DOCUMENT RESUME SO 029 401 ED 424 176 Thunder-McGuire, Steve AUTHOR Working Papers in Art Education, 1996-1997. TITLE Iowa Univ., Iowa City. School of Art & Art History. INSTITUTION 1997-00-00 PUB DATE 233p.; For the 1994-1995 edition, see ED 405 264. Also NOTE referred to in this issue as "Marilyn Zermuehlen's Working Papers in Art Education." School of Art & Art History of the University of Iowa, Art AVAILABLE FROM Education, 13 North Hall, Iowa City, IA 52242-1223 ($25). Serials (022) Collected Works PUB TYPE Working Papers in Art Education; n14 1996-1997 JOURNAL CIT MF01/PC10 Plus Postage. EDRS PRICE *Aesthetics; *Art; Art Criticism; *Art Education; Art DESCRIPTORS Expression; Art History; Culture; Elementary Secondary Education; Higher Education; Popular Culture; Preservice Teacher Education; Visual Arts ABSTRACT This collection of working papers in art education is comprised of manuscripts by graduate students presented at the National Art Education Conference. Papers in this issue reflect several educational settings and geographic areas. The 22 articles include: "Symbolic (1) Meanings in the Ghanaian Arts: A Step Towards Developing Cultural Literacy" "Artistic Scanning as a Classroom Qualitative Research (Robert Ayiku); (2) "Cross Cultural Interpretation and Valuing of Activity" (Steve Elliot); (3) Northwest Coast Art by Natives and Non-Native Americans" (Nancy Parks); (4) "A Feminist Study of African American Art in New Orleans: Considerations of "A World Aesthetics, Art History and Art Criticism" (Harriet Walker); (5) Community of Old Trees: An Ecology Art Project on the World Wide Web" (June "A Feminist-Based Studio Art Critique: A Classroom Study" (Anne Julian); (6) "Designing a Collaborative Arts Program: Implications for Burkhart); (7) Preservice Art Education" (Jan Fedorenko); "Text, Discourse, (8) Deconstruction and an Exploration of Self: A Disruptive Model for Postmodern "Preparing Preservice Teachers to Art Education" (Jane Gooding-Brown); (9) Work with Diverse Student Populations: Implications for Visual Arts Teacher "A New Case for Clay: Multi-Dimensional Education" (Wanda B. Knight); (10) "A Meta-Critical Analysis of High School Ceramics" (Billie Sessions); (11) Ceramics Criticism for Art Education: Toward an Interpretative Methodology" (12) "Teaching Art as Reasoned Perception: (Booker Stephen Carpenter, II); Aesthetic Knowing in Theory and Practice" (Richard Siegesmund); (13) "The Feminization of Physical Culture: The Introduction of Dance into the American "Of Hosts and Guests: Curricular University Curriculum" (Janice Ross); (14) Discourses at a Southeast Asian Cultural Village" (Cameron Graham); (15) "Hanging Emily: Issues in Art, Text and Education" (Karen Knutson); "The (16) Creative Process and the Making of a Virtual Environment Work of Art" (Dena (17) "Spatial Treatment in Children's Drawings: Why Do Japanese Eber); (18) "Conversation as Children Draw in Particular Ways?" (Masami Toku); (19) "Sharing the Mountain; Pedagogy in the Teaching of Art" (Jane Zander); (20) "Color Shards and Tabasaran Weaving Culture" (Lorraine Ross, '96); (21) "Anton and Jay's Carpets: Context in Dagestan" (Lorraine Ross, '97); Sports Trading Card Series: Embracing the Presence of Letters" (Lisa +++++ ED424176 Has Multi-page SFR---Level=1 +++++ Schoenfielder); and (22) "Teaching Art Via Culture: Fictive Travel as a Learning Tool" (Erin Tapley). (EH) ******************************************************************************** * Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made * * from the original document. * ******************************************************************************** 9 6 9 1 MARILYN ZURMUEHLEN WORKING PAPERS IN ART EDUCATION 9 1 U S DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educational Research and Improvement PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS CENTER (ERIC) BEEN GRANTED BY ti( This document has been reproduced as received from the person or organization SieveThuncler- originating it O Minor changes have been made to McGLItre. improve reproduction quality Points of view or opinions stated in this TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES document do not necessarily represent INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) official OERI position or policy. 1 MARILYN ZURMUEHLEN WORKING PAPERS IN ART EDUCATION is published by the School of Art & Art History of The University of Iowa. Manuscripts by graduate students are derived from presentation papers at the annual Graduate Research Session, Seminar for Research, the National Art Education Association Conference. Along with these papers are statements from mentors which establish a context for the student's doctoral research. These papers should follow the form of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (3rd ed.) or the MLA Handbook. Send an original and one Macintosh disk copy to Dr. Steve Thunder-McGuire, Editor, or Liz Voss, Associate Editor, Marilyn Zurmuehlen Working Papers in Art Education, 13 North Hall, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa 52242. Marilyn Zurmuehlen Working Papers in Art Education, 1996-1997 Number 14 1996-1997 3 Contents 1996-1997 PAGE 1 CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY, MONTREAL Robert Ayiku/ Symbolic Meanings in the Ghanaian Arts: A Step Towards Developing Cultural Literacy 12 Steve Elliot/ Artistic Scanning as a Classroom Qualitative Research Activity 19 INDIANNA UNIVERSITY Nancy Parks/ Cross Cultural Interpretation and Valuing of Northwest Coast Art by Natives and Non-Native Americans 29 LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY Harriet Walker/ A Feminist Study of African American Art in New Orleans: Considerations of Aesthetics, Art History and Art Criticism 36 NEW YORK UNIVERSITY June Julian/ A World Community of Old Trees: An Ecology Art Project on the World Wide Web http://www.nyu.edu/projects4ulian! 42 OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY Anne Burkhart/ A Feminist-Based Studio Art Critique: A Classroom Study 55 Jan Fedorenko/ Designing a Collaborative Arts Program: Implications for Preservice Art Education 11 OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY (Continued) 66 Jane Gooding-Brown/ Text, Discourse, Deconstruction and an Exploration of Self: A Disruptive Model for Postmodern Art Education 78 Wanda B. Knight/ Preparing Preservice Teachers to Work with Diverse Student Populations: Implications for Visual Arts Teacher Education 92 PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY Billie Sessions/ A New Case For Clay: Multi-Dimensional High School Ceramics 107 Booker Stephen Carpenter, II/ A Meta-Critical Analysis of Ceramics Criticism For Art Education: Toward an Interpretive Methodology 115 STANFORD UNIVERSITY Richard Siegesmund/ Teaching Art as Reasoned Perception: Aesthetic Knowing in Theory and Practice 127 Janice Ross/ The Feminization of Physical Culture: The Introduction of Dance Into the American University Curriculum 135 UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA Cameron Graham/ Of Hosts & Guests: Curricular Discourses at a Southeast Asian Cultural Village 150 Karen Knutson/ Hanging Emily: Issues in Art, Text and Education 158 UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA Dena Eber/ The Creative Process and the Making of a Virtual Environment Work of Art 164 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS Masami Toku/ Spatial Treatment in Children's Drawings: Why Do Japanese Children Draw in Particular Ways? 185 Jane Zander/ Conversation as Pedagogy in the Teaching of Art 190 UNIVERSITY OF IOWA Lorraine Ross '96/ Sharing the Mountain; Tabasaran Weaving Culture 194 Lorraine Ross '97/ Color Shards and Carpets: Context in Dagestan 198 Lisa Schoenfielder/ Anton and Jay's Sports Trading Card Series: Embracing the Presence of Letters 207 Erin Tapley/ Teaching Art Via Culture: Fictive Travel as a Learning Tool mentor's introduction CATHY MULLEN Concordia University Robert Ayiku came to Concordia University as a Commonwealth Scholar from Ghana, entering the MA Art Education program and then continuing in the PhD program. His broad interests led him to course work in art education, several areas of education, and museum education (including a study visit to the Museum of African Art in New York City). Through these experiences Robert has encountered theory, research and professional practices that are current in North America. All along he has enthusiastically explored these new areas of knowledge while remaining true to his vision of arts education that values and sustains Ghanaian cultural identity. That vision emanates from his extensive understanding of traditional Ghanaian symbology and art forms, as well as Western-influenced line art' as practiced by contemporary Ghanaian artists. The goals of Robert's dissertation reflect his deep commitment to developing the role of arts education in the school curriculum. From the many approaches to research and arts education which he has encountered during his graduate studies, Robert has selected those that he deems most appropriate and relevant to his goals: ethnography and phenomenology for methods of documenting cultural symbols and their uses, and the discipline-based art education (DBAE) model for develop education strategies. Besides the obvious value of the study for developing arts education in Ghana, the research should also be interesting to North American readers in that it will provide a rare opportunity to see how familiar research methods and arts education models are translated--or even reconstructed--when they are applied in a different cultural and social context. With the support of a Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship from the Getty Center for Education in the Arts, Robert is preparing to pass the next several months doing field research in Ghana. After five long years away from his family and community, the coming months will be filled with homecoming as well as research. 1 Marilyn Zurmuehlen's Working Papers In Art Education 1996-1997 Symbolic Meanings in the Ghanaian Arts: A Step Towards Developing Cultural Literacy Robert Ay iku Statement of Purpose This study proposes to document some aspects of the indigenous cultural arts of Ghana. Its goals are to: 1) identify and interpret some key symbolic expressions as found in particular examples of visual, performing, and verbal art forms, and 2) state the significance of these expressions and art forms in the everyday life and living of the people of Ghana. The documentation of these symbolic expressions will be done in a way to make them directly applicable as educational material in Ghanaian schools. This application to teaching will involve following the model of Discipline-Based Arts Education (D.B.A.E.). Statement of the Problem and Discussion Since the second half of the nineteenth century, the cultural arts of Ghana have suffered a considerable setback due to foreign influences. The major foreign factors influencing Ghanaian artistic expression include religion such as Christianity and Islam, as well as formal (Western) schooling. Christian missionaries to Ghana have rejected many indigenous Ghanaian customs, beliefs, and values because these do not conform to the Western culture which they have sought to impose on the people of Ghana. These missionaries have viewed the cultural life of the people of Ghana as primitive, idolatrous, paganistic, and childish. As such, they have described the whole cultural system as "fetishistic," implying it is unreal, superstitious, and magical. Like Christianity, Islam has also attacked and denounced the Ghanaian It has taught "monotheism," an ideology that emphasizes the existence culture. of only one God, called Allah, and therefore condemned the Ghanaian indigenous religious practices as the worship of many gods. Islam does not allow figurative representation of deities in any visual art forms, a practice that is central to indigenous religious practices in Ghana. The consequences of these forces of acculturation are diversified, but the most prominent is that most Ghanaian religious converts have become confused, thereby losing confidence in their indigenous cultural arts and developing ambivalent or lukewarm attitudes towards them. Due to Christian teaching, many Ghanaians who have received Western education have also shifted to Western types of life styles, thus influencing the lifestyles of many other Ghanaians, especially urban dwellers and the youth. Among the Western- influenced elite of Ghana, attitudes towards the arts are varied, but the most prominent is the tendency to look down on indigenous arts and artists. The arts are regarded as intellectually undemanding as compared to disciplines like 2 Marilyn Zurmuehlen's Working Papers In Art Education 1996-1997 mathematics, engineering, and science, which are perceived as difficult because they require skills of abstraction, conceptualization, and computation. In light of these attitudes, most parents of this elite group encourage and persuade their children to study science or something else other than art. These attitudes can be attributed in large part to the fact that the system of schooling was such that it did not help much of the Ghanaian public to understand the role of the arts in education and the society-at-large. In an attempt to rectify this situation, the Ministry of Education and Culture of Ghana has instituted a "Curriculum Enrichment Programme" as part of the educational system of Ghana. In this programme, the Ghanaian cultural arts are incorporated as an interdisciplinary study at the basic level of education. By basic level of education is meant, from Kindergarten to the Junior Secondary School level, with ages ranging from approximately five to sixteen years old. The primary aim of this programme, which began in 1984/85, has been to create an opportunity for the indigenous Ghanaian arts to be brought to all students by integrating them with all subjects in the school programme. This has resulted in the arts being treated as a supporting content of the general education programme. Although they are included in the curriculum, the arts are not treated as full-fledged disciplines. While other subjects are taught with a concern for content, continuity, and consistency to enable learners to understand and achieve the rudimentary principles and basic literacy, and included within the schedule of daily instruction, learning in the arts tends to be treated as an ancillary activity - a recreational diversion from vigorous academic work. This is because there have been no specifically accepted guidelines regarding how instruction in the arts is to be carried out so as to result in a meaningful and purposeful learning for the students. Thus the potential is lost for the arts in assisting to "expand the students' capacity to create, to empathize, and to gain access to their own feelings" as part of the learning process (Bell, 1987, p.43). As such, the value of the arts in everyday life fails to manifest itself in the learner. This disparity between the goals and priorities of general education and arts education, as well as the imbalance between instruction in the arts and other subject areas, have resulted in denigrating the image of the arts, thereby relegating them to a very low ebb among educators, students, and the general Ghanaian public. The foregoing problems suggest a need for a careful reexamination of the goals and priorities for teaching and learning in the arts in Ghana. First, there is the need for documented material that would validate the indigenous Ghanaian arts so that they can serve to build the cultural identity and self-identity of Ghanaians. Second, there is need to reexamine and find ways to improve the place of arts education as it is currently practised in the Ghanaian school curriculum, to raise the status arts education from an ancillary to a full-fledged discipline, comprised of the study of history, criticism, and aesthetics of the Ghanaian arts, as well as their production. It is, therefore, to this end that this research is proposed. 3 Marilyn Zurmuehlen's Working Papers In Art Education 1996-1997