I still don't feel like I have really gotten rolling on my research, but now I feel like I can after we talked about what I can start. I gave my students the pre-instruction survey on Friday, but I haven't reviewed results. Students also wrote their second process journals on Friday. Next week, I plan to review the data from the survey and the journals to plan some voice mini-lessons.
My Drawing students are the first group that has finished their skill building practice and is ready to apply those skills to a creative project. We did a whole group brainstorming activity where I gave them big concepts on post-it notes and we started adding other topics and sub topics to the list. Finally, I had them add specific personal experiences and connections underneath the sub topics. I knew at least two of my students were struggling, but after the activity I talked with one of my new students and she seemed a lot more confident. When we first conferenced about her idea, she was stuck on images of skeletons, aliens, and dreamcatchers from Google. After the activity she is focused on a mythological creature/deity that she knows about and is combining multiple reference photos to create an original image. I am pretty confident that my research falls under Grounded Theory. I am a little intimidated by how specific the analysis techniques seem, but I'm sure it will make more sense when I get there.
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The beginning of this school year has been chaotic and a lot of changes are happening at my school. I started out with a negative attitude and had to purposely give myself an attitude adjustment. This will be our first year at my school implementing the TLCS initiatives, so we have three full-time coaches (instructional, technology, and at-risk/success) and four new PLC leaders. We are still a one-to-one school but switched from IPADs to Chromebooks this year. I am finding little things that I did using the IPADs that don't work on the Chromebooks, but the student's websites and Google Classroom work so much better. I hope this will help with students' blogging and documentation.
The change that has had the biggest impact on my research so far is the implementation of Win-Win time instead of study halls. Rather than having study hall throughout the day, students will now all have Win-Win during 6th period. Due to the upheaval this caused in the master schedule, most core teachers had their class sizes increase, and most of the elective teachers saw their class sizes shrink dramatically. Last year I had full classes of 20 in both of my Foundations classes, and this year my Foundations section had 4! Before the first day of school, my largest HS class had five students and I was only teaching 14 total students at the HS level throughout the day. Four of those fourteen were going to be completely new students to me. An additional three have failed art classes with me multiple times because of not completing work and turning in poorly done process documentation if they turned in any at all. If most of my research data is coming from their process documentation, what happens if 25% don't turn it in?? What if I don't get any quality data? Needless to say, I was very upset and worried that this big change happened to fall on the semester that I was collecting my data. Could I even have useful data with that few students? As the week went on, schedules shuffled and I signed many independent study forms. My class sizes are still small, but bigger than they were. My biggest period of HS now has 8 students. Two of my periods will be a grab bag of students taking different classes. My 2nd hour has three students in three different classes, one Foundations, one Intermediate Drawing, and one Advanced. My 7th hour has six students enrolled in four different classes. If I wasn't already a TAB minded teacher I would have needed to become one this year to accommodate this weird situation, but my flexibility is allowing more kids to get into the art room. The kids who have added are ones I am confident will give me valuable data and be thoughtful as they document their process throughout the semester. I'm glad that I was already planning to make my instruction this year more focused on voice, artistic research and critique than on technique because I think I can still teach all of these diverse classes as a group. Since Monday is the last day for schedule changes, I plan to have my instructional coach come in on Tuesday to introduce the study and the assent forms. Their first journal will be due next Friday, and I plan to give my pre-instruction survey as soon as I get the consent/assent forms returned. During the following week, I plan to give my first lesson on artistic voice and share some artists based on a similar theme. It is going to be a crazy semester, but I am feeling much more excited and optimistic now. Walker, M. A. (2014). From theory to practice: Concept-based inquiry in a high school art classroom. Studies in Art Education, 55(4), 287-299.
This article was an inquiry into the effectiveness of the teaching methods of a specific high school art teacher. The author’s research questions were:
The research methodology used was a mixed methods qualitative study that combined survey and case study. The researcher considered phenomenology during her observations and notes and used triangulation to analyze her data. Data Collection Who: The author studied 26 students between the ages of 14-19 and their high school art teacher. The students were racially diverse and had varying levels of experience in art prior to this class. The researcher met this teacher during his presentation during the 2007 NAEA conference. What: The author collected data using a questionnaire given to students at the beginning and end of the study, observing in the classroom, conducting interviews with the students and the instructor, student artwork, video, audio, and student and teaching reflective writing samples. The researcher interviewed the teacher and 14 of the 26 students, recorded class discussions, photographed student artwork. When: This study was conducted over 5 months. Where: The study was conducted at a public high school with a mostly white and middle class demographic. It is the only high school in the district, but the teacher studied is not the only art teacher in the building. I think the methods used were able to answer the research questions. The author concluded that students in Mr. Miller’s class grew in their level of engagement, more diverse in the depth of concepts they tackled. They chose more unconventional materials, and used a more sophisticated decision making and problem solving process. From student interviews, she found that students felt valued, developed a stronger sense of self, better problem solving skills, and a better ability to apply what they had learned to themselves and other classes. Even though Mr. Miller does not self-identify as a TAB teacher, the goals of his teaching are very similar or the same. He wants his students to be creative and make postmodern art that is expressive and meaningful. He believes his teaching style represents a paradigm shift away from traditional skills and elements and principles focused curriculum. In his class, students choose their own materials and process to answer an essential question. They also work reflect on their work through writing before and after making what Miller calls their “artifact”. This study definitely shows that Mr. Miller’s teaching style and philosophy does increase student growth and artistic thinking. The limitations of the study are that it is only in one classroom with one teachers. The study is unable to answer if other teachers could replicate the results by using Mr. Miller’s teaching style, or if the other teaching styles could be used with similar results. However, this study is a powerful indicator that a focus outside of skills/formalism is a benefit for student creativity. It would be interesting to see a longitudinal study of Mr. Miller’s students to see how they reported their satisfaction with their art class later in life. It would also be interesting to see how they reported feeling after switching to a more traditional class. The research question I am interested in pursuing is: How is Teaching for Artistic Behavior (TAB) applied and implemented at the secondary level? There are many resources available for teaching TAB at the elementary level, but the secondary level, especially high school, is an area where no defined best practice seems to exist. One of the exciting things for me about TAB is that most of the best "research" out there is grassroots based and appears on teachers' blogs, Facebook groups, and twitter. These teachers are striving for best practice through reflection, collaboration, sharing, and informal means. I am interested in looking at these resources and practices through a more formal research lens. BooksIn Engaging Learners Through Artmaking, the founders of TAB, Katherine Douglas and Diane Jaquith, lay out their philosophy of teaching and practice of teaching TAB in their elementary classrooms. This book is the "How?" and the "Why?" of teaching with TAB pedagogy. It has the positive of being a direct source, but is very elementary focused. While the philosophy can be applied to the HS level, many of the practices are not applicable. This text is a series of essays written by teachers who employ the TAB pedagogy and philosophy in their classrooms. The Learner-Directed Classroom shows a wide breadth of practices in different classrooms. It includes perspectives from some middle level teachers, but HS perspectives are absent. Studio Thinking 2 is one of the most commonly cited texts related to TAB practices. Although it does not align itself with TAB in name, it focuses on using the Studio Habits of Mind as a foundation for art curriculum and assessment. This aligns with the TAB philosophy of creating a learning space that is more like an artist's studio and less like a traditional classroom. This text seems to focus less on theory, and more on classroom practice. Websiteshttp://teachingforartisticbehavior.org This is the official site for Teaching for Artistic Behavior. The site provides information about TAB philosophy and practice, as well as links to journal articles, message boards, and social media groups. http://www.openartroom.com This website is created by practicing HS teachers Melissa Purtee and Ian Sands. The use this site as a sounding board to reflect and share their philosophy and successes teaching TAB at the HS level. Journal ArticlesSmoke and Mirrors: Art Teacher as Magician by Nan E. Hathaway © 2013. This article discusses the shift from the teacher centered to the student centered approach and how it changes the responsibilities of the teacher. Instruction shifts from the whole group to targeting smaller groups and individuals. High School TABology - Ian Sands, School Arts March 2016 This article discusses the lack of resources available for teachers implementing a TAB pedagogy at the High School level. The article suggests using units based on what artists do and how they practice as a basis for best practice at the HS level. Even though Ian Sands is one of the leading voices in promoting TAB education at the secondary level, this article was submitted to a less formal publication. Issues and DirectionsLooking for and reading through these resources has brought up many questions and directions of inquiry that I could follow to research TAB practices at the secondary level.
What are best practices in TAB assessment? How are they similar or different to those in DBAE? Core-subjects? Why are there so few scholarly sources about secondary TAB? Do practitioners not have the education or access to publish through more official channels? Are they forgoing them for more democratic/practical platforms? Are students in TAB classrooms able to reach the same pinnacle of skill as those students in DBAE structured classrooms? Do students in TAB classrooms have a stronger artistic voice? Are students coming out of TAB programs more creative? Can students in TAB programs apply their learning to daily life? Are students in TAB classrooms stronger than peers in 21st C. Skills? What research from other disciplines links/supports TAB pedagogy? (Core subjects, general education research etc.?) What other pedagogy does TAB support? (Holistic education, Social practice, Critical pedagogy) Do TAB teachers know they are using facets of these research backed pedagogies? While TAB is a current hot topic in art education, there are many avenues of research that haven't been explored. |
AuthorMorgan Singleton is a secondary art educator with a Master's degree in art education. Archives
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