LTC 8750 Annotated Bibliography

Open publication - Free publishing - More art

Ch. 7 What Works?

Time Line: I’m not sure that I will be able to do this in the upcoming school year because of so many obligations already on my plate but here goes dreaming:

July-Mid. Aug.: Create Surveys and Pretests. Blog about the process.

Aug.: Get Permission from Principle. Blog about the process.

Sept: First day of school: get student permission and send home parental permission.

          As soon as permission is returned administer survey and pretest to students in Art I classes.

          Hopefully this will be during the first week of school.  Blog about the process.         

Oct. : Organize, code, analyze, and interpret data from the surveys and pretests. Blog about the process.

Jan.: First day of school: get student permission and send home parental permission

          As soon as permission is returned administer survey and pretest to students in ART I classes.

     Hopefully this will be during the first week of school.  Blog about the process.

Feb.: Organize, code, analyze, and interpret data from the surveys and pretests. Blog about the process.

March: Combine data collection. Organize findings. Blog about the process.

April: Prepare presentation for school board. Gather relevant artifacts for talk. Blog about the process.

           Begin writing article and organizing website. Use the information from my blog to do so.   

May: Presentation to school board.

          Finish Article and Website.

         

Find a Grant Source:

-Georgia Association of Educators
http://gae2.org/pdf/profdev/gfie/12/bestinfo.pdf

-NAEF
http://www.arteducators.org/grants/naea-research-grants


Working Proposal:

Background (or Position Statement): I teach in a great county and I love my school and my students. Though in our school district there is no art education at the elementary school level and there is no art education at the feeder middle school just across campus. My students are being exposed to art education for the first time in high school and it’s sad to say that many students are not being exposed to art at all.

Research Question and Subquestions: Where are high school students at without prior art education within artistic development?

Related Research: Creative and Mental Growth, Viktor Lowenfeld, Macmillan Co., New York, 1947; Patterns of Artistic Development in Children: Comparative Studies of Talent, Constance Milbrath, 1998; The Child's Creation of a Pictorial World, Claire Golomb, 2004; Young children's sculpture and drawing: A study in representational development, Claire Golomb, 1974; Child Development in Art, Anna M. Kindler (Editor);

Permissions: I will need permission from my principle, from the students and from their parents.

Data Sources: pretest for students entering into Art I and a survey for students entering into Art I,

Methods and Analysis: During the first week of school in the fall and again second semester in January,  I will give the students in all of the Art I intro classes a survey to fill out and a pretest to take. The survey will gather background data to determine any prior art education. The pretest will be used to gather evidence of artistic development and understanding. The survey and parts of the pretest may be electronic with the use of ipads.

Time Line: I’m not sure that I will be able to do this in the upcoming school year because of so many obligations already on my plate but here goes dreaming:

July-Mid. Aug.: Create Surveys and Pretests. Blog about the process.

Aug.: Get Permission from Principle. Blog about the process.

Sept: First day of school: get student permission and send home parental permission.

          As soon as permission is returned administer survey and pretest to students in Art I classes.

          Hopefully this will be during the first week of school.  Blog about the process.         

Oct. : Organize, code, analyze, and interpret data from the surveys and pretests. Blog about the process.

Jan.: First day of school: get student permission and send home parental permission

          As soon as permission is returned administer survey and pretest to students in ART I classes.

          Hopefully this will be during the first week of school.  Blog about the process.

Feb.: Organize, code, analyze, and interpret data from the surveys and pretests. Blog about the process.

March: Combine data collection. Organize findings. Blog about the process.

April: Prepare presentation for school board. Gather relevant artifacts for talk. Blog about the    

           process. Begin writing article and organizing website. Use the information from my blog to  

           do so.   

May: Presentation to school board.

          Finish Article and Website.

         

Possible Findings: I expect to find that the students entering my high school Art I classes are significantly behind in terms of their artistic development as a result of not being exposed to art education.

Dissemination: I will create a blog and/or website of some sort for my own use while in progress and to use as a way show the final results of the study.   In addition to a website I will write an article and certainly present to my school board.

Budget: $200

VTS II Unit Identity Presentation

VTS II Unit Identity

Open publication - Free publishing - More education

Blog Topic #15

"Instead of focusing on a single subject, creative thinkers seem to unconsciously contemplate many pieces of information and trains of thought at the same time."(Gnezda 2011)

Does this mean that through VTS some students are not only developing thinking skills but also becoming  more creative thinkers? I like to think so.

I do think that VTS within this unit lead to a greater level of creativity in the students work. And I don't say that arbitrarily but rather looking at one class who is doing VTS and another class who isn't. It wasn't that there was a huge difference in the quality of the work because my non vts class had some great pieces. But overall as a whole the level of work and certainly understanding was higher in my VTS class.

VTS II Blog Topic #14

Angkor Wat, Cambodia         Steve McCurry

-Great choice! I was so impressed with my kids. Their insights were lightyears beyond where we began. I really think that some of my students have matured as a result of this process. The tone of this image, the ambiguity, the details, her actions, all played into a great image for discussion.

-There was a lot of evidence of student learning and I think that the students themselves were even aware of it. There were several comments about her posture which lead to her interests in the images on the wall. One student said "I can tell that she is really interested in what she is looking at because of the way her hands are on the wall so intently but at the same time her legs are casual." Wow, I wanted to go and hug this student.

-Yes there was evidence beyond the scope of the unit because there were several comments made back and forth about not seeing her face and overwhelming the students agreed that they didn't need to see her face. We never discussed this in class.

-This unit was the end of the year for us.

-VTS is a great summative assessment strategy. It certainly assesses student knowledge and understanding in an authentic way and in a way that allows students to support and scaffold one another.

VTS II Blog Topic # 13

Angkor Wat, Cambodia      Steve McCurry

-I feel that this image really sums up the big idea of identity. There are so many details present in the image that give insight as to who this girl is and what she is about.

-I think that this image is appropriate for my students at the time because it will pull their prior knowledge from previous images and assignments as starting points of investigation.

-I hope it reveals that they get it and that they have been understanding and really seeing all the aspects of identity that we have been discussing in class.

-I do hope that it pushes them beyond what we have discussed about identity thus far. It certainly has potential to do so.

-Not at this time because we are at the end of the year.

VTS II Blog Topic #11

I love the big idea of identity and the students are responding well to both the VTS images and the assignments. They are really getting into the portraits that they are taking and are enjoying the process of learning about themselves through inventories and tests. The images that I have used this semester have been really great for discussion. The students have been so intrigued with the images and the depth and maturity of the discussions has been impressive. Their growth from the first discussion until now makes me a very proud teacher. I'm not wanting this unit or year to end.

Winner simplifies saying that the goal of art is about understanding and the studio habits of mind involve observation and reflection. VTS is about observation and reflection in order to gain understanding.

VTS II Blog #9

Supporting authentic discussion in the classroom is a daunting task. And to be honest before my introduction to VTS it was scary and something that I would avoid at all costs. Just as Hadjioannou suggests several things have to be in place. The students have to be able to trust you as a teacher, the students have to be able to trust one another, the students need to feel that the teachers role in discussion is not that of "indisputable authority" but rather another perspective if anything. And as a teacher trying to achieve authentic discussion you have to be flexible and sometimes give the students a little room to run. The goal is student learning and thinking and meaning making. Its tricky.

VTS has changed the overall environment of my classroom both in terms of relationships and classroom management. I think after several VTS discussions the students do trust both myself and one another more. They value one another's opinion more about their own assignments and they are willing to discuss more freely with one another about their own work. Classroom management has never really been a problem in my classroom but the environment is even more "chill" if you will.

VTS II Blog Topic #6

These chapters on assessment were so informative. I thought that I had a really good handle on assessment and scoring and judging strategies but these chapters really opened up some doors for me to expand in my classroom. I get assessment and the core of what it is all about. Its a good thing. It takes practice I think and I seem to constantly be refining how I assess. I read in the intro article about student participation in the conception and crafting of the assessment tools. Thats smart. Why haven't I thought about that. I want to find a way to incorporate that. I like where in the same article it says "it should be neither cumbersome nor overwhelming for the teacher to manage"... I couldn't agree more. I'm not there yet but that is an attainable goal. The guideline article begins with asking the question "Why am I assessing?",  that question is so crucial. Later in this article is talks about using assessment to determine a grade and the need for both objective and subjective formats. Yes, I agree that balance is necessary. The scoring and judging strategies articles was awesome. So many of those were new to me. I like checklists and already use those in my classes. Tallies, I haven't used these but would like to. I love teacher interviews and use them in my classroom. Self-Assessments are great I use them too.

VTS II Blog Topic 4

"What do students need to know first so they can understand what follows?" Sequencing is crucial in order to build knowledge. VTSing within a unit is a beautiful opportunity to scaffolded and build on the students prior knowledge. And with the right sequence of images and assignments you can build on students understanding and create a depth of knowledge. With my unit I started with the most familiar so that students can pull from their prior knowledge. With each image I am building to things that are more foreign and more controversial and finally with an image that is much more ambiguous but encompasses it all so that they are pulling from everything that they have learned and seen.

Read & Reflect Week 4: BLOG BRIEFLY: Feldman Visual Literacy & Yenawine Visual Literacy

Thoughts on the Feldman article:

He begins with a great definition of literacy. Simply letters, but elaborates to call them "phonic images".  He goes on to talk about genuine literacy needing to "...include an understanding of the ways language is used to govern behavior..." I've never thought about this. So very interesting. He mentions that spelling used to vary from person to person and that it was quite creative, well if my students writing is any indication this is making a rapid comeback and honestly I can't say anything. I desperately rely on spellcheck. I love his suggestion that "...looking at a picture is not very different from listening to several conversations going on in a room one has just entered."

Thoughts on the Yenawine article:

I'm reading the same info over and over again in different ways in different articles by different people so I'm just going to touch on a few things that stuck out. He was listing the aspects of cognition at the beginning that people call upon and I was thinking about the things that my students use during VTS and I have noticed that speculating seems to be their favorite. In the second paragraph he is talking about images engaging the viewer differently. I love this. I love the power and I ability I have here as a teacher when it comes to image selection. Choosing the image is one of my favorite parts of the process.

Read & Reflect Week 3: BLOG BRIEFLY: DeSantis & Housen

I struggled with this article until the Housen section. Just goes to show if you are not interested or invested in something it makes it more difficult. I wasn't aware how different or "set apart" her research and theory are because she did not begin with a hypothesis that she then tried to prove. And I love love love the unobtrusive way that she conducted her research. It just makes so much sense. This article answered a question that I had previously about how long she spent developing this and now I know that it was most of the 70s and 80s. There are a few things about stages in this article and I love the way they are stated, "...no stage is better than another",  "...while growth is related to age, it is not determined by it;". Smart people.

Read & Reflect Week 2: BLOG BRIEFLY: Housen (Eye of the Beholder)

Just from reading the introduction of the article I was thinking "Wow, those are impressive, massive questions!" As the article continued she referred to her original assumptions as naive and intuitive, that makes me feel better because I feel like most of what I do is naïve and intuitive or it certainly begins that way. As she is talking about descriptions of aesthetic understanding, I had no idea that there were three ways of describing it. Some of the questions that she asks are brilliant like, “What are the moment-to-moment thoughts in aesthetic experience?” When I was reading her summary of her vantage point and what it involved I kept thinking, “How long did it take her to get to this point?” My students last semester were definitely Stage II viewers. Overall it is such an impressive body of research and I completely agree with it.

Read & Reflect Week 1: BLOG BRIEFLY: Walker Chapt’s 1, 2, & 3

I did not learn to teach this way, with Big Ideas that is. So this was new to me. I really like it. Though while reading page 1 alone I was thinking, "this is above where most of my students are". My reason for thinking that is that my students have no art education experience before that get to high school. So no elementary or middle school art for my kids, which drives me insane but that's where we are. So especially in Art I there are times when it is simply the crafting of a product. That's not always the case and its not the case in the advanced classes. I like the idea of Big Ideas and I would love to be able to teach this way all the time but I'm not sure that my students are ready. I couldn't agree more with the notion of the Big Idea needing to be personal to the students. This doesn't sound easy but I have no doubt that it is important. And of course students need a knowledge base for artmaking. I am doing the things they are talking about in Ch.3 so that makes me feel a little better.

VTS II Blog Topic 10: Video #5

Amanda and her Cousin, Amy Valese, North Carolina, 1990

  Mary Ellen Mark

Santa Claus at lunch, New York City, 1963

    Mary Ellen Mark

 VTSing two images at once verses a single image was different. I think it may have initially thrown my students off too. Participation was down with this discussion because the seniors were out of class but I chose to continue with the vts without them hoping to give the rest of the class an opportunity to speak up without the sometimes vocally dominant seniors. I don't know if it was because we were looking at two images at once or because of the images themselves but the discussion seemed to be focused on what statement these photos were making. It was harder for me to keep up with gesturing and paraphrasing for two images especially in my classroom with the top half of my big screen so far out of my reach. I need to invest in a good laser pointer for this. I think that looking at two images forced the students to look at more big picture stuff rather than details but for some students I think that they were maybe a little overwhelmed by it or they didn't know where to look. or what to think or how to connect them or if they should. Maybe if I had chosen images that were more different it would have been easier but I don't know. In my experience I would use this technique if I were wanting them to see connections or differences, or to draw conclusions, make statements. My students certainly used these in that way.