues like reductionism and dualism engrained in the conventional view of art integration that currently dominates our school culture. The holistic ways of the arts developed in this thesis are suggested as one of the more promising ways of transforming our schools into learning and caring communities where our children will have a better chance to thrive as ‘whole persons.’

As a conceptual study, this thesis aims to establish a holistic pedagogy of art integration that would address nurturing the whole child as the goal of education. Over the last few decades, art integration has become an important academic issue in curriculum studies, particularly at the early and primary levels of childhood education. Many have entertained various modes of art integration to promote their personal or institutional philosophies and goals of schooling. As a result, we see some popular arts-integrated programs which can be characterized as ‘interdisciplinary,’ ‘cognitive,’ ‘social,’ or ‘cultural.’ Those programs and approaches suggest, in one way or another, that there are good reasons why we need to be more active in including the arts into curriculum. Our schools would be better off with a well-thought-out arts-integrated curriculum. In this movement, however, there is a critical problem: many have come to believe that the arts are useful in so far as they are good for brain development and academic improvement. This mechanistic or cause-effect view of the relevance of the arts to education has gained solid support and is becoming the major focus when teachers and schools try to integrate the arts into their curricula. Facing this situation, this study proposes a holistic pedagogy of art integration through 1) refining the holistic curriculum with the help of process thought, 2) conceptualizing natural spirituality and its relevance to the whole child, 3) establishing the holistic ways of doing the arts in curriculum, 4) building holistic models of art integration, and 5) discussing some working programs and designing one that best exemplifies the holistic models. The holistic pedagogy of art integration to be established in this study is, then, intended to be one that would remedy some critical issues like reductionism and dualism engrained in the conventional view of art integration that currently dominates our school culture. The holistic ways of the arts developed in this thesis are suggested as one of the more promising ways of transforming our schools into learning and caring communities where our children will have a better chance to thrive as ‘whole persons.’

The goal of this study was to identify strategies used by exemplar practitioners to develop integrated instruction. A pilot case study design was used and four sources of data were analyzed allowing for a convergence of data sets. These data sets included a questionnaire, an audio recording, lesson plans, and student artifacts. Data were analyzed through theme analysis producing 26 strategies. These strategies were then collapsed into a final list of 15 representing important areas of consideration for practitioners. A careful review of these 15 strategies identified three broad strategy categories: Planning, Implementation, and Evaluation. By grouping strategies in this way, each could be shown to relate to specific aspects of the overall integrative instructional process. / Master of Arts

The purpose of the current research was to examine the effects of a sequence of classroom activities that integrated mathematics content with music elements aimed at providing teachers an alternative approach for teaching mathematics. Two classes of third grade students (n=56) from an elementary school in Southern California participated in the research. A random assignment pretest-posttest control group design was used to examine students' changes in mathematics content achievement and the disposition between the two groups. The students in the music group received music-mathematics integrated lessons. A quasi-experiment time series design with multiple pretests, mid-tests and posttests was utilized for investigating the effects of music-mathematics integrated lessons on students' mathematics process ability levels. The results demonstrated that the intervention of a series of music-mathematics integrated lessons had positive effects on the music group students. The findings showed that the music group students had statistically significantly higher scores on mathematics achievement, and mathematics dispositions after the intervention. Moreover, the music group students also showed statistically significant improvement on scores in the mathematics process abilities from pretests to posttests. The study results suggested that music, with its unique features, can be used as a resource for students to make these connections and also as a way for students to represent mathematics in alternative ways. The findings suggest that teachers should take advantage of the opportunities that music offers to help all students learn mathematics in challenging and enjoyable ways developing students' mathematics achievement, mathematical process ability, and mathematics dispositions.

The purpose of the study is to investigate factors of 7th graders learning attitude in mathematics. According to the result of this study, the research provides some suggestions for the education authorities, the schools and future study. The approaches used in this research are Questionnaire on Mathematics Learning Attitude. 168 7th graders were randomly sampled at a Junior High School in Kaohsiung City. The feedback undergoes a descriptive statistics, two-sample independent Student t test, Pearson Correlation among other statistical methods. The following are conclusions of the research: 1. Factors of influencing 7th graders Attitude in Mathematics are the following eight elements. They are confidence of learning, influence of teachers, concept about value of mathematics, influence of the art of teaching, efficacy of self-learning, effect of learning, pressure of learning, and fearlessness. 2. Confidence of learning, influence of teachers, concept about value of mathematics, efficacy of self-learning, effect of learning, fearlessness, and grades in mathematics have moderate related. 3. Concept about value of mathematics, effect of learning, influence of teachers, efficacy of self-learning, fearlessness, confidence of learning demonstrate significantly different degrees of respect on students whose grades between above 70 and under 70. 4. Confidence of learning, influence of teachers, concept about value of mathematics, efficacy of self-learning, effect of learning, fearlessness can forecast learning grades in mathematics. Ultimately, based up on the above findings, the researcher of this study proposed 3 suggestions for the authorities concerned and official staffs.

The purpose of this study is to develop a curriculum which integrated life education and music and to examine the effects of this integrated curriculum on senior high school students¡¦ sense of purpose of life and attitudes toward death. Using a quasi-experimental design, two freshman classes were selected from a Junior high school in Pintung County. Then the two classes were randomly assigned to the experiment group and the control group. The former received a 10-week long integrated life education/music curriculum, while the latter did not receive any treatment. Before and after the experiment, both groups of students were tested on the purpose of life and attitudes toward death, and they answered several open-ended questions about life and death. The experimental group also gave feedbacks about the curriculum. The results of this study found that, after the intervention, the two groups showed no difference in their changes in their sense of the purpose of life and attitudes toward death. However, the students evaluated the program positively; they considered the topic discussed important and liked the way it is integrated into the music curriculum. They also reported that they are inspired to contemplate the complex issue of life and death. Based upon the findings, the implications of this study were discussed.

This study focused on the integration of book arts in a fifth grade classroom. As an art teacher turned regular education teacher I was interested in the effects of integrating art into the area of reading. The curriculum unit consists of two lessons in which the students were invited to use books arts as a means of expression and comprehension. The lessons correlated with the novel Number the Stars, by Lois Lowry. The results include my observations and reflections as a practicing elementary teacher.