Matching Items (3)
Filtering by
- Genre: Art--Study and teaching (Preschool)--Curricula--Kuwait.
- Genre: Music--Arizona--20th century--History and criticism.
- Genre: Music--History and criticism--Web-based instruction--Arizona--Case studies.
Description
This study examines the experiences of participants enrolled in an online community college jazz history course. I surveyed the participants before the course began and observed them in the online space through the duration of the course. Six students also participated in interviews during and after the course. Coded data from the interviews, surveys, and recorded discussion posts and journal entries provided evidence about the nature of interaction and engagement in learning in an online environment. I looked for evidence either supporting or detracting from a democratic online learning environment, concentrating on the categories of student engagement, freedom of expression, and accessibility. The data suggested that the participants' behaviors in and abilities to navigate the online class were influenced by their pre-existing native media habits. Participants' reasons for enrolling in the online course, which included convenience and schedule flexibility, informed their actions and behaviors in the class. Analysis revealed that perceived positive student engagement did not contribute to a democratic learning environment but rather to an easy, convenient experience in the online class. Finally, the data indicated that participants' behaviors in their future lives would not be affected by the online class in that their learning experiences were not potent enough to alter or inform their behavior in society. As online classes gain popularity, the ability of these classes to provide meaningful learning experiences must be questioned. Students in this online jazz history class presented, at times, a façade of participation and community building but demonstrated a lack of sincerity and interest in the course. The learning environment supported accessibility and freedom of expression to an extent, but students' engagement with their peers was limited. Overall, this study found a need for more research into the quality of online classes as learning platforms that support democracy, student-to-student interaction, and community building.
ContributorsHunter, Robert W. (Author) / Stauffer, Sandra L (Thesis advisor) / Tobias, Evan (Thesis advisor) / Bush, Jeffrey (Committee member) / Kocour, Michael (Committee member) / Pilafian, Sam (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
To understand the visual culture and art education practices within three ideologically distinct kindergartens, I employed an interdisciplinary approach, utilizing tools from the fields of art, education, anthropology, literary theory, visual studies and critical social theory. Each of the three schools was considered to be the "best" of its kind for the community in which it resided; TBS was the original bilingual school, and the most Westernized. It was set in the heart of a major city. The second school, OBS, operated from an Islamic framework located in an under-developed small transitioning suburb; and the last school, NBS, was situated in Al-Jahra, an "outlying area" populated by those labeled as bedouins (Longva, 2006). The participants' attitudes towards art education unfolded as I analyzed my visual observations of the participants' daily practices. I have produced a counter-hegemonic visual narrative by negotiating my many subjectivities and methods to gain new knowledge and insights. This approach has provided a holistic understanding of the environment in each site, in which attitudes and practices relating to art education have been acquired by the community. Operating from three different educational paradigms, each school applied a different approach to art education. The more Westernized school viewed art as an individual act which promoted creativity and expression. In the Islamic school art was viewed as an activity that required patterning (Stokrocki, 1986), and that the child needed to be guided and exposed to the appropriate images to follow. In the bedouin school, drawing activities were viewed as an opportunity for representing one's individual story as well as a skill for emergent literacy.
ContributorsAl-Bader, Jawaher Khaled (Author) / Young, Bernard (Thesis advisor) / Margolis, Eric (Committee member) / Tobin, Joseph (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
ABSTRACT A cultural overview of the so-called "early music movement" in Arizona, specifically the musicians who performed early music in the mid-to-late twentieth century, has never been undertaken. In applying ethnographic methods to Western art music, Kay Kaufman Shelemay suggests, in her 2001 article, "Toward an Ethnomusicology of the Early Music Movement," that a musical anthropology "would seem to hold great potential for the study of `Western music.'" In this paper I analyze and discuss issues related to "early music" in Arizona from roughly 1960 to 2008. In focusing primarily on the musicians themselves, I address issues in three primary areas: 1) the repertory and the so-called "early music revival;" 2) specific types of early music which have been presented in Arizona and the effects of economic factors; and 3) Arizona musicians' attitudes toward the repertory and their motivations for specializing in it. I then analyze Arizona musicians' involvement with both the early music repertory itself and with the community, identifying how musicians were exposed to early music and whether or not those first exposures began a long-lasting involvement with the repertory. In this section I also describe ways in which musicians define early music for themselves as well as analyze more critical areas such as musicians' formation of an "early music identity." I also asked informants to discuss how they see early music as being fundamentally different from other types of "classical" music and how they view their own places in that community of "difference." Finally, I compare musicians' thoughts on the "transformative" effect that some early music can have on performers and listeners and how that effect compares with similar phenomena in other types of Western art music.
ContributorsDe Fazio, James M (Author) / Haefer, John R (Thesis advisor) / Solis, Theodore (Committee member) / Saucier, Catherine (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2010