Arts Classroom Research Articles

Multiple Temporalities, Layered Histories

In Quotational Practices: Repeating the Future in Contemporary Art, Patrick Greaney asserts, “the past matters not only because of what actually happened but also because of the possibilities that were not realized and that still could be. Quotation evokes those possibilities. By repeating the past, artists and writers may be attempting to repeat that past’s unrealized futures.”[1] In the information age, the Internet, for instance, provides us an expanded collection of visual information—quite literally available at our fingertips—summoning together aspects of the past and possibilities of the future into a boundless present. Sketchbook Revisions (2014–2015), a series of mixed-media paintings, represents my attempt to communicate the ways in which I experience my contemporary moment constructed from multiple temporalities excavated from my past. This body of work combines fragments of representational paintings created between 1995 and 2003 and nonrepresentational renderings produced between 2003 and 2014. Using traditional tracing paper and graphic color, I randomly select moments of my previous work to transfer and layer over selected areas of already-filled pages of a sketchbook I used from 2003 to 2004. These sketches depict objects I encountered in studio art classrooms and iconic architecture on the campus of McDaniel College, and often incorporate teaching notes. The final renditions of fragmented and layered histories enact the ways that we collectively experience multiple temporalities in the present. Quoting my various bodies of work, Sketchbook Revisions challenges both material and conceptual boundaries that determine fixed notions of artistic identity.

Getting into Flow in the Arts Classroom: Research Findings and Implications for Practice

Getting into Flow in the Arts Classroom: Research Findings and Implications for Practice

Lingua Anglia: Bridging Language and Learners: Building Resilience: Refugee Students in the Language Arts Classroom

“Lingua Anglia: Bridging Language and Learners” discusses critical, transformative, and powerful ways to support students’ acquisition of Standard English.

Teachers’ instructional practices during pupils’ individual seatwork in Norwegian Language arts

ABSTRACTThis study examines teachers’ instructional practices during seatwork in primary Norwegian Language arts classrooms. Although seatwork is a common activity in classrooms, our knowledge about what teachers actually do during this activity is limited. In this qualitative study, six teachers in third grade primary school were videotaped while pupils worked individually. The study gives examples from writing instruction. An analytical framework was developed based on existing research and used for coding of the video data. The analyses reveal that the participating teachers utilised their time during seatwork very differently. Two of the six teachers spent a majority of the time on instructional support (for instance challenging pupils’ thinking), while the other four spent the majority of the time on organizational support (for instance practical help) or monitoring (for instance listening to pupil read). Emotional support was almost non-existent in these classrooms. Teachers’ use of challenging versus telling as a way of supporting pupils is a key difference among the observed teachers.

Motivation, Needs Support, and Language Arts Classroom Practices: Creation and Validation of a Measure of Young Adolescents’ Perceptions

Early adolescence is a critical time for examining academic motivation, specifically motivation to read. To support self-determined motivation to read, students’ needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness must be met within the classroom context. Because classroom instructional practices are a key component of adolescents’ daily experiences in the classroom, research that investigates the influence of these practices on students’ intrinsic motivation to read is needed. In addition, the perceptions of students regarding the degree to which classroom instructional practices meet students’ needs as well as the influence of classroom instructional practices on students’ motivation to read should be considered. The field is lacking an established measure of early adolescents’ perceptions of classroom instructional practices and the degree to which they support students’ needs (i.e., competence, autonomy) and intrinsic motivation to read. This study, guided by self-determination theory, sought to address this gap in the literature by developing and validating a measure called the Language Arts Reading Practices Survey (LARPS). This measure assessed student perceptions of the degree to which classroom instructional practices in the language arts classroom support students’ needs for competence, autonomy, and students’ self-determined motivation to read. The results of this study provide preliminary support for the validity of the LARPS.

Implementing Vocabutoons in the English Language Arts Classroom: Drawing Their Way to Success

Implementing Vocabutoons in the English Language Arts Classroom: Drawing Their Way to Success

From Awareness to Action: Teacher Attitude and Implementation of LGBT-Inclusive Curriculum in the English Language Arts Classroom

This survey research describes English language arts teachers’ comfort levels in integrating literature with lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) themes or characters into their curricula and classroom practices. Significant relationships were found between teachers’ age, comfort, awareness of resources, and implementation levels. Although younger teachers had higher comfort levels with LGBT texts, they displayed lower resource awareness levels and static implementation rates. In addition, comfort, awareness, and implementation of LGBT curriculum materials were also correlated with teacher location and with strength of religious belief, with rural teachers and strongly religious teachers displaying lower comfort and implementation levels. Availability of supportive resources such as gay–straight alliances (GSAs) and library holdings, as well as teachers’ awareness of these resources, is also examined. Specific barriers rural teachers encounter when implementing LGBT-inclusive literature/curriculum are identified. A call for future research and professional development is extended.

Does a teacher’s classroom observation rating vary across multiple classrooms?

Classroom observations have been increasingly used for teacher evaluations, and it is important to examine the measurement quality and the use of observation ratings. When a teacher is observed in multiple classrooms, his or her observation ratings may vary across classrooms. In that case, using ratings from one classroom per teacher may not be adequate to represent a teacher’s instructional quality. Drawing on the Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) dataset, this study examined the variation of a teacher’s classroom observation ratings across his or her multiple classrooms. The results indicate that the math classrooms accounted for 4.9 to 14.7% of the variance in the classroom observation ratings and English language arts (ELA) classrooms accounted for 6.7 to 15.5% of the variance in the ratings. The results of this study suggest that teachers’ multiple classrooms should be taken into consideration when classroom observation ratings are used to evaluate teachers in high-stakes settings.

Unpacking disability-related curriculum in the Language Arts classroom

PurposeThe purpose of this paper was to understand what disability-related curriculum (DRC) looked like in the middle school Language Arts classroom. DRC refers to any curricular material and related pedagogical approach intended to address students’ understanding of disability. The authors drew on the experiences of three in-service middle school Language Arts teachers to understand what disability-related texts they selected, and why they chose to incorporate DRC into their classrooms.Design/methods/approachThe authors used a qualitative, exploratory multi-case design to understand the what and why underlying three middle school language arts teachers’ use of DRC.FindingsFindings from this study revealed that teachers leveraged DRC to broaden students’ understanding of diversity, increase empathy and provide exposure to disabilities; teachers gathered resources both online and within existing curriculum; and DRC varied in curricular and pedagogical structure.Research limitationsThe results of this study are exploratory. Although the aforementioned findings are promising, they are limited, due to the small sample size and relatively homogeneous participant demographics. Additional research that incorporates a larger and more diverse sample of participants would serve to broaden, or potentially confirm, the results of this study.Practical implicationsThe results of this study provide insight into current practice around DRC while illustrating some of the limitations that teachers may encounter when integrating this practice.Originality/valueWhile Language Arts curriculum often explores diversity in relation to race or class, it rarely focuses a lens on disability. This study fills a void in current research by providing empirical data on how educators approach the design and implementation of disability programming in their respective classrooms.

Orthodoxy revisited: the postsecular classroom

As is the case with many new intellectual concepts, the definitional parameters of the term ‘postsecular’ are in flux and ultimately will shape its critical usefulness. This article represents an effort to participate in this discussion with a particular emphasis on the pedagogical importance of the tenets of religious orthodoxy when discussing spiritual matters in the university-level liberal arts classroom. The analysis is contextualized by reflection on the place of religion in the public sphere by various scholars, including Jürgen Habermas and Rowan Williams. This analysis establishes that the study of traditional religious positions in the university classroom can enrich the discourse of the liberal arts; however, neither proselytization nor an emotion-based spiritual paradigm bereft of intellectual rigor will serve these ends. I argue that the re-introduction of religion into analytical discourse in the humanities classroom will be successful if the discussion of religion is complemented by the recognition of the serious study of religious thought and scholarship. The argument is then developed through a pedagogical case study of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited that illustrates how the discussion of orthodox positions can enhance discussion of the novel in the postsecular classroom.

Picking Up Speed: Re-Thinking Visual Art Education as Assemblages

In contemporary visual arts education, neoliberal managerialism has meant that education has become end-product driven. This article builds on a mindset of how to perform an affirmative critique by analyzing relationality as entanglements of subjects and objects, or educational assemblages, in the visual arts classroom. Drawing on visual ethnography in an upper secondary school in Sweden, we analyze speeds and intensities as bodily experienced affect. The speed and intensity increased in the classroom when the teacher introduced materials connected to a film project. The complex encounters and entanglements between human and nonhuman bodies accelerated the intensity in the educational assemblages. As a result, we suggest a methodology of visual invention that can resist the logics of the neoliberal discourse and unleash the potentials for creativity by working with learning encounters as well as becoming open and sensitive toward unexpected events.

Adapting Art Critiques to Address Digital Harm

Abstract How can we use the skills our students have already developed in the art classroom to address digital harm issues? Pre-service art teachers and students who are comfortable with the critiquing process and understand it as a way to systematically explore and discuss the technical, contextual, and interpretive aspects of artwork may be able to apply the same skills to analyze digital harm incidents so they can be better prepared for digital life.

Relocalizing Standards in English Language Arts: Consequences on Functions of Literacy

ABSTRACTThe authors examine the functions of literacy in three accountability-driven English language arts classrooms. To explore the interplay between transmission-oriented, standards-based instruction and local interpretations and uses of literacy, they employed Pennycook’s (2010) notion of relocalization. The authors examine how accountability mandates, relocalized as curricular standards, and relocalized again in textbook materials and teachers’ instructional moves, shape the functions of literacy in these classrooms, with consequences for students’ negotiation of meaning of the assigned texts. They found that language and literacy practices across ability tracks, curricular tracks, and teachers emphasized “separating” functions of literacy: separating, reducing, and narrowing (a) which texts or aspects of text counted as official or important, (b) which ways of making meaning with texts counted as legitimate, and (c) which meanings counted as legitimate interpretations. The contribution of this work is to expose the mechanisms by which these separating functions of literacy occur in diverse classrooms, and to examine how a common approach to standards-based instruction, encouraged in the current accountability paradigm, limits students’ possibilities for meaning-making by encouraging “separating” functions of literacy to the near exclusion of student-centered involvement in meaning-making. The authors conclude by suggesting alternative frames and approaches for attending to standards.

Challenges

Challenges

図画工作・美術科の授業における教師の発話に関する実践研究・IV : 深沢アート研究所「こども造形教室」と図画工作・美術科の授業の比較から

図画工作・美術科の授業における教師の発話に関する実践研究・IV : 深沢アート研究所「こども造形教室」と図画工作・美術科の授業の比較から

Teaching Tainted Lit: Popular American Fiction in Today's ClassroomJanet G.Casey, Editor. University of Iowa Press, 2015.

Teaching Tainted Lit: Popular American Fiction in Today’s Classroom Janet G. Casey, Editor. University of Iowa Press, 2015.The essays in Teaching Tainted Lit: Popular American Fiction in Today's Classroom suggest a shift in terms of the fundamental question in literary studies concerning literature: rather than ask if popular texts deserve a place in our classrooms, the more prevalent question is how these texts can incorporated in fruitful, appropriate ways. Janet Casey, in her introduction, states, Our collective sense of the literary has become much more capacious, and many would say more compelling, as a result of this enlarged version of what literature might be (3). Rather than permission, then, contemporary teachers of literature are instead looking for methodological examples; Teaching Tainted Lit contains ten. While the collection mentions a wide array of literary and cultural theorists, it is clearly focused on practical rather than on theoretical concerns.Even with this paradigmatic shift away from possibility and toward method, the essays contain ample contextual material about the history of pedagogical difficulties related popular, or tainted, literature. Many of the authors refer issues of canon-formation and and collectively assert that this history of debate is in fact one of the more rewarding attributes of popular literature. Incorporating tainted texts into the classroom provides opportunities for students engage with questions of canonicity and aesthetics. As Randi Lynn Tanglen offers, I hope organize my classes so that students can part of the debates about their education and make these judgments for themselves (33). For Tanglen, the incorporation of popular texts in her early American literature survey course allows students to become aware of the arbitrary nature of aesthetic values and assumptions (47). Melissa Gniadek says something similar about her inclusion of a nineteenthcentury serialized novel, of Prairie Eden (1848): 'Bel instructs students at least consider the possible politics of a particular aesthetics (29). Other authors in the collection echo the sentiments of Tanglen and Gniadek, stressing the idea that rather than revolting against the existence of a canon, the inclusion of popular texts instead affords fresh opportunity for students critically engage with questions about and implications of a canon.Discussions surrounding canon-formation are important-but expected-results of the inclusionary view toward popular literature espoused in this collection. More intriguing in Teaching Tainted Lit are the rather surprising approaches and outcomes many of the essays propose. For example, in Sneaking It In at the End: Teaching Popular Romance in the Liberal Arts Classroom, Antonia Losano suggests a unique home for romance literature: the undergraduate literary theory course. …

Language policy, language ideology, and visual art education for emergent bilingual students

ABSTRACTIn 1968 the Bilingual Education Act marked the first comprehensive federal intervention in the schooling of language minoritized students by creating financial incentives for bilingual education in an effort to address social and educational inequities created by poverty and linguistic isolation in schools. Since that time federal education policies related to language instruction for emergent bilingual students have undergone a number of shifts that reflect changing ideological perspectives on language and citizenship. These shifts, in turn, frame seemingly neutral educational requirements for preservice and practicing art educators related to language and visual art instruction, implicating art educators in ideological stances toward students and families who primarily speak languages other than English. This article reviews the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in its most recent reauthorization as the Every Student Succeeds Act, and offers insight into ideological implications of standards and assessments that impact art educator preparation and art teaching practices with regard to language in the art classroom, including the National Core Arts Standards and the Education Teacher Performance Assessment. Implications regarding ways art education, framed by ideological policies, might support or undermine social and educational inequities educational policies are intended to address are discussed.

Effective Creative Writing Instruction

The purpose of this project is to couple existing literature and research along with my own experience in order to develop unique recommendations for incorporating creative writing instruction into the English Language Arts classroom. I arrived at this line of inquiry after noticing a lack of creative writing instruction during my student teaching, despite the fact that I always believed creative writing to be an integral component of the English Language Arts classroom. Through my research, I sought to discover the merits of creative writing instruction as well as good practices for implementation.

Multimodal exploration of civic stance in the English Language Arts classroom

PurposeThis study/paper aims to explore civic participation within multimodal expression. With the rise of content produced and circulated within participatory cultures online, there has been much attention raised regarding questions of audience and attention to this content. For example, does production of media content constitute having a voice if no one is paying attention?Design/methodology/approachUsing multimodal analysis and mediated discourse analysis, this study examines adolescents’ school-based media production and use of multimodal ensembles to recruit and maintain audience attention to specific content in their radio and video documentaries.FindingsResearch findings reveal deliberate attempts to connect with audience needs when creating media as well as exploration of emerging civic identities.Research limitations/implicationsQuestions for how researchers in literacy and learning can further investigate and articulate civic engagement and advocacy are suggested.Practical implicationsImplications for how teachers can use multimodality to create spaces for civic engagement are provided.Originality/valueThis study is original in that few studies have applied the concepts of participatory politics to media products and process conducted in school settings. This study begins to test the utility of these constructs.

Language Identity in the Elementary English Language Arts Classroom

AbstractIn response to the growing number of linguistically diverse students in elementary classrooms, this Teaching Tip centers stories of students exploring language identity and use in one fourth‐grade classroom in the Midwestern United States. Specifically, the author situates this Teaching Tip by first telling how students engaged in a discussion about the Navajo code talkers before nuancing stories of two linguistically diverse elementary students as they navigated and negotiated the intricacies of language identity in their school. The author then illuminates how teachers can open new spaces for dialogue about and the practice of a multiplicity of languages.