The Triumph of American Culture Over The Art Education Establishment: Findings from the U.S. National Assessment of Educational Progress in Art Page: 1 of 4
4 p. : 28 cm.View a full description of this thesis or dissertation.
Extracted Text
The following text was automatically extracted from the image on this page using optical character recognition software:
I I :WiiItiliItW ...~..-
- ,. I~ T
------ -- - - - -
- -----
---4
- I
-- 4
I-The Triumph of American
Culture Over The Art Educa-
tional Establishment: Findings
from the U.S. National
Assessment of Educational
Progress in Art
Brent Wilson
Professor, School of Visual Arts, The
Pennsylvania State University/USA
Through his art man creates visions and versions of himself, his world-
past, present and future - and his conception of what is good and desir-
able. Indeed there is no need to question the essential contribution that
art makes, both to individuals and to society. There is reason, however, to
question just how effectively school art educational programs function to
expand students' knowledge of art, to enhance their sensitivity to its qual-
ities, to modify their attitudes toward it, and to develop their skills in pro-
ducing art.
ducing art.
In the United States the enormous task of assessing educational progress in
art has been undertaken. In the National Assessment project we have departed
from the European and British commonwealth practice of examining only the
achievement of individual students at the end of their schooling. Rather, we
have chosen to assess the art educational enterprise itself through an examina-
tion of the degree to which school art educational programs throughout the
country have been effective in helping all students at various points in the
schooling process to (1) sensitively perceive and respond to works of art. (2)
value art as an important realm of human experience, (3) be skillful, imagina-
tive and fluent in creating graphic forms, (4) know something of the history of
art, and (5) make reasoned judgments of the merit and quality of works of art.
The evaluation of the effectiveness of art teaching in the United States has
been conducted by the National Assessment of Educational Progress. It is esti-
mated that this independent agency, funded by the Federal government has
now spent over two million dollars on two separate assessment for the pur-
pose of gathering systematic census-like data on the art-related performance
of American public school students. By collecting 7.500 to 15.000 responses
to a variety of art tasks from samples of 9-, 13- en 17-year-old students
in the four geographic regions of the country, by collecting data from six
different sizes and types of communities and from groups representing dif-
ferent races, educational backgrounds, social and economic classes it is pos-
sible to make well-founded and accurate claims about the effectiveness of
art teaching throughout the entire country.
And what are the findings of the National Assessment of Educational Pro-
gress in Art? What do they tell us about the effectiveness of the American art
educational establishment in reaching its objectives? First, I will present illus-
trations of a few specific findings and then I will move to the general educa-
tional, social and cultural implications of the assessment results.
Under the general art educational objective stating that students should be
able to sensitively perceive and respond to aspects of art, was written this sub-
objective: successfully diagram the major compositional features of works of
art.
Seventeen-year-old students were provided a reproduction of Fra Filippo
Lippi's Madonna and Child with these instructions:
There are two triangular shapes (A) important
to the composition of this painting. Trace around
the edge of the two triangular shapes., -,-
Ij
6
Brent Wilson is Professor
af Art Education in the
School of VisualArts at
the Pennsylvania State
University, USA. He was
Professor and Head of
Art Education at the Uni-
versity of Iowa. exchange
professor at Birming-
ham, England Polytech-
nic School ofArt Educa-
dion, a Lecurer at the
University of Utah, and
Supervisor of Art in the
Salt Lake City. Utah
schools. He has taught
art to children at both the
primary and secondary
school levels,
He received the Doctor of
Philosophy degree from
the Ohio State Univer-
sity, the Master of Fine
Arts degreefrom Cran-
brookAcademy ofArt,
and the Bachelor of
Science degree from the
Utah State University.
He has conducted re-
search into children's
graphic development,
cross cultural aspects of
children's sequential
graphic narratives, the
nature of language used
to describe and evaluate
works of art. the history
ofchildren's graphic
images, and the assess-
ment and evaluation of
school art learning. His
inquiry has been pu-
blished in over30 re-
search reports, articles
and chapters in books.
He is co-author (with his
wife, Dr. Majorie Wil-
son) ofaforthcoming
book, Teaching Children
to Draw.
He has served as the
Principal Consultant to
the National Assess-
ment of Educational Pt. -
gress in Art where he has
directed both the exercise
development and scoring
procedure aspects of the
project.
181M" iii ".i i ii __ ___ _______ __-_ --__- -___
.. ._.ay l
Upcoming Pages
Here’s what’s next.
Search Inside
This document can be searched. Note: Results may vary based on the legibility of text within the document.
Tools / Downloads
Get a copy of this page or view the extracted text.
Citing and Sharing
Basic information for referencing this web page. We also provide extended guidance on usage rights, references, copying or embedding.
Reference the current page of this Thesis Or Dissertation.
Wilson, Brent. The Triumph of American Culture Over The Art Education Establishment: Findings from the U.S. National Assessment of Educational Progress in Art, thesis or dissertation, [1989..]; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1051401/m1/1/: accessed June 5, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.