Increasing Art Understanding and Inspiration Through Scaffolded Inquiry

Abstract

We investigated the impact of inquiry instruction within a well-established, yearlong, studio-focused high school student program based at a contemporary art museum in the southwestern United States. The pretest and posttest focused students’ attention on the work of two different contemporary artists and used the same prompts to solicit student questions about the artists’ work and ideas for the students’ own artist-inspired work. Quantitative results showed that on the posttest, students asked more questions, formed better questions, and inquired more about higher-order topics than they had done on the pretest; additionally, inspiration for their own art expanded. Qualitative findings showed that students’ inspirations for their own art expanded after engaging in scaffolded inquiry instruction.

Funding

This study was partially funded by a grant from the National Art Education Foundation.

Notes

¹ Kathy David and Teresa Keele scored students’ questions.

² Nancy Egly served as statistician for this study.

³ https://scottsdalearts.org/education/school-programs/visions

⁴ We borrowed and credited brainstorming rules as well as a strategy for distinguishing open and closed questions from Rothstein and Santana (2014).

⁵ Jasen Evoy prepared carefully sequenced 15-minute YouTube videos to ensure consistent administration of pretest and posttest.

⁶ Jamie Watts provided thoughtful feedback based on her extensive experience teaching art in several high schools in the United States and in the United Kingdom.

Additional information

Funding

This study was partially funded by a grant from the National Art Education Foundation.