Classroom management is a common challenge in middle schools. Class-wide Function-Related Intervention Teams (CW-FIT) is a multi-tiered intervention designed to decrease problem behaviors at the classroom level (Wills et al., 2010). It is comprised of evidence-based practices such as teaching classroom expectations, increasing teacher praise, and using positive reinforcement in an interdependent group contingency. CW-FIT has shown promise in a variety of school settings, but it has not been tested in middle school art classrooms. This was initial investigation examining the effects of CW-FIT using a single-subject ABAB design in two middle school art classrooms. Results indicated that class on-task behavior increased by more than 25% and teacher praise-to-reprimand ratios more than doubled during CW-FIT implementation, compared to baseline levels. Results also indicated that on-task behavior for students identified as at-risk for emotional/behavioral disorders improved by more than 18% during the intervention. Teachers and students found the intervention to be socially valid. Results indicate promising implications for using CW-FIT in other middle school art classrooms.

This thesis will critically examine the importance, purpose, methods, and applications of art criticism. Initial background information on types of critical judgment will lay the foundation to understanding the different methods of art criticism. While the articles and journals read on criticism vary in style and method they all have the goal to become a basic framework for examining the form and content of works of art. My goal of this thesis will be to take researched methods of criticism and create my own methods of criticism to be used in the K-12 art education classroom. The body of my research will examine the following methods of criticism (1) Feldman Method, (2) Broudy Method, (3) Lankford Method, (4) Anderson Method, (5) Feminist Conversation Method, (6) Modernism, and (7) Postmodernism. My research will seek to understand the nature of and importance of art criticism and its educational applications for K-12 art classrooms. In conjunction with the examination of these methods and their corresponding stages, I will be able to synthesize three methods of criticism to be used in the classroom: formalist, expressivist, and instrumentalist.