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The arts are of central importance to the education of young minds. However, educators know surprisingly little about how the arts are taught, what students learn, and the types of decisions teachers make in designing and carrying out instruction. The Studio Thinking Project is a multi-year investigation designed to answer these questions. Phase I. Teaching and Learning in the Visual Arts, 2001-2004 Phase I of our research, funded by The J. Paul Getty Trust, is completed. Phase I documented art teachers' pedagogical intentions and strategies, and also included a small pilot study investigating whether students actually learned what their teachers taught. We identified eight categories of learning that arts teachers intend their students to learn and three classroom structures that teachers use to teach them. Our findings are described in a handbook for teachers and researchers in the visual arts (to be published) called Studio Thinking: How Visual Arts Teaching Can Promote Disciplined Habits of Mind. Phase II. Learning and Assessment in the Visual Arts, 2003-2005 Phase II of our research, funded by The J. Paul Getty Trust and the Ahmanson Foundation, is an analysis of learning in visual arts (following from the pilot study conducted in Phase I), based on work with K-12, visual art specialist teachers and their students near Boston, MA and in Oakland, CA. This study will result in a tool for assessing Studio Thinking in the visual arts in the eight Studio Habits of Mind documented in Phase I. Our findings will be reported in a companion "assessment guide" to the teaching handbook. The assessment guide will be for teachers of visual arts, both arts specialists and arts teachers in general classroom contexts, as well as arts researchers. Phase III: Using the Studio Thinking Framework, 2004-2006 Phase III, funded by The J. Paul Getty Trust, the Ahmanson Foundation, and the US Department of Education, began in January, 2004. In Phase III we are working with two collaborating institutions in Oakland, CA: the Alameda County Office of Education and the California College of the Arts. We are documenting how 15 elementary and middle school teachers generalist teachers in disadvantaged public schools in Oakland learn to use the Studio Thinking Framework, in conjunction with the Teaching for Understanding Framework and other teaching frameworks developed at Project Zero, for teaching, learning, and assessment of visual arts with entire classes.
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[Project Zero] [Research Projects] [History of Project Zero ] [Principal Investigators] [Summer Institute] [Products and Services] [eBookstore] Copyright © 2010 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education, 20 University Road, Sixth Floor, Cambridge, MA 02138, Phone: 617-495-4342, Fax: 617-495-9709 |
