Visual Arts Classroom Research Articles

Digital Media Practices: Exploring the Challenges of Graphic Design Students in Senior High Schools in Ghana

The development and introduction of digital technology for the past three decades have affected every aspect of human life. Since the introduction of digital technology in schools and colleges, most Graphic Design(GD) students have had difficulties making use of these digital technologies for their various artistic expressions. Therefore, exploiting the use of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in the visual arts classroom has been rather challenging for students. This study thus set out to explore the challenges of Graphic design students in Senior High Schools (SHS) in Ghana. The study was conducted quantitatively. It employed the purposive sampling methodology to select four Senior High Schools where Visual Arts is studied in the Ho Municipality in the Volta Region of Ghana. The simple random sampling method was used to select 400 students from the four schools to answer the designed questionnaire. The result revealed that GD students do not involve computer applications in design knowledge to enhance creativity in the Visual Arts class because they were not taught how to use the computer application software for their practical work. It is recommended that there is a need to investigate to know the factors affecting the proper integration of ICT in the learning of Visual Art at the SHS level. Secondly, students should be trained to use ICT software to do Graphic Design work in the classroom. Keywords: Graphic Design, Digital Technology, Visual Art Education, Computers.

An explanatory study of kindergarten teachers’ teaching behaviours in their visual arts classrooms

This study aimed at using a mixture of direct observations and interviews to investigate kindergarten teachers' knowledge and pedagogical approaches to visual arts. An adapted version of the Early Childhood Teacher Behaviour Observation (ECTBO) instrument was used to investigate the possible reasons for teachers' current behaviours in Hong Kong visual arts classrooms. In an observation study, a total of 18 classrooms with 76 children in two local kindergartens in Hong Kong were observed during a 30-min visual arts activity. Altogether, 540 min of video data were recorded and analysed using field notes and a time sampling strategy. In addition, 18 class teachers from the observed classrooms were invited to give post-observation interviews, and 810 min of data were recorded. The interview participants supported the importance of non-directive early childhood arts. However, the observation findings revealed that they still relied heavily on directive teaching in implementing early visual arts teaching. Thus, a discrepancy was found between the teachers’ subject matter knowledge in visual arts and the integration of their pedagogies in their actual classroom practice. The findings of this study in a local setting have the potential to significantly change the way in which early childhood visual arts teaching is conceptualised and discussed in international contexts.

Scaffolding the Visual Arts Classroom with ‘I-GEP’ – Infographic on ‘Elements and Principles of Design’ for Secondary Schools

Scaffolding the Visual Arts Classroom with ‘I-GEP’ – Infographic on ‘Elements and Principles of Design’ for Secondary Schools

Nurturing Creativity in the Visual Arts Classroom Understanding Teacher Strategies through Amabile's Componential Theory

Creative skill-building is a major focus of educational systems around the world. In this article, we draw on data from four K-12 visual arts teachers to illustrate pedagogical strategies used to support students’ creative development. We adopt Teresa Amabile’s Componential Theory of Creativity to frame the teachers’ approaches to creative skill-building, identifying how they nurtured students’task motivation, domain-specific skills, and creativity-relevant processes. By presenting the teaching strategies in this way, we hope to enable art educators to recognize, shape, and enhance how their own teaching can support the development of student creativity in the visual arts classroom.

We The People: Immigration Counter-Narratives in the High School Visual Arts Classroom

Immigrant students are deeply impacted by the xenophobic dominant narratives about immigration in the United States today, and are at risk of developing a deficit mindset about their own cultures. Our classrooms can serve as spaces of resistance to anti-immigrant and neo-nativist values by intentionally raising student critical consciousness about these oppressive forces, and centering our student’s lived experiences and funds of knowledge in the curriculum. This article looks at one high-school arts curriculum unit prompting students to critically analyze the dominant narratives about immigration, interview real immigrants in their lives, and create a counter-narrative art work for public display. The aim for this project was to give immigrant students a space to process, analyze, and counter the xenophobic narratives surrounding them. Summary of the unit plan, student work samples, classroom culture, and alumni testimonials are included.

Utilizing contemporary art forms in the primary after-school: An artist-teacher-researcher perspective

This article discusses the application of the integrative approach to teaching art to primary-school students in after-school activities from the teacher’s perspective. The described case study is based on the theoretical assumption that contemporary art forms are integrative in their nature and are therefore a suitable tool for knowledge integration because they have potential to make the relations between different objects and phenomena more visible. The research questions, addressed in the article, are related to the role of the artist-teacher-researcher in the teaching-learning process in the visual arts classroom and the pedagogical outcomes of applying artistic action research to teaching visual arts through contemporary art forms. An action research was conducted by the artist-teacher-researcher in an international primary after-school environment, and semiotic analysis of the collected verbal and visual data was performed to demonstrate how conceptualization of artistic ideas leads to knowledge construction.

Looking at the Process: Examining Creative and Artistic Thinking in Fashion Designers on a Reality Television Show.

We examine creativity from a qualitative process rather than a quantitative product perspective. Our focus is on “habits of mind” (thinking dispositions) used during the creative process, and the categories we used were those of the eight Studio Habits of Mind observed in visual arts classrooms (Hetland et al., 2007, 2013). Our source of data was footage from a popular reality television show, Project Runway, in which nascent fashion designers are given garment design challenges. An entire season of the show (14 episodes) was transcribed and coded for the presence of eight Studio Habits of Mind. We found abundant evidence of all eight of these thinking dispositions in all portions of the show. We argue that the creative thinking occurring during fashion design bears strong resemblances to that which occurs in the art studio-classroom. Qualitatively created frameworks, like those of the Studio Habits of Mind, can be used to inform our understanding of creative behavior in various disciplines.

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.

The Challenges of Teaching Visual Arts: The Case of Moroccan Higher Education

Visual studies are imparted as majors in many western institutions. This concern with visual culture stems from the vital role of images in communication and how they shape the mindset of the global citizen. Moroccan academia has recently introduced such discipline in some departments in order to modernize the curricula and enhance a liberal education. However, socialization and the dominant local culture favor a more conservative perception of images. The paper explores how these converging narratives operate and how students react to some modern values such as body politics, freedom of expression, subjectivity, etc. The last concern of this study is to analyze to what extent images interrogate and disrupt traditional norms and perceptions and contribute in developing students’ critical thinking, visual literacy, modernist perspectives, intercultural communication and mindfulness. The paper is a mixture of qualitative and quantitative research methods. It is first grounded in the postmodern theoretical framework, but it is also based on a four year teaching visual arts experience, classroom observation, and questionnaires. The ultimate aim of this paper is to share some findings with other practitioners, to address the impediments and challenges of university education and to contribute in designing modern curricula that smoothly prepare the students to embrace multicultural values.

Cultivating imaginative thinking: teacher strategies used in high-performing arts education classrooms

This article reports on recent case-study research that examined teacher- and student-level processes in nine Australian arts classrooms. The selected classrooms, based on the results of a connected longitudinal study, demonstrated strong positive links between arts participation and academic motivation, engagement and achievement. The focus here is on how teachers supported their students to conceive, shape and present imaginative work. Although different approaches were apparent in the dance, drama, film, music and visual arts classrooms, patterns were detected in the processes used to transform imaginative ideas into a creative work. The research indicated that important skills were being developed as the students encountered the ambiguity of the creative process. Furthermore, insights were gained into how work drawing on the imagination can be initiated and sustained through the highs and lows of development to become both a work of art and a learning experience that will augment future creative work.

“You Get to Be Yourself”: Visual Arts Programs, Identity Construction and Learners of English as an Additional Language

Students learning English as an additional language (EAL) in Australian schools frequently struggle with the cultural and linguistic demands of the classroom while concurrently grappling with issues of identity and belonging. This article reports on an investigation of the role primary school visual arts programs, distinct programs with a specialist teacher, in a designated art room, can play in supporting EAL students’ identity construction and social transition. At six Melbourne primary schools, classroom observations and teacher and student interviews revealed that the visual art programs offer clear possibilities for enhanced and empowered constructions of identity. This article focuses on four students as case studies, highlighting the powerful role visual arts programs, classrooms and teachers can play in EAL learners’ identity construction. On a personal and societal level, identity construction and a positive sense of self are essential in our current era of increased linguistic and cultural pluralism, and this study offers insights into how these inclusive goals can be achieved.

Carpe Diem: Seizing the Common Core with Visual Thinking Strategies in the Visual Arts Classroom

Carpe Diem: Seizing the Common Core with Visual Thinking Strategies in the Visual Arts Classroom

Digital Technology in the Visual Arts Classroom: An [Un]Easy Partnership

This article scrutinizes the dichotomy of the uneasy and easy partnerships that exist between digital technology and visual arts education. The claim that by putting computers into schools “we have bought ‘one half of a product’… we’ve bought the infrastructure and the equipment but we haven’t bought the educational piece” (McKenzie, 1999 as cited in Joyce, 2005, p. 52) is considered. Despite the ease with which many art educators have embraced technologies and tools for artistic practice in their classrooms in the past, maximizing the Internet and information communications technology usage in the visual arts classroom has been somewhat problematic. This issue and the largely absent “educational piece” of the product, that is, art made for the Internet and purpose built for Internet-as-gallery, are addressed.

Linking the Nature of Secondary School Students who are Highly Artistic with Curriculum Needs and Instructional Practice

This exploratory qualitative investigation examined the nature of 7 secondary school students who are highly artistic to link visual arts programs that best ac-commodate their learning needs. Instrumentation for data collection included 1 questionnaire, 3 in-depth semistructured one-on-one interviews, artwork docu-ments, observations, and field notes. Findings related to creativity, motivation, social and emotional perspectives, and cognitive processes supported the signifi-cance and benefits of visual arts in student growth. Results identified the development of critical thinking, problem-solving skills, risk-taking, meeting chal-lenges, transferability of skills, extending local and world connections, and environmental and societal concerns. Through artwork production and insight into their needs, students conveyed valuable suggestions for programming en-hancements and visual arts classroom settings. These findings are meaningful for educators and curriculum developers as they distinguish the importance of diver-sified and differentiated learning opportunities in engaging students who are highly artistic to meet their optimal potential, and suggest implications for educa-tional practice.

Digital Portfolios in Visual Arts Classrooms

(2008). Digital Portfolios in Visual Arts Classrooms. Art Education: Vol. 61, Risk, pp. 47-53.

Advancing Media Arts Education in Visual Arts Classrooms: Addressing Policy Ambiguities and Gaps in Art Teacher Preparation

Since the mid-1980s, arts policymakers in Minnesota have positioned media arts—defined as the “study and practice of examining human communication through photography, film or video, audio, computer or digital arts, and interactive media“—within the realm of aesthetic education and considered it one of six arts areas. This article explores the historic policy decisions that led to the nation’s first academic standards in media arts education. We argue that implementation of these benchmarks in state public schools has been hampered by inservice and preservice art teachers’ lack of familiarity with the theory and practice of media arts education. To that end, we propose initiatives that 1) develop an “add-on” certificate program in media arts for licensed arts teachers; and 2) require media arts coursework for preservice teachers seeking admission to art education licensure programs.

ICT in the secondary visual arts classroom: A study of teachers' values, attitudes and beliefs

<blockquote>For some 20 years the literature has been highlighting a range of benefits to be gained from integrating information and communication technology (ICT) in the teaching of visual arts. However, little research has depicted the 'state of play' regarding visual arts teachers' approaches to technology within the Australian context. This paper reports on a study of 14 visual arts teachers from a rural area of Australia and reveals broad diversity in individual teachers' social, artistic and educational values, attitudes and beliefs about ICT, leading to widely diverse approaches to both their personal and professional use of technology. The paper explores a number of key issues, including: whether teachers perceive dissonance between ICT and visual arts; whether teachers believe it is important to integrate ICT in their teaching; the role ICT is currently playing in classrooms; the issues teachers are experiencing and how teachers approach their own ICT learning. It is argued that effective ICT professional development for teachers must take account of teachers' values, attitudes, beliefs and perceptions not only regarding ICT, but in relation to teachers' own approaches to their personal and professional learning.</blockquote><p> </p>

Regional Findings from a Secondary Analysis of the 1997 NAEP Art Assessment Based on Responses to Creating and Responding Exercises

In 1969 Congress charged U.S. Department of Education through National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) with developing and implementing nationally representative and continuing measurement of student achievement in American schools. Assessment of visual arts achievement began with 1974 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and continued in 1978. Findings from these assessments provided initiative for similar high stakes, large-scale, state level assessments of visual arts achievement in 1980s (Sabol, 1990, 1994, 1998a; Shuler & Connealy, 1998). However, subsequent NAEP visual arts assessments were not forthcoming. It was not until 17 years later that visual arts were included again as part of NAEP. Only after arts was added to nation's goals as a core subject (U.S. Department of Education, 1994) and Congress stated that the arts are forms of understanding and knowing that are fundamentally important to education (U.S. Congress, 1994, p 2) were arts reintroduced in assessment. Subsequently, assessments were done in visual arts, music, and theater. Dance was not included in 1997 NAEP. Each student who participated in assessment was assessed in one of three arts. The National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB) was established to formulate policy guidelines for NAEP. It is responsible for selecting subject areas to be assessed, developing assessment objectives, identifying appropriate achievement goals for each grade level and subject tested, and establishing standards and procedures for interstate and national comparisons (National Assessment Governing Board, 1997). The NAGB divided processes involved in visual arts into creating and responding categories and outlined specific knowledge and skills content for each category in its assessment framework for arts (National Assessment Governing Board, 1997). The NAEP framework was deliberately designed to reflect best practices from field and to be compatible with national arts standards (Music Educators National Conference, 1994; National Assessment Governing Board, 1997). Assessment exercises included authentic tasks that assessed knowledge and skills in creating and responding to visual arts. Independent sets of exercises on 1997 NAEP in art were divided into Creating and Responding blocks. Items in these blocks focused on content knowledge, skills, and processes used in making and responding to art. Measurement of students' Creating and Responding ability also is compatible with national visual arts standards (Music Educators National Conference, 1994), visual arts curriculum development (Sabol, 1994), and visual arts classroom practices. A total of eight blocks were developed including three Creating blocks, two Responding blocks, and three blocks that combined assessment of creating and responding knowledge and skills in visual arts.1 No student completed all blocks of assessment. Students completed either one Responding block and one Creating block or two Responding blocks. In order to measure students' knowledge and skills in creating, students were required to create and work with various media to make visual art. Students showed abilities to communicate in works of art, think of different solutions to visual problems, generate for works of art and design, and use their technical proficiency in realizing those ideas (Persky, Sandene, & Askew, 1998, p. 80). They also were asked to evaluate their own work in written form. Evaluation questions asked students to identify, describe, and analyze important qualities in their work. Responding blocks included exercises in which students viewed works of art representing a variety of cultures, genres, and historical periods. Responding questions focused on students' ability to demonstrate their knowledge of media and techniques, visual organization, cultural contexts of artworks, and how user needs are met with well-- designed functional objects. …