Type of Culminating Activity

Graduate Student Project

Graduation Date

5-2012

Degree Title

Master of Arts in Art Education

Department

Art

Major Advisor

Kathleen Keys

Abstract

Teachers have power to implement a constructive learning environment through team teaching and aligned instruction where schools can benefit from stronger bonds between students and teachers while providing a learning environment responsive to both academic and social needs. Thus, utilizing a mixed model of art education and standard core curricula can provide students with effective creative-thinking processes to support instruction, and empower students.

This project proposes a model of integrated arts curriculum into public education at the high school level. Arts integration can produce more learning possibilities while informing a community of solutions to larger problems through project-based curriculum design, and visual literacy.

The method used to explore arts integration in practice, was to build a curriculum between visual arts and literature at a public alternative high school over one semester. The course was titled Community Narratives, using the idea of community as a topic for inquiry- based learning and the use of the constructivist method, developed to include teacher-student cooperation while defining learning goals.

Students taking the course were aware of their participation in a pilot study and given full explanation as to why the class was constructed in such a different manner. Most students were inquisitive and engaged, knowing they were part of something bigger, while other students felt outside of their comfort zone, never having opportunity to think about their own learning. However, when students realized they were allowed to participate in the process of building the curriculum, they began to feel more secure in expressing their own opinions and ideas.

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