Matching Items (6)
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- All Subjects: narrative
- Creators: Margolis, Eric
- Member of: Theses and Dissertations
Description
This qualitative case study of 12, eighteen to twenty-four-year-olds from seven countries provided insight into the learning practices on an art-centered, social media platform. The study addressed two guiding questions; (a) what art related skills, knowledge, and dispositions do community members acquire using a social media platform? (b), What new literacy practices, e.g., the use of new technologies and an ethos of participation, collective intelligence, collaboration, dispersion of abundant resources, and sharing (Knobel & Lankshear, 2007), do members use in acquiring of art-related skills, concepts, knowledge, and dispositions? Data included interviews, online documents, artwork, screen capture of online content, threaded online discussions, and a questionnaire. Drawing on theory and research from both new literacies and art education, the study identified five practices related to learning in the visual arts: (a) practicing as professional artists; (b) engaging in discovery based search strategies for viewing and collecting member produced content; (c) learning by observational strategies; (d) giving constructive criticism and feedback; (e) making learning resources. The study presents suggestions for teachers interested in empowering instruction with new social media technologies.
ContributorsJones, Brian (Author) / Stokrocki, Mary (Thesis advisor) / Young, Bernard (Committee member) / Guzzetti, Barbara (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
ABSTRACT This qualitative study examines how high school art teachers conceive of being a good art teacher. Motivated by my own experiences as an art teacher, I designed this study to add teachers' voices to the conversation surrounding quality in education. My research design included a narrative strand and an arts-based strand. In the narrative strand, I interviewed and observed 12 high school art educators from a major city in the southwest. I conducted an autoethnographic reflection exploring my connection to the research topic and research process. In the arts-based strand I used fiber-arts to further understand my topic. I wrote this dissertation using a narrative approach, blending the traditional research format, voices of participants, and my autoethnographic reflection. I included the results of my arts-based approach in the final chapter. Findings suggest that the teachers in this study conceptualize being a good art teacher as a process of identity construction. Each of the teachers understood what it meant to be a good art teacher in unique ways, connected to their personal experiences and backgrounds. As the teachers engaged in identity work to become the kind of art teacher they wanted to be, they engaged in a process of identity construction that consisted of four steps. I propose a model of identity construction in which the teachers chose teaching practices, evaluated those practices, identified challenges to their identities, and selected strategies to confirm, assert, or defend their desired identities. The findings have implications for teachers to become reflective practitioners; for teacher educators to prepare teachers to engage in reflective practices; and for administrators and policy makers to take into account the cyclical and personal nature of identity construction. This study also has implications for further research including the need to examine the dispositions of art teachers, teachers' evolving conceptions of what it means to be a good art teacher, and the effect labeling teachers' quality has on their identity construction.
ContributorsAndrelchik, Hillary (Author) / Erickson, Mary (Thesis advisor) / Young, Bernard (Committee member) / Margolis, Eric (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
Black Rock City is a temporary city existing for one week in the harsh desert of northern Nevada. It plays host to the Burning Man festival with over 300 large-scale art installations and is considered to be the largest interactive art festival in the world. Besides the main burn, smaller local regional events have developed. These regional events encompass many of the same tenets as Burning Man including the presentation of large-scale art. Burn2 is the regional event held on the virtual world, Second Life. In 2013, both events used the theme of Cargo Cult as a stepping off point for the artists. Through the lens of spectacle, I used art criticism as a way to gain understanding of the artworks.
Art criticism is a means of interpreting and appreciating artwork and is often used in the art classroom. Edmund Feldman's method promotes a deeper understanding of art and consists of four steps: description, formal analysis, interpretation and judgment. Using Feldman's method, I analyzed three artworks from the 2013 Burning Man festival and three works from Burn2. From interviews, photographs, and personal observations I analyzed the artworks. I used external analysis to compare the literature on similar festivals and the artworks with other events held in the real life and virtual world.
I found in both events very similar concepts and themes. Artists had specific subject matter in mind when designing their installations. Artists used the theme as a stepping off point for rationalizing their content. Art made to be displayed at Burning Man was expensive; funding was a concern for all the artists. Burn2 artists were free from funding concerns even though there were expenses to making art in Second Life. Emerging themes were use of building materials and color, use of electronics and computer technology, art installations in festivals, spectacle, collaboration, and interactivity. Further implications included teaching about the engineering of structures, critical thinking about festival themes and the individual art installations, visual culture, and art making with these emerging art forms.
Art criticism is a means of interpreting and appreciating artwork and is often used in the art classroom. Edmund Feldman's method promotes a deeper understanding of art and consists of four steps: description, formal analysis, interpretation and judgment. Using Feldman's method, I analyzed three artworks from the 2013 Burning Man festival and three works from Burn2. From interviews, photographs, and personal observations I analyzed the artworks. I used external analysis to compare the literature on similar festivals and the artworks with other events held in the real life and virtual world.
I found in both events very similar concepts and themes. Artists had specific subject matter in mind when designing their installations. Artists used the theme as a stepping off point for rationalizing their content. Art made to be displayed at Burning Man was expensive; funding was a concern for all the artists. Burn2 artists were free from funding concerns even though there were expenses to making art in Second Life. Emerging themes were use of building materials and color, use of electronics and computer technology, art installations in festivals, spectacle, collaboration, and interactivity. Further implications included teaching about the engineering of structures, critical thinking about festival themes and the individual art installations, visual culture, and art making with these emerging art forms.
ContributorsKrecker, Linda Susan (Author) / Stokrocki, Mary (Thesis advisor) / Young, Bernard (Committee member) / Margolis, Eric (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
This narrative study sought to understand the socialization experiences of Hispanic entrepreneurs. While several studies have explored socialization and work-life wellness, few have focused specifically on Hispanics or entrepreneurs. A total of 25 participants were formally interviewed for this study including 16 entrepreneurs and 9 of their family members. Data were also collected through participant observation in which 210 participants were observed at several venues. Participants were recruited from three Southwestern states including: Arizona, Colorado, and Texas. The study employed qualitative interpretive methods to collect and analyze data. Research questions focused on the socialization experiences Hispanic entrepreneurs' reported, how they narrated the ways in which these experiences influenced their work-lives as entrepreneurs, and what they and their family members reported about the relationship between family and work. Results indicate Hispanic entrepreneurs were exposed to work at very young ages, acquired a variety of skills (e.g. sales and leadership) that transferred to their careers as entrepreneurs, and developed coping skills which helped them deal with business and personal hardships. Moreover, participants noted the ways in which faith, positive self-talk, and emotional labor played a role in their work lives. Finally, this research extends current constructions of care and what constitutes work and quality family time.
ContributorsMontoya, Yvonne Jay (Author) / de la Garza, Sarah Amira (Thesis advisor) / Tracy, Sarah J. (Committee member) / Margolis, Eric (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
ABSTRACT Stress and burnout in the educational field primarily in teaching is not a new phenomenon. A great deal of research and analysis to the contributing factors of causation to teacher burnout has been executed and analyzed. The struggle of the artist/teacher, hybrid professionals that maintain two concurrent roles, offers a perspective to burn out that has gone unnoticed. The conflict of roles for the artist/teacher does not infer that the teacher role is incapable of reconciling with the artist role but because of this unique scenario the stories of art teachers and burnout often go unheard. Today's public educator is contending with established stress factors as well as emerging and evolving stress factors. How does this phenomenon impact the artist/teacher's ability or inability to be creative? What are the implications of burnout and its impact on artist/teachers personal and professional work? This qualitative study was conducted using Narrative/Autoethnograpy, Narrative/Ethnography and A/r/tography. The stories of four artist/teachers provides in-depth accounts of their experiences as teachers and how that profession has affected their art making process and well being.
ContributorsMack, Paul (Author) / Margolis, Eric (Thesis advisor) / Sandlin, Jennifer (Committee member) / Saldana, Johnny (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
The Burning Man Festival, a free-spirited yet highly sophisticated social experiment celebrating "radical self expression and radical self reliance" is well-known for its large-scale and highly interactive public art installations. For twenty-five years, Burners (as festival participants are called) have been creating and displaying amazing works of art for the annual event, which currently takes place in Nevada's Black Rock Desert. In the desert, Burners build a temporary city, appropriate the open space to serve as their "tabula rasa" or "blank canvas," and unleash their creative potential in the name of "active participation" and social civility. In the process, they produce public art on a scale unprecedented in United States history. This dissertation, a visual and narrative ethnography, explores the layers of aesthetic and social meanings Burners associate with public art. Told in narrative form, this project utilizes "in situ" field notes, photographic field notes, rhetorical analyses of art installations, thematic analysis of Burner storytelling, and writing as a method of inquiry as means for investigating and understanding more fully the ways Burners create, display, and consume public art. Findings for this project indicate Burners value public art beyond its material presentation. Preparing for, building, celebrating, and experiencing aesthetic transformation through the engagement of public art all are viewed as valuable"art" experiences at Burning Man. Working in tandem, these experiences also produce profound feelings of connection and collaboration in the community, suggesting Burning Man's methods for producing public art could serve as model to follow, or points for reflection, for other groups wishing to use public art and other forms of material expression to bring their members closer together.
ContributorsStewart, Karen Ann (Author) / Goodall, Jr., Harold (Thesis advisor) / Margolis, Eric (Thesis advisor) / Tracy, Sarah J. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2010