Integrating Art and Technology
An Action Research Case Study in a High School

dissertation proposal by temi rose 2/20/02

Table of Contents

CHAPTER ONE: THE PROBLEM STATEMENT
A National Perspective
Art in Academia: Valuing Aesthetic Cognition
Technology in Education: Ethical Considerations
Art and ritual.
Learning, Change and Democracy
Rationale for this Study


CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW
Introduction: Weaving a Web
Art in Schools: Theory
Justice, Responsibility and Care
Conversational Reality
Motivation and Learning
Adult Education
Action Research: Methodology and Principles
Art in Schools: Practice
Technology in Schools
Conclusion: Seeking an Articulation


CHAPTER III: METHOD
The Site
The Participants
Data Sources
Procedure
Researcher's Role
Data Analysis


APPENDIX I - THE STATE GUIDELINES FOR TECHNOLOGICAL EDUCATION
APPENDIX II - THE STATE GUIDELINES FOR ART EDUCATION
APPENDIX III – LETTER FROM RESEARCHER TO THE CAMPUS LEADERSHIP COMMITTEE
APPENDIX IV– FROM THE FINE ARTS ACADEMY COORDINATOR: E-MAIL INITIATING CONTACT WITH RESEARCH COMMUNITY
BIBLIOGRAPHY


Chapter II: Literature Review


ADULT EDUCATION
Introducing change into an educational institution is essentially an act of adult education. The change agents are attempting to convert adults to a new set of behaviors, in other words, the technologists want the teachers to use the technology. In Farhad Saba’s article, New Academic Year Starts with Controversy over the use of Technology (1999), faculty anxiety and lack of institutional support staff are blamed as the culprits in the failure of technology integration in the school. Saba’s study reported yet another example of teacher resistance to technology. In this case the resistance was attributed to individuals feeling insufficiently trained and insufficiently supported by technicians. Saba pointed to the cognitive paradigms that were operative in the environment as holding back teacher participation.

It is tempting to wonder if perhaps the symbol systems in the cognitive approaches to technology were incompatible. Perhaps what Saba was noticing in terms of cognitive approaches could be characterized as a clash of symbolic representations between what was occurring and what people’s expectations were about how things ought to happen. For instance it was conceivable to me that the cognitive paradigms that Saba reported and the use of systemic solutions Saba characterized as inappropriate read to me as symptomatic of culture clash or a meeting of incompatible narratives. The rigidity of the school system that the technologist perceived in attempting to integrate technology into the school, might also be perceived as a clash between two sets of rigidities. My thought, reading the article, was that perhaps the technologists were failed to perceive their own thinking as paradigmatic. Perhaps the technologists also felt anxiety and lack of institutional support, but it would be humanly and professionally difficult to write that in a research article unless the researchers were committed to self-reflective qualitative research and the ethic of care.
Adult education is a meeting of peers around real life issues, problems and situations. Research on change efforts that involve peer learning might benefit from the researcher examining her own relational research practices at the same time that she is describing the situation, the site and the participants. The first subsection in this section on adult education will explore elements of adult education that are applicable to change efforts involving adult peers in educational situations.


Adult Learners
Realistically, entering the high school as a technology consultant and university-based researcher put me definitively in the role of expert teacher. As a teacher of my peers, the issues I faced came under the theoretical purview of adult education. In Brookfield’s (1987a,b,c, 1985) extensive writing on adult education. He identified four main elements of adult education, and admits that every one of them is problematical. Experiential learning is one element that Brookfield identified. Experiences were not hard to come by in the daily life of a high school, so we were sure to have plenty of experiential learning. As we know, Dewey was an advocate of experiential learning.
Learning to learn is another element that Brookfield identified as an important factor in adult education. I was expecting there to be significant issues surrounding learning how to use software and learning to feel comfortable with the oft-noted fact that technology changes very fast and learning in that field is practically a constant. Learning to learn about technology would likely be a factor in this study. Learning to learn is well covered in the literature on metacognition that I assume is familiar to the reader (Metcalf, 1994). Essentially, the educational literature on metacognition asserted that higher level, or second order thinking enables the learner to take control of her learning and become a more independent learner. Second order thinking is also sometimes known as thinking about thinking.

Self-directed learning is the third element that Brookfield stated facilitates adult learning. Self-direction is the ability to chose one’s own learning path. For the adult educator, it is not always a simple task to share enough information with the learner about a domain so that the learner is able to chose her learning path and tasks. Perhaps, in practice, self-directed learning is an ideal form that is not necessarily desirable as a complete reality. Rather, learning might best be thought of as something that occurs in relationship, that the growth in learning to learn is in the direction of self-direction and self-actualization, without losing sight of the significance of others.
Brookfield’s final criterion for adult learning is critical reflection. I did not intend to teach participants critical reflection, but I was committed to practicing it myself. Critical reflection is the ability to withdraw from the practical, strategic type of thought that is closely connected to action, and to concentrate on internal, motivational, affective and theoretic aspects of one’s own schema, symbolic systems, and drives. Since I intended to be in conversation with participants, I was certain that they would hear some of my self-reflections as we worked together.

Brookfield has been active in keeping the work of Eduard Lindeman available to adult educators and scholars. His book Learning Democracy: Eduard Lindeman on Adult Education and Social Change (1987), explored Lindeman’s thought and work. I would like to aid the promotion of Lindeman’s ideas by briefly describing who he was and the kind of education for democracy that he promoted.

Eduard Lindeman was himself the product of adult education. There is some evidence that Lindeman was almost illiterate when, in 1902, at the age of 22, he entered a special program for at Michigan Agricultural College (p. 2). Eventually, Lindeman would teach at the New York School of Social Work (later the Columbia School of Social Work), the New School for Social Research in New York City (where Hannah Arendt also taught), Temple University in Philadelphia, Stanford University in California, and the University of Delhi. He was Chair of the American Civil Liberties Union Commission on Academic Freedom. He wrote four books, one being The Meaning of Adult Education (1926). Lindeman’s career is astounding considering that he learned to read as an adult.

Perhaps because he was himself an adult learner, Lindeman’s concepts and theories of adult learning are passionate and, I write now from 20 years as an adult educator myself, accurate. Lindeman was a friend and colleague of John Dewey’s and he shared Dewey’s belief that learning is now, that learning takes place in the lived moment experienced between individuals. Both Gilligan (Brown & Gilligan, 1992) and Arendt (1976) describe similar constructs. According to Lindeman, because adult learning occurs in lived moments, discussion is the primary means to use in adult education. The validation of discussion is reminiscent not only of Dewey’s constructs, but also of Freire’s (1993), Vygotsky’s (1962), and Shotter’s (1993a). All of these educational theorists have asserted that the teacher must engage fully as a collaborator in the educational moment, to participate in discussion with the learner.

Lindeman, like Freire, attacked forms of adult education that treated learners as passive absorbers of information. He did not use Freire’s term, assistencialism, but he articulated the same perception that the assumption of intellectual superiority and instrumentalism inherent in teacher-centered curricula reinforced authoritarianism and should not be tolerated. Lindeman believed, as did Dewey, that the ultimate purpose of education in a democracy was simply democracy itself. The content of the learning situation is determined by historical circumstances. The means, democratic practice, evolves in style but remains the core methodology of progressive education. Lindeman perceived democracy as a living, growing social organism, originally made possible and constantly recreated through the interactions of individuals pursuing self-discovery in the context of their peers’ pursuit of self-discovery. Lindeman asserted that self-discovery is the same as learning.

Although Lindeman did not write about self-actualization, his understanding of the purpose of adult education can, with no fundamental theoretical loss, be thought of as self-actualization in the context of democratic responsibility.
In the next subsection the discussion will widen to include the social context of adult learning. We will be concerned with how the social, structural, context influences learners and how learners might in turn take responsibility to influence that environment.


The Self Guiding Society
Amitai Etzioni’s (1951, 1968, 1971) perspective was more structural than Lindeman or Brookfield’s. Etzioni studied and described how structures and roles within organizations influence the dynamics that affect the experience of people working in those organizations. Etzioni examination of the forces acting on individuals owes much to Lewin’s field theory of psychology and group dynamics. In these theories, the individual has internal and external forces acting on her and a consultant must try to assess the nature of these forces. Then the task is to restrict the negative impact of forces so they cease restraining active participation and to increase the strength of those forces that support personal and group development.

Etzioni is also the founder of the Communitarian movement that seeks to create a national conversation on the role of community in democracy. Etzioni’s focus was to encourage local responsibility. His point, not yet covered in this literature review was that the democratic concept of rights is linked to the democratic concept of responsibility. Rights, in this sense, result from the exercise of responsibility. Many educators are familiar with learners becoming more able when they are encouraged to take more responsibility. Facility can be compared to rights and experience can be seen the responsibility through which facility is earned. The democratic process requires the active participation of its members, this is a responsibility. This active participation in turn creates an environment in which rights are respected. Applied to this study, Etzioni’s theory might look something like this: teachers who wish to have more computers in their classrooms might consider becoming active participants in computer-supported learning activities. This active participation might create a climate in which their right to more computers would be recognized and satisfied. This possibility was explored in the study.

The next subsection returns to focusing on the individual adult learner. If self-actualization is conceived of as a learner’s right, then perhaps self-revealing can be considered the corresponding responsibility. The following subsection is the last in this section on adult education will consider Arthur Comb’s construct of self-revealing as a possible conversational catalyst for self-actualization.


Self-revealing
Arthur Combs (1979, 1982, 1999) has written extensively on adult education. His perspective was one of person-centeredness. All learning, Combs asserted, comes from perception and perception is our most unique expression of individuality. Combs’ ideas converged with Maslow’s, whom he often credited. Combs was also influenced by systems theories and asserted that people are open systems, constantly exchanging with the environment. Combs stated that teachers of adults must be "self-revealing" (1982, p. 172). Here we can see the influence of Carl Rogers. A teacher of adults, in these theoretical frameworks, is meant to co-engage in learning. Combs would agree with Greene’s statement, "I am not yet."

Being vulnerable is not an easy task in a professional situation, and consultancy is a professional relationship. The distinction between the private and the public that has permeated our societal structures seems to be breaking down but how do we protect ourselves if there is no distinction between public and private? In theory, these are terrible fears to contemplate, but in practice, relationships are rarely completely, purely, in any one particular mode. We more often find ourselves in a turmoil of forces, as Lewin described, pulling us in a variety of directions and we attempt to steer a course that meets our understanding of our selves, our values, and our circumstances. In my experience, self-revealing can be a powerful tool but can also overwhelm the learners. The purpose of self-revealing is two-fold, to encourage an appreciation of one another as flawed and yet accomplished adults, and to mitigate against authoritarianism by ensuring that the educator is vulnerable to the learners. When self-revealing itself becomes oppressive, it is no longer meeting its purposes in an educational situation.

When I was very young, we used to play a game at the beach. One person would start digging a hole in the sand, as deep as one could. The other person would start digging another hole, directly in the path of the first hole. Eventually, the two digging hands met under the sand and a tunnel was formed. How do I convey except to state the giggling joy when two sets of wiggling, struggling fingers met under the sand? Often, as I have worked on this study, I have had the image of science and math educators’ fiercely digging towards a justification of their purposes, while the arts and humanities educators are doing the same from an opposite direction. In my imagination, information technology is the tunnel where the hands will join.

Summary: Lifelong Learning
No one theorist is given credit for articulating the concept of lifelong learning. Lifelong learning is an idea that emerged, not from theory so much as from a description of reality. The learning organization is a nomer applied to business organizations that ask personnel to commit to a perspective of growth and change. However, the learning organization can also be applied to us all in every walk of life. In the Darwinist, evolutionary view, all organic systems must continuously adapt or die. Continuous adaptation is learning, but it is a D-need-motivated kind of learning. The type of learning that the learning organization and lifelong learning promote is B-need-motivated learning. Educators who use the terms lifelong learning and the learning organization are promoting an open systems view of education. In this view, formal education is perceived as a small, deliberated element within an ongoing, living, all-encompassing, process.

Many adult learning theorists agree that discussion is a key factor in adult education. The educational dialogue called discussion is described as a co-equal engagement in a process of self-discovery whose purpose is both to create growth in the individuals involved and to support the growth of the group as a whole. The benefits of discussion skills last a lifetime and are as essential to lifelong learning as the ability to read and interpret what has come before. An active citizen in a participatory democracy requires the skill to interpret the past through engaging in communication with the artifacts from that past. A democratic citizen also has the right and the responsibility to bring her understanding into public, present, shared arenas and the skill required to do so is discursive conversation.

The context for conversations is the organization from which the participants’ roles take their definitions and in which their relational experiences are embedded. Theoretically, if social systems are living systems, then participation by individuals mutually interacting ought to influence the enveloping systems as much as the individuals themselves.

We have covered art theory, conversational reality theory, motivation theory and adult education theory. In the next section we will explore action research methodology and principles. next