DISCOVERING THE PEDAGOGICAL PARADIGM INHERENT IN INTRODUCTORY ART HISTORY SURVEY COURSES, A DELPHI STUDY by Josh Yavelberg A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of George Mason University in Partial Fulfillment of The Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Education Committee: ___________________________________________ Chair ___________________________________________ ___________________________________________ ___________________________________________ Program Director ___________________________________________ Dean, College of Education and Human Development Date: _______ ______________ Fall Semester 2016 George Mason University Fairfax, VA Discovering the Pedagogical Paradigm Inherent in Introductory Art History Survey Courses, a Delphi Study A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at George Mason University By Josh Yavelberg Master of Science Pratt Institute, 2002 Bachelor of Fine Arts Pratt Institute, 2002 Director: Kelly Schrum, Associate Professor College of Education and Human Development Fall Semester 2016 George Mason University Fairfax, VA Copyright 2016 Joshua A. Yavelberg All Rights Reserved ii Dedication This dissertation is dedicated to my lovely wife Dr. Ashley Babcock and my parents, Arthur and Cheryl, who pushed and supported me throughout this process to get this milestone accomplished. iii Acknowledgements I would like to thank Dr.
Schrum for her dedication as a dissertation advisor, providing me the support and push to complete this process. I would also like to further acknowledge my wife, Dr. Ashley Babcock, for her efforts as an editor for this dissertation. iv Table of Contents Page List of Tables.
xi List of Figures. xii List of Acronyms. xiv Chapter One: Introduction. 1 Statement of the Problem.
7 Overview of the Research Design. 14 Researcher’s Connection to the Problem. 15 Chapter 2: Review of the Literature. 17 History of the Art History Survey Course.
17 The Status Quo. 30 Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Integration, and Learning How to Learn. 31 Synthesis, Evaluation, Integration, and the Human Dimension. 33 Caring and the Human Dimension.
38 21st Century Skills and Technological Literacies. 40 Pedagogical Options / Teaching Strategies. 41 Western versus Global. 42 Chronological versus Thematic Approaches.
46 v Textbooks versus Open Educational Resources. 47 Standardized Assessments, Writing Intensive Approaches, and/or Authentic Assessments. 49 Individual versus Team-Based Learning (TBL). 53 On-Ground versus Hybrid versus Online Delivery.
55 Use of Technology. 57 Gaps in Research. 58 Summary and Conclusion. 60 General Design of the Study.
60 Method of Inquiry. 85 Final data analysis procedure. 85 Limitations / Delimitations of the Research. 86 Chapter 4: Outcome results.
88 Introduction to the Study Results. 99 Skill Outliers and Individual Cases. 115 Content Outliers and Individual Cases. 118 Chapter 5: Strategy Results.
121 Answering Research Question 2. 123 Course blog / hybrid model. 124 Museum / gallery field trips. 126 Less-is-more approach.
128 Participatory / student driven. 130 “Unknown artwork” discussions. 131 Multi-modal engagement. 133 Ineffective teaching strategies.
140 Teaching Strategy Outliers and Individual Cases. 146 Course Assignments/Assessments. 148 Writing journal / blog. 148 Research project of an “unknown.
150 Analysis of a personally viewable artistic artifact. 154 Creative re-interpretation. 156 vii Comparison essay. 157 Critical analysis essay.
158 Art history games / role playing. 161 Group research project. 162 Multiple choice, slide ID, short answer exam. 163 Round 1 general themes.
170 Assignment/Assessment Outliers and Individual Cases. 178 Traditional survey textbook. 178 Traditional survey textbook with supplemental readings. 180 Critical understanding of various historical viewpoints.
181 Primary source materials. 181 Resources on how to write, research, etc. 181 Cultural identity / encountering others’ work. 182 Open educational resources.
187 Course Reading Outliers and Individual Cases. 199 Discussion on Methodology. 206 Chapter 6: Discussion and Conclusion. 232 Future Research and Recommendations.
237 Methodological Reflection and Research Limitations. 250 Letter to Participants and Informed Consent. 280 ix Summary of Themes. 290 Course Organization Palette.
305 x List of Tables Table Page Table 1. Demographic Frequencies by Participant Groups Per Round. Average Perceived Percentage of Student Populations. Round 1 Proposed Skill Themes with Weighted Values.
Round 2 Skill Ranked Results. Round 3 Skills Ranked Results. Round 1 Content Themes with Weighted Values. Round 2 Content Ranked Results.
Round 3 Content Ranked Results. Round 2 Teaching Strategies Ranked Results. Round 3 Teaching Strategies Ranked Results. Round 2 Assignments/Assessments Ranked Results.
Round 3 Assignments/Assessments Ranked Results. Frequency Table of Round 2 Reading Theme Responses. Frequency table for Round 3 Textbook Theme Responses. 188 xi List of Figures Figure Page Figure 1.
Participant experience by participant group. Sections taught or supervised per term. Art historical areas of expertise. Institutional type described by participants.
Placement of the course within the institution. Participant descriptions of the course division. Course delivery modes at the participants’ institution. Course prerequisites as described by participants.
Focus of the course as described by participants. Linear versus thematic approach of the course delivered at participant institutions. Participant response to the requirement of a textbook for their course. Required textbooks described by the participants.
Average class size as provided by participants. Boxplot Demonstrating Round 2 Skill Rankings. Boxplot demonstrating Round 3 skill results. Boxplot of Round 2 content rankings.
Boxplot of Round 3 content rankings. Boxplot of Round 2 Teaching Strategies Rankings. Boxplot of Round 3 Teaching Strategies Rankings. Boxplot of Round 2 Assignment/Assessment Rankings.
Boxplot describing Round 3 assessment/assignment results. Boxplot of Round 2 Textbook Theme Responses. Boxplot Displaying Round 3 Textbook Results. 189 xii List of Acronyms Art History Teaching Resources…………………………………………………AHTR College Art Association……………………………………………………………CAA Computers and the History of Art……………………………………………….CHArt Open Educational Resources…………………………………………………….OERs Partnership for 21st Century Skills……………………………………………….…P21 Study of Teaching and Learning………………………………………………….SoTL Science, Technology, Education, and Math…………………………………….STEM Team-Based Learning………………………………………………………………TBL xiii Abstract DISCOVERING THE PEDAGOGICAL PARADIGM INHERENT IN ART HISTORY SURVEY COURSES, A DELPHI STUDY Josh Yavelberg, Ph.
George Mason University, 2016 Dissertation Director: Dr. Kelly Schrum This dissertation utilized a Delphi methodology in discovery of the perceived outcomes and teaching strategies that are common for art history survey courses taught at higher education institutions throughout the United States. A group of art history faculty, chairs, and current researchers focused on studying teaching and learning within art history weighed in on their perspectives through three mixed method survey rounds, ranking the importance of various themes developed through the responses. The results discover that there is still a strong preference for a Socratic seminar teaching strategy, while the participants also highlighted other outcomes and strategies that are important areas for future research in the discipline.
Keywords: Study of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), Art History Survey, Delphi Methodology Chapter One: Introduction Statement of the Problem The art history survey course has been, and continues to be, a staple of many undergraduate post-secondary education programs. The course is typically required by arts and art history programs as an introduction and is often included as a distribution requirement for other undergraduate programs. In this capacity, the art history survey course has been influential in delivering aesthetic knowledge of a canon of historical artistic objects and a basis for visual literacy for students of every major at many higher education institutions throughout the United States. Art history surveys are also often the sole course within a student’s curriculum to provide any familiarity with visual art and architecture within culture.
A once pedagogically innovative course, the survey has, with few exceptions, stagnated. Titles such as “Art-in-the-Dark” or “Midnight-at-Noon” are often tagged onto the nearly standardized dual slide lecture. At many institutions, faculty still teach this course to auditoriums of 100 or more students as part of their obligation to their departments, while their attention is directed more to their tenure research than to the art of teaching (D’Alleva, 2015; Donahue-Wallace, La Follette, & Pappas, 2008). The course relies heavily on a few expensive textbooks, hardly read by the students (Baier, Hendricks, Warren Gorden, Hendricks, & Cochran, 2011), that provide chronological 1 structure to a generally accepted western canon of art.
Students no longer find importance in memorizing the names, dates, styles, terminology, and other such facts that are often required to pass the midterm and final exams when the Internet is at their fingertips to answer such questions in an age that represents what Mansfield Spitzer (2012) has coined Digital Dementia. A clear marker for the ways in which the art history survey has stagnated is the publication of a text, A Survival Guide for Art History Students, written by Cristina Maranci (2005) and published by Pearson / Prentice Hall. This text has provided an attempt to explain the importance of visual literacy and, using a humorous tone, debunked various myths about the course, but continued to describe “the anatomy of an art history class” (p. The anatomy of a survey course is considered so standard and mystifying that there is an apparent market for the complete publication of a guide for students on how to make sense of this now foreign world.
Tests are standardized in a manner that their structure and the specific study skills necessary are broken down for the student to get past this course and move on. The book even presumed to explain the exact manner on how to take bulleted notes from an art history lecture. The existence of Maranci (2005)’s text speaks volumes to the problems this course currently has for a student population that may have never visited an art museum. Kathleen Desmond explained: Visiting an art museum is a first in the lives of many of our first-generation college students.
Some students ask what they should wear and if they are allowed to talk in the museum, indicating why they have not visited an art museum before. 2 We take a lot for granted as art professors, and we need to try to remember what it was like before we devoted our lives to the study of art. Many professors teach the way they learned, with no consideration of the fact that students learn differently these days than they did. Some professors are also dedicated to the “canon” and cannot figure out how to get that canon taught if not by lecture-the way they learned.
(Phelan, Concannon, Irina, Desmond, & et al, 2005, p. 35) Maranci (2005) mirrored these claims of “profound disorientation” that these first-time students face what she believes are the standard components of the introductory art history class as taught in colleges and universities in the United States” (p. This assumed standardization mirrored by statements of concerned professors at the prominent College Art Association (CAA) conference (College Art Association [CAA] Education Committee, 2015) amplifies the problems of stagnation and lack of connection with students. In the recent Survey of Public Participation in the Arts conducted by the National Endowment for the Arts (2013), there is a demonstrated downward trend in art museum or gallery attendance, especially among adults aged 18-44 years old.
Especially telling is the importance of education in museum attendance. In 2012, as the National Endowment for the Arts stated, 9.9% of high school graduates noted having visited an art museum or gallery, whereas 19.7% who have attended some college and 37.2% of college graduates have visited art museums or galleries at least once within the year surveyed. This statistic has demonstrated the importance of the art history survey course to engage students, but 3 it should also be noted that these numbers are in steady decline of several percentage points each year the survey was given. In 2008, the number of college graduates attending museums was over 40.6% of those surveyed and this downward trend has been consistent since 1992, perhaps also adding to the significant shift in philanthropic giving by Gen Xers and beyond, forcing museums to rethink their fundraising strategies (Merritt & Katz, 2013).
Current political trends have also added additional pressures on the art history survey course.