Browsing by Subject "Informal education"
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Item Creative catalysts : a narrative investigation of pivotal learning experience through conversation with six contemporary artists(2010-08) Curry, Kendra Wynne; Bolin, Paul Erik, 1954-; Mayer, Melinda M.This thesis is a narrative study that examines significant life experiences of six living artists that were pivotal in their decision to pursue careers in the arts. Although the examples found in these conversations are not exhaustive—many factors play into the individuals sense of identity and agency—they serve to give voice to the multiplicity of the learning experience, underscoring that creative education occurs in the home, the community, and among social groups as frequently as it does in the classroom. Through direct, open-ended conversations with artists, research explores the setting of upbringing and education, the pivotal experiences—catalysts—that propelled these individuals into art careers, and impact of their experience on both creative practice and notions of art learning. Interviews encompass artists whose work is located in public spaces, natural landscapes, and urban environments as often as it appears in the traditional exhibition settings, whose work is both collaborative and socially constructed. They comprise Rick Lowe, artist and founder of Project Row Houses in Houston, Texas whose community-centered social sculpture expands on our cultural assumptions about the artist and Anne Wallace, a public artist whose early work as a human right activist and bi-cultural experiences translate into videos about the complexities of the United States/Mexico border. It includes Vincent Valdez, a self-described “hyper-realist” who depicts his home city and composite life experiences of his family through allegorical paintings and drawings; Marie Lorenz, an artist explorer whose interest in urban waterways brings her work into the waters of forgotten canals and rivers; of Robert Pruitt, who critiques ever-changing political landscapes, conceptions of history, and globalism through hybrid drawings and sculptures; and Franco Mondini-Ruiz who fuses aesthetics of high and low in installations and creative economy widely accessible to people both within and outside the confines of the art world. Through narrative conversation, this thesis enriches overlapping theories that encompass our understandings of education and learning—mentorship, experiential learning, the aesthetic experience, place-based learning, communities of practice—through lived example, underscoring learning as a socially constructed phenomenon. Experiences of learning, unique and wholly individualized, contribute to a one’s sense of self and agency; in the case of the six artists featured in this study, creative experiences contribute to their identity as “artist” and motivated their pursuit of lifework and career.Item Learning through making : a study in craft education at the John C. Campbell Folk School(2013-08) Burke, Margaret Taylor; Bolin, Paul Erik, 1954-The purpose of this study was to investigate why adult students engage in arts learning and what they gain from that experience. Specifically, this research combined case study and narrative inquiry methods to produce a richly textured understanding of the John C. Campbell Folk School and the experiences had by students, instructors, and staff at the school. Due to the unique nature of a rural, interdisciplinary folk arts school, a survey of the Folk School’s history and educational philosophies was conducted to provide a framework for understanding the school’s specific environment. Through informal narrative interviews with students, instructors, and staff, individual accounts of the Folk School experience were established. By identifying what drives enrollment and outcomes of attendance, this study draws conclusions about what individuals seek through informal arts learning. The findings of this study indicate consistent motivations for initial enrollment at the school, but a broad range of reasons for re-enrollment. The reported outcomes were strongly related to personal development, enjoyment, and relationships built at the school. Based on the findings of this study, key components of informal, adult arts learning were identified that can inform other schools and institutions as they promote adult programs.Item Science and the culture of American childhood, 1900-1980(2012-12) Onion, Rebecca Stiles; Davis, Janet M.; Mickenberg, Julia L.; Meikle, Jeffrey; Hunt, Bruce; Hartigan, JohnIn American culture of the twentieth century, there has evolved a persistent popular association between the personal qualities of children and of scientists. Efforts to encourage children to get “hooked on science” have consistently noted this affinity, as Americans have ascribed curiosity, wonder, and delight in discovery to their children. Responding to debates within cultural history, childhood studies, and the history of science, this dissertation argues that tracking the ways that this cultural commonplace has been created, and showing how it has depended upon inequalities of gender, race, and class, can help us understand intermingled attitudes of awe and distrust toward science in public culture. In five chapters, the dissertation traces efforts to bring science into children’s popular culture across the twentieth century, showing how these efforts constitute a very visible form of public science. In Chapter One, located in the Progressive Era, the American Museum of Natural History and the Brooklyn Children’s Museum offer comparative case studies that show how “science” was perceived as a civilizing or empowering force in children’s lives, depending on their social class. In the interwar period, children’s culture taught that posing questions about the natural and technological worlds was a practice that cemented a white male child’s position as the vanguard of evolution. Chapter Two examines the proliferation of children’s non-fiction and encyclopedias, and Chapter Three shows how chemistry sets created images of modern boyhood. In the postwar era, young scientists began to appear as an endangered species, as science promoters saw popular culture as a threat to the kind of individuality and focus necessary for serious inquiry. Chapters Four and Five show how promoters of the Westinghouse Science Talent Search and Robert Heinlein, author of a series of young-adult science fiction novels, sought to create alternative youth cultures hospitable to science. By examining the images of young inquirers that result from these popularization efforts, I argue that these images helped adults come to terms with their own relationships to innovation, while naturalizing the perception of science as an intellectual project of privilege.