Book Description

This thesis investigates how creativity, risk-taking, exploration, play, and experimentation in artmaking may be encouraged through curricular structures, and/or classroom culture and norms – as well as how art teachers can allow for expansive, authentic choice and autonomy for students, without leaving them lost with no direction. It is additionally interested in how we can model creative habits for our students, and what kinds of classroom environments either help or hinder these goals. Utilizing both action research and autoethnography as my research methodologies, this thesis is a comparison of two classroom environments, which I call School A and School B, and how the lessons I developed transpired at each placement. I was interested in how to maintain a youth-driven curriculum, how I as a teacher can help students develop creative practices that can be taken outside of the classroom, and if my lessons could achieve these two goals. I originally proposed a project that aimed to teach about text-based artworks while also attempting to model creative habits that students could utilize outside of the classroom, and engaged with democratic practices as a necessary component of the curriculum. I was most interested in creativity, play, and experimentation within an arts curriculum, and how youth choice and autonomy can authentically exist within the confines of the classroom. I was not pleased with how the project turned out at my high school placement, a freshmen IB arts classroom (School A), mostly because the classroom culture and norms created an environment that did not prioritize meaningful student choice, creativity, or experimentation, but instead heavily emphasized assessment, retention of vocabulary, and learning IB class procedures. My second school placement (School B) was a TAB classroom in which choice and experimentation were highly prioritized, so I redesigned a series of creative challenges that 7th/8th grade students could engage there, in order to observe and document the difference between these two placements. I removed the text-based project, as this classroom was entirely open to whatever projects students would propose and then pursue themselves. Instead, these creative challenges were framed as ways for students to explore and experiment with materials, play, and develop ideas for their personal projects. Ultimately, my findings focused on the differences between these two school sites, what meaningful choice for students can look like, and how classroom environments either help or hinder creativity, choice, and autonomy for students.