Art Integration: Exploring a Transdiscplinary Practice in Rural Art Education
Open Access
- Author:
- Kiser, Kathleen Anne
- Graduate Program:
- Art Education
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- January 31, 2018
- Committee Members:
- Kimberly Anne Powell, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Kimberly Anne Powell, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Christine M Thompson, Committee Member
Mary Ann Stankiewicz, Committee Member
Scott P Mcdonald, Outside Member - Keywords:
- : art integration
transdisciplinary
place-based
rural education - Abstract:
- The kindergarten through twelfth-grade curriculum often separates academic disciplines, student interests, and the local culture and geography. This division of information can discourage students from connecting overarching concepts to the relationship of lived experiences. Therefore, bridging these ideas together helps provide educational significance and personal meaning while encouraging learners to develop a sense of place. My dissertation explores how rural students make these connections through the research and artmaking process. In a semester-long ethnographically informed investigation, I collaborated with an art instructor to research within her high school class, Art Experiences. We used an art integrative place-based framework to guide our inquiry. To ground our research in a classroom setting, we modeled the curriculum after art educator and theorist Julia Marshall’s (2014a) art integrative transdisciplinary approach—Art Research Integration (ARI). ARI positions students as artist-researchers who independently explore topics of interest through thematic investigation. This process encourages learners to connect overarching concepts with their lives outside of school. Following Marshall’s model, students in our study embraced the artist-researcher role. To support lived experiences from a cultural and geographic perspective, we intertwined ARI with place-based inquiry. Its inclusion aimed to foster learners’ curiosity about the surrounding rural area. Through investigation of an individualized locally-themed question, each student followed a unique research trail. Learners documented their research in sketchbooks which provided them a space to brainstorm ideas, create concept maps, and archive resources. Students drew sketches to express what they had learned from their exploration. Using their sketches as inspiration, students created works of art to complement their research findings. During my inquiry, I examined how students explored diverse academic subjects, their interests, and the local area using an art integrative place-based approach. I focused on explicating how and in what ways learners wove together academic disciplinary knowledge, how ARI facilitated a transdisciplinary process of learning, and the ways using a place-based rural perspective helped to understand learner decision making better. Answering these questions provided insight into the ways learners became artist-researchers, understood content interconnectivity, and linked lived experience with place to enhance personal meaning.