Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 7, 397-414 (1992)

Visual Art in Primary Grades: A Portrait and Analysis

Liora Bresler University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

This article examines visual art as it is conceived of, and practiced by, class- room teachers. Based on a 3-year study (conducted under the auspices of the National Arts Education Research Center), data sources included inten- sive observations of art teaching in Grades K-3 in three elementary schools, semistructured interviews with teachers and principals, and analysis of materials. The study of art programs in the schools unravels a chasm be- tween teachers’ advocacies on the one hand, and their classroom practice on the other. This chasm can be understood within the contexts in which art programs operate, in particular, the incompatibility of teachers’ views of art with the broader values and goals of the schools.

INTRODUCTION

This article is concerned with the description and interpretation of visual art instruction in Grades K-3. Traditionally, the study of visual art in early childhood comes from the field of psychology. Major questions address the development of children’s artistic behavior. In contrast, my starting point concerns the kind of opportunities provided in the environment. It is the careful, empirical study of contents and activities in art lessons, the examin- ation of specific skills, and implicit values transmitted by the schools that is the neglected part in the literature.

What is the role of the arts in primary grades? The importance of art activities for young children is broadly acknowledged. Statements to this effect are voiced by arts education scholars within the academic community

It is my pleasure to thank Bernard Spodek, Robert Stake, and Daniel Walsh for insightful comments on this manuscript. Also, many thanks to Karen A. Andrews for her excellent editorial assistance.

Correspondence and requests for reprints should be sent to Liora Bresler, University of Illi- nois, Department of Curriculum and Instruction, College of Education, 3 11 Education Bldg., 310 South Sixth St., Champaign, IL 61820-6990.

n Received May 22, 1991; Revision received September 19, 1991; Accepted October 14, 1991.

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as well as by practitioners in the schools, teachers, and administrators. Within the academic community, earlier advocacies had emphasized affec- tive rationales, highlighting self-expression and creativity (e.g., Lowenfeld, 1939). More recently, theoreticians advocate the importance of qualitative thinking in a variety of modes of representation (Ecker, 1963; Eisner, 1982), the development of multiple intelligences (Gardner, 1983), and the develop- ment of imagination and imagery (Broudy, 1972). Bresler (1988) showed that practitioners typically base their arguments for art in the schools on its merits in the affective realm, echoing Lowenfeld. Whether for affective or cognitive rationales, whether in academic or school-based circles, the claim for substantive art instruction is loud and clear.

However, the study of art programs in the schools unravels a chasm between advocacies on the one hand, and classroom practice on the other: The not too uncommon rift between theory and practice. Is it a failing of advocacies, or have the goals not been set clearly enough? Effective reform is seldom born of goal setting and standards raising but rather of intensive analysis of problems and careful delineation of areas susceptible to im- provement (Fullan, 1982; Stake, Bresler, & Mabry, 1991). This article aims to provide such analysis.

The analysis is based on the examination of visual art lessons in primary grades, focusing on contents, structures, pedagogies, and evaluation prac- tices (Eisner, 1991). A special place is given to the contexts in which arts programs operate, in particular, to the values and goals of the schools, in- cluding teachers’ beliefs about the arts. These contexts, I believe, are crucial to the understanding of what is happening in the classroom. The questions asked in this study are:

l What learning opportunities are provided for children in Grades K-3? l What is the actual role of art in these grade levels? l How compatible is art (as perceived by teachers) with school values and

goals?

This study is based on in-depth observations of arts programs and open- ended interviews with teachers and principals in three elementary schools. One of the findings is that the very features for which art is prescribed- fostering self-expression and creativity, developing imagination, and problem-solving skills-are absent in art programs. The analysis hinges on a variety of contexts and issues: teachers’ beliefs, institutional goals, and community values. Although curriculum theory provided the conceptual framework, the interpretations emerged from my involvement in the field and were validated by participants: the teachers and principals.

Few studies explore arts teaching in primary grades. Most research in early childhood investigates children’s activities from a developmental stage perspective (cf. Case, 1985; Clare, 1988; Davis & Gardner, in press; Dennis,

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1984; Freeman, 1980; Golomb, 1974, 1983, 1989; Goodnow, 1977; Parsons, 1987; Siegler, 1986; Willats, 1977). In their outstanding article on a cogni- tive development portrait of the young child, Davis and Gardner (in press) present a comprehensive account of existing literature. The dramatic change between childhood and adolescence is one intriguing finding. Preschool children display “a fluid and constructive rapport with the world of ideas, feelings and symbols” (Davis & Gardner, in press), a stage that is described as “flourishing in a golden age of Creativity” (Gardner, 1983). It is rather intriguing that as the school year progresses, the “incidence of spontaneous metaphoric speech appears to decline and the expressive drawings of the pre- schooler are replaced by convention-bound representations that apparently disappoint both the child who draws them” (Rosenstiel & Gardner, 1977) and the adult who hopes to appreciate them (Rosenblatt & Winner, 1988). Thus, for the majority of children, the gift of creativity has been lost by the time they have completed elementary school (Davis & Gardner, in press; Winner, 1982). From a cognitive perspective that regards drawing as a special kind of intelligence, the loss of the ability to employ graphic symbols freely is regarded as a loss of an ability to construct understanding or knowledge (Davis & Gardner, in press).

What are the factors leading to this change? Growth and development are, to a large extent, dependent upon interaction with the environment. The kind of instructional programs and the societal values that the children are exposed to are important factors (Stake, 1975). School inculcates values in instructional programs at an accelerated rate (e.g., Apple & King, 1975, 1977; Bernstein, 1975; Berlak, Bagantos, & Midel, 1975; Kalekin-Fishman, 1986). The learning opportunities provided, the kind and quality of arts programs in educational settings as well as in the media, the place of the arts in the broader school and societal values, all play an important role in shap- ing learning.

In the last decade, a number of studies have examined art instruction in elementary (but not focusing on primary grades) and secondary schools. Some surveyed the arts as part of a general curriculum review (e.g., Goodlad, 1984), others focus specifically on the arts (e.g., Chapman, 1978; Eisner, Bresler, Catford, Phillips, & Trilling, 1984; May, 1989; Toward Civifiza- tion, 1988). The studies point to the low priority of arts education in actual practice.

METHOD

The data here draw on two case studies (Bresler, 1988, 1989).’ The larger question concerned the opportunities for learning provided by the schools.

’ Part of a series of case studies (Stake et al., 1991) carried out under the auspices of the National Arts Education Research Center and funded by the National Endowment of the Arts.

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It is assumed that arts lessons are not isolated phenomena but operate within social, educational, political, and economical contexts. In these con- texts, issues are affected and shaped by diverse factors such as teacher back- ground and beliefs on the one hand, school culture, goals, and values on the other.

This article focuses on the visual arts as they are practiced by nonspecial- ist classroom teachers in three Illinois elementary schools. The emphasis here is on studying classroom teachers rather than specialists, because non- specialist classroom teachers are largely responsible for teaching visual arts in elementary schools. Access by elementary school students to a visual art specialist in the United States is often lacking: 42% of the student popula- tion are not served at all, 32% are served part-time, and 26% are served full- time (Toward Civilization, 1988). Although there is some research on arts specialists’ practices (e.g., May, 1989), there is little literature on classroom teachers teaching art.

Goodlad (1979) defined the operational curriculum as what actually occurs in the classroom, the what and the how. The first part of this article investigates different instances of the operational curriculum, centering on contents, as well as on the structural, the pedagogical, and the evaluative (Eisner, 1991) dimensions of the curriculum. The analysis includes those contexts that stem from the hidden as well as the overt (Jackson, 1968), the implicif as well as the explicit (cf. Eisner, 1979) aspects of schooling, includ- ing those aspects not stated formally and publicly. As themes and patterns are summarized across different teachers, I locate these patterns within their larger contexts and examine the mutual shapings of beliefs, values, and practices. The second part of this article explores these beliefs and practices as they operate within the technical constraints and the ideologies of the school.

The Sites The selected sites-centennial 2 school in Chicago, Washington and Prairie schools in Danville, Illinois-were ordinary schools, selected to touch a variety of demographics in a big city and a small, “blue collar” town. Cen- tennial, located in the north part of Chicago, housed (in 1988-1989) 780 students in Grades K-8 and 37 certified faculty. Minority students com- prised 74% of the school population (40% black, 20% Hispanic, and 13% East Indian). Fifty percent of the students were entitled to free or reduced lunch; about 70010 of the parents were single.

In Danville, Washington school housed (in 1987-1988) 820 students in Grades 2-5 as well as most of the special programs in the Danville district and 60 certified faculty. Prairie, a K-l school, housed 440 students and 20

* The names of the schools were changed as were the names of the teachers.

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certified faculty. Minority students in both schools comprised 42% of the school population (28% black, 10% Hispanic, and 3% Asian), and 60-65% of the students were entitled to free lunches.

Methodology The commitment to a holistic approach featuring interrelated issues and contexts, and the interest in participants’ views and perceptions called for the use of qualitative methodology (cf. Bresler & Stake, 1992; Eisner, 1991; Erickson, 1986; Lincoln & Cuba, 1985, 1988). Data reported in this article are based on: (1) intensive observations of arts instruction; (2) in- depth, semistructured interviews with teachers, students, principals, and pa- rents; and (3) review of classroom materials and other formal writings, as outlined by Berg (1989), Bogdan and Biklen (1982), and SpradIey (1979).

Altogether, I spent 12 days in Chicago and 12 days in Danville from October through June. I observed 15 primary (K-3) grade classrooms be- tween one to four times where art was taught by classroom teachers, and conducted interviews with 39 classroom teachers including the 15 classroom teachers I had observed. The observations encompassed different ability levels, from the gifted through the “average” to the lowest tracks, including special education classes. Like the rest of the schools in their districts, these schools had no visual art specialists (though the two Danville schools had music specialists.) Data directly related to primary grade levels consisted of slightly more than 50% of total data. In this article, upper grades served as a frame of reference and comparison for the primary level.

THE OPERATIONAL CURRICULUM: VIGNETTES AND PATTERNS

The following section includes vignettes from my observations of art classes in the school. The patterns illustrated here are representative of the majority of classes I observed, as I will discuss later.

Bunny Hats for the Spring Frolic

9:26. Today’s project is bunny hats in preparation for tomorrow’s “Spring Frolic,” an annual play for parents and guest classes. Mrs. Jones, a second- grade teacher, takes out crayons as students move chairs to form horizontal lines facing her. She holds high her model bunny hat.

“Let me show you what we’re going to do.” She motions to Johnny to stand up and places on him her hat. “What do you think you look like?” Johnny, switching from leg to leg: “I look silly.” Teacher protests: “You’re not looking at yourself. Trust us. You look cute. [To class]: Do you want to do one of these? [Approving voices.] I already traced the pattern. First you need to put some eyes on it. I’m going to give you a choice. You can have pink eyes or blue eyes.”

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With heavy demand for pink, Mrs. Jones gets more pink paper from her desk and hands it to Matt to distribute. Ears, eyes, nose, and whiskers are manufactured in that order. Mrs. Jones instructs: “Okay, I want you to hold it so that the ears are going down on your paper. No, turn it around, put it flat down, so that the ears are down. Now, where do you think the eyes should go?” Lucy suggests right in the middle. Mrs. Jones cautions: “Don’t put them too high. Put them about half way, about like that. You can make them as big or as small as you want. Now we need a nice, big, pink nose. Then you’re going to cut the black paper in some skinny strips and make some whiskers. If you have your scissors-remember? Yesterday I reminded you, I said, you need scissors and glue-if you got scissors, you may start cutting your pink, your blue, and your black. How many whiskers do you think you should cut?” Matt says three, other voices echo. Michael says six. “Why six, Michael? Everybody else is saying three, how come you said six?” Michael: “Three on one side, three on the other.” Mrs. Jones: “That’s right. Maybe you could do eight. But don’t do any more than eight because then it will be all whiskers.”

Bunnies multiply and proliferate as children cut, glue, and paste. Jeff comes to show a paper-cut finger, with a pain-and pride-mingled expression. The teacher promises to send him to wash it in just a few minutes. At 9:45, Jones reminds them to put their names on the back of the hat. Passing from one student to another, she checks that things have been done correctly, com- pliments (“I see some real nice bunny ears here.“) and staples the hat. Now she holds high the finished products: “OK. Our firsf bunny. Yeah!!!” Josh, the creator, smiles. “And here is another bunny.” More high voices enter in “I’m done, ” “I’m done” answered by a lower, articulated “I’m coming.” Children put their bunny hats on. show their bunnies to friends. Small groups of children are talking softly. For those who are finished, the math lesson starts like a stretto (an overlapping of themes in contrapunctual compositions.) There is some tidying up. Most students are doing math at this point, with bunny hats on.

For the most part, the ambience of this class is cheerful, the teacher caring and attentive to students’ needs. Tasks and activities are well articulated, expectations are clearly presented. There is much good will, often extra ef- fort on the teachers’ part.

Themes, procedures, and activities are strikingly similar across classes. It is late fall as Ms. McHenry distributes to her first graders a ditto featuring a dainty, sad-looking ghost flying amidst pumpkin pies and a sketched house. The assignment here is to color between the lines. Those students who step up front to show her their work get rewarded with a “beautiful” and “gorgeous.” The art scene, here as in the other floors and buildings, reflects the progression of seasons and holidays: Halloween witches, pump- kins, and turkeys in fall; penguins, Christmas trees, and Valentine hearts in winter; Easter eggs, bunnies, and Mother’s Day roses in the spring.

I perceived many common patterns across primary grade levels. Lessons were typically 30-45 minutes long, varying from one every 1 to 4 weeks. The

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projects were one-time projects, with no continuity and building of skills. Craft objects prevailed. Evaluation consisted mostly of checking that direc- tions had been followed, and the expression of personal likes or dislikes, with few attempts at reasoning or the drawing of student attention to aes- thetic qualities. The great majority of the products seemed to be oriented towards crafted schematization (e.g., bearded Santas, glittering trees), with little attempt to convey expressivity, or broaden associations. For the most part, products appeared standardized, reflecting diverse ability levels rather than diverse visions and ideas. Ms. Colingwood, a third-grade teacher, summed it up in a sentence: “It is seasonal: cut, paste, color, draw, and I usually do it on Friday afternoon.”

Occasionally, an arts lesson theme is unrelated to a holiday. Ms. Wilson’s paint project consisted of coloring half a page with water colors, then folding the page to make a mirror image. The lesson required preplanning and special effort on her part, coping with messiness, and handling aprons and stained shirts in an otherwise clean classroom. It was obviously enjoyed by most of her kindergartners. From an art discipline point of view, there is a missed opportunity in the fact that not even once in the whole session did the teacher draw attention to the concepts of symmetry or mirror image, or to any other aesthetic quality. When I probed her, as well as the other teachers, about their goals, and their motives behind the arts activities, they typically spoke of change of pace, promoting creativity and the uniqueness of the child, and the expression of self and imagination. Technical goals in- cluded eye-hand coordination and the beneficial impact of art on writing skills. If teachers aimed at aesthetics, it was intuitive, unverbalized. It was difficult for me to infer it from their interaction with the children, whether in instruction or in evaluation of children’s artwork. Observations indicated clearly that they rarely drew students’ attention to artistic ideas and con- cepts like form, repetition, and variation. There was little guidance to ex- plore and experiment with materials, even less with ideas and aesthetic qualities.

Let us now examine a classroom representative of different pedagogies, embodying beliefs about free expression and open-ended activities.

Arts as an Open-Ended Activity 1:40. Lily Metzer, a second-grade teacher, pours glitter, yarn, cotton balls, and other materials into little plastic bowls, and arranges them neatly on a back table between scissors and pine cones. Laura makes green stems from yarns and cones. Christopher glues cones on a newspaper. Allison glues glitter on cardboard. Mark folds paper for a magnificent lamp, each fold separately, Sarah helps. Children visit with each other and are interested in what the others are doing. Metzer summons Allison to help assemble more bowls on the table. Jacob accidentally hits a box and the water colors spill out. Metzer in a soft voice: “Just clean up, please.”

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Children are scattered all over, in natural patches, which bring to mind the arbitrariness and artificiality of straight lines. Lily, young and graceful, moves from one group to another: “Now what I can do, is I can cut that out, and I can put glue there, and I can glue the paper, then it will be a little Christmas tree. And if I wanted now I could glue it and it would be ornaments. Would that be an idea? Why don’t you go for it?” “What are you doing? Ooh, that’s nice. Do you have lots of paper to put them on or do you like them like that? Are you going to glue them to this paper? Why don’t you do glitter or glue on one side?” “ That would be a good idea, to use turquoise blue. Right here. Why don’t you, can you mix that up? That’s a neat idea.” “Do you need some help? Are you going to put some glitter before you finish that? Why don’t you paint this and wait on this for a little?” “ It’s not a telescope any more. What is it now?” Natalie: “A pole, maybe? Metzer: A pole maybe? Hm, maybe it is a pole.” Natalie: “I don’t know. Maybe its a statue. Maybe its a piece of art.” Children crowd around. “I want to see it, I want to see it.” Jeff complains about Santa’s eyes sliding down. Metzer: “Yeah its kind of tough to make eyes on cotton balls. Look at all the Santa Clauses here. Cotton ball beards. Pretty neat.”

A little boy approaches and asks for help with the glitter. He tells me he does not like glitter. When I ask him why he chose it, he explains that he did not know what to choose, so he chose the one encouraged by the teacher and by other students. Metzer encourages the self-conscious guy: “Your things look a lot better than you think they do. I am sure it looks fine. OK, now you are ready? Is that what you wanted? Is that how you wanted it?”

As I follow her in class, Metzer explains to me: “These are their own art projects. They can make anything they want. Somebody makes a computer out of cardboard boxes, we have many Christmas trees from magazines. What I told them at the beginning of the week is to bring any supplies they want to, anything that they would like for art. They can pick up from three items over there (motions to the table with supplies) to start, and then they can come over there later after everybody had their chance.”

“Those are my art supplies” says Metzer as she takes me over to two big drawers at the side of the room. When they closed two schools in Danville, nobody wanted these supplies and she just “came and took them.” I sense her pride in her special supplies and her enthusiasm as she shows me the little shelves housing a variety of materials.

2:20. Metzer: “It’s time to start picking up” [disappointed little sounds]. Lou comes and wants to give her his artwork. Metzer: “I think you should go home and put it up on your Christmas tree. Put it by the light and all the sparkle will shine. Won’t that be pretty?” He insists and she accepts. I hear from a number of teachers that some parents throw away the children’s art- work immediately. By giving it to the teacher, these children get, at least, the acknowledgement of the gift.

This lesson clearly invited individual ideas and projects, allowing teamwork and variety. Some of the items were remarkably different from the rest in their conception and execution. Still, I found it interesting that the majority

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of products were strikingly similar to each other, strikingly similar to the other lessons’ products. The explanation lay perhaps in the fact that, here too, there is little teaching of skills, of new, deeper ways of looking and seeing. Children need explicit teaching and guidance, a presentation of alternatives. It takes teaching to overcome the otherwise routinized school environment. My observations show that in the open-ended lessons, students were typically not presented with opportunities to learn a set of skills and knowledges specific to the arts.

The similarities between Metzer’s and Jones’s classes in structures, con- tents, and evaluation practices are apparent: the prevalence of holiday and seasonal themes; projects that are a single, isolated experience with little at- tempt at the development of skills; activities that are lower level skills. Eval- uation typically consists of positive feedback (“I like that.” “How pretty.“) with little attempt to substantiate the evaluation on aesthetic qualities. Here too, lessons are production oriented: It is the rare lesson that ventures into art appreciation, even rarer one that includes aesthetics or history.

The routinization of activities and products is especially surprising as we listen to teachers’ beliefs about the arts, most of them highlighting their uniqueness, self-expressive qualities, emphasizing meaningful, personal ex- periences for the children (Bresler, 1988). The following quotations, ex- pressed by individuals, were chosen because they represent opinions by all or most of the 39 classroom teachers interviewed:

Art as Experience and Self-Expression I think that anything that causes a response in you is art. If you look at a paint- ing and it makes you feel good, if you hear a song and it makes you feel happy, if you write a story and you are pleased with yourself. Because for me art is just a reflection of the inner self, whether its yours or someone’s else.

I try to teach my kids that they are unique human beings. And what they have to offer, no one else has to offer. And I think you can do that through the arts.

I think it helps them express themselves, other than language.

I think that what art is doing, basically, is giving insight into human nature, helping to teach intrinsic values.

Most art lessons, though, do not fit into these aspirations. Projects were not unique, and were rarely expressive. The standardized products did not seem to reflect inner selves.

The emphasis on school art that had little to do with art as a discipline was prevalent. As I was looking for exceptions, I found them in those teachers who manifested extensive arts involvement and artistic backgrounds in their private lives. Helen Brahos, a first-grade teacher in Chicago, reorganized the classroom for art lessons, teaching art in small groups of four, allocating to art sessions full 2-hour sessions instead of the 45 minutes traditionally

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allocated to it. Bringing to classes vases of flowers and still life, Brahos taught techniques and skills, but even more, she taught her students how to look, how to transfer what they saw to colors and shapes. Her classroom walls, decorated with various projects done previously that year, and her comments in class reflected continuity and sequence. John Hinkleman, a second-grade teacher in Danville, taught his second graders skills, how to draw pandas and bears, how to convey expressions, how to plan, design, and evaluate. Both these teachers had degrees in studio art and engaged on a regular basis in drawing and painting, mostly after school hours and during summers. It was those teachers who possessed knowledge, as well as a deep commitment for art who were able to resist institutional expectations because they had an alternative paradigm, and additional sources of motivation.

INSTITUTIONAL PRIORITIES

Teachers’ lack of training and background in art was one key barrier to an improved art program. Institutional priorities and pressures were another key factor.

Pressure For Academics

Role of Classroom Teachers. Teachers said in their interviews that they didn’t feel responsible for including art in their teaching. Twenty years ago there were art specialists in Illinois schools. The specialists are long gone. However, in teachers’ minds, the arts still belonged to specialists. Even though some classroom teachers were involved in different arts activities in private life, most lacked specialized artistic skills and background, and critical faculties in the arts. The acquisition of these skills requires more than a reasonable effort for teachers who struggle to survive the difficult conditions in a typical school system. The result was a void in the function of a teacher responsible for the visual arts.

AI1 teachers felt heavily responsible for academics. The pressure for academics was brought up by teachers across different grade levels. Teachers talked about feeling guilty for taking time from academic subjects when there was so much pressure and so little time in the school day for “the basics.” Thus, teachers created their own balance between academic pressures (where art can be seen as taking away from the basics) and their own ability and motivation to teach art. That balance varied, as we see later, from classroom to classroom, but the reduction of arts instruction seems to be a general trend.

Visual art was not the only “victim” of that pressure. Whatever activity that did not contribute directly to measured achievement was diminished,

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sometimes eliminated. Such was the fate of building blocks in first grade (“The fewer distractions we have, the more work we get done” said a first- grade teacher). Such was the fate of music. Not having a specific place in the curriculum, visual art suffered the most.

Integration of Art into Academics. Many teachers saw, in the integra- tion of the arts into academics, a possible solution to minimize the loss of “academic time.” Jacki Martinez, a second-grade teacher said:

I integrate art with the subjects as much as I can, but with the elementary age level, here in school, the time you spend with reading and math seems to take up most of your day. And so you really have to make a special effort to get the art subjects in. It’s very difficult at times. You almost feel pressured to keep the children advanced enough in their reading and math. At the same time, meet their other needs, needs that they have to express themselves in other ways. And so you really have to integrate it, or else you just have to take special time aside and just work on art.

The pressure for academics led to the use of art as a vehicle rather than sub- ject in its own right. How were art activities integrated into the academics? Geometric designs and collages for math were popular activities. Jacki Martinez’s “menu” is representative of many teachers:

In math, when we talk about geometric designs, I usually try to have them make a geometric design, by using squares and circles and rectangles, and that type of thing. It’s cute, you know, and they like that.

We often talk about the difference between animal, mineral and vegetable. Then I take magazines and I have them do collages. And I have them separate those that are animal, and those that are vegetable. That turns out to be a pretty nice artistic type of thing, depending on the child.

My aide had the kids working with clay one day. They made some nice things, little animals, and that type of thing. It was because they had a story in their reading on how to make things from clay.

The low priority of art within the school (and the lack of intellectual challenge associated with it) are clearly reflected in Jacki’s words: “I know a lot of teachers like to do art on Fridays especially, because by this time, their brains seem to be draining, and it’s a good way for them to kind of relax and end the week.”

Echoes of the pressure for academics were reiterated by every teacher. Many, like Louise Wilson, a veteran kindergarten teacher who had seen the change of curriculum in the last 20 some years, elaborated on these changes and the emotional cost for children. Others, like Carol Givens, a second- and third-grade reading-improvement teacher, were more laconic, but not

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less intense, as she said with great emphasis: “We slack off on the arts and sciences, especially in the primary grades. We have to read, read, read!!!” Typically, the primary grade teachers I interviewed lamented the decrease in the arts. In contrast, upper grade teachers often felt that teaching art in the school was not a priority, considering what students need to know in life (Bresler, 1988).

At what grade level does the pressure for academics start? I began ex- amining the lowest grade level-kingergarten-expecting only minima1 pressure. As I talked with Marylin Harrison, a kindergarten teacher, her words came as a surprise. Marylin pointed out two kinds of pressure: The first, from the top, coming from administrators, superintendents, parents, curriculum guides, a pressure, which I call, vertical; the second, more sub- tle, but not less powerful, comes from peers, which I call the horizontal pressure. Marylin Harrison stated:

We are told that we are responsible for the things that are in the curriculum guide. The Kindergarten curriculum guide will give you a list of things in each subject that the children are supposed to have covered. That’s districtwide. In that way you get some pressure through the administration, and through the superintendent. A big deal is made about test scores. There is much emphasis on math this year because math achievements were low last year. Then you get pressure from some parents who hear about other kids who can do something and they want to be sure their kids are getting it too. They call the school, or they call the superintendent, or they talk with the child. A lot of pressure you put on yourself, because you want to be sure that your kids are really good and ready.

And then you get some pressure when you listen or talk with other teachers. Sometimes it’s comforting to hear about other people in the same spot, but at the same time, there are always a few who like to stick it to you: “My children are on page such and such and my children do this and my children do that.” Kindergarten teachers get some pressure from first-grade teachers. When they get your kids they put you down. They say “I want to ask you about Joe Smith, didn’t you have him last year? Well, he just does not know his letter sounds.” So I think about Joe, and I think about all the behaviorial and socialization problems Joe had last year. The big thing for Joe and Joe’s parents and me was when I got to send them a note saying: “Joe had a good day.” And they celebrated and I celebrated and Joe celebrated and Joe was all smiles. Because he had a terrible time getting along in school, it took us a long time to work it out. The test happened on the first week of school. One of the other teachers said: “What happened to review?” Joe has been home for three months. Because some of the teachers have so much pressure, and some of them are so academic, they start the year with full force. They want the kids to know all that when they get to nouns. And no matter how I feel or what I think about Joe, it puts pressure on me, because it makes me feel like “Oh, my gosh. She thinks I

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should have taught him.” I feel so sorry for his parents because they were so cooperative last year. And I feel the pressure because I know that Joe has a real tough time because he does not know his letter sounds.

The pressures for academics permeate the whole academic setting. Initiated from the top, it now infiltrates through the teachers and community to rein- force and shape a particular climate. In addition, it is the subtler, horizontal pressures that are hardest to resist in a climate zealous for academics. This is a prime example of a mutual shaping of factors, a self-reinforcing cycle, rather than cause and effect.

The pressure for academics is part of a larger value system advocating “back to the basics,” a concern with directly measurable achievements, placing accountability as a top value. These values have penetrated into kindergarten. Spodek (1991) placed these changes in a broad educational context:

As kindergarten education has expanded during the past several years, there have been pressures to change the kindergarten curriculum. Since most chil- dren now enter kindergarten with prior early childhood educational experience the traditional play-oriented kindergarten curriculum was seen as denying them a valid educational experience. It was also felt that beginning academic instruction one year earlier would increase the probability that the children would learn to read. (p. 1)

Limited Resources The low priority of the arts within the school was manifested in the low bud- gets allocated to them. Administrators and teachers mention the lack of financial resources. Budgets are tight, resources limited. Because there is no money for arts specialists, visual arts are taught by classroom teachers who often lack any formal background in the arts, or, at best, have taken one or two art courses, which were often not perceived as relevant at the time, and the content of which they have long forgotten. That lack of background in- teracts with teacher ability to draw on curricular organizers such as text- books, the development and use of curriculum guides, and the resources the district and school provide.

I did not see in teachers’ rooms or school libraries any of the existing textbooks for art (e.g., Chapman, 1985). Conversations revealed that teachers were not aware of art textbooks, just as they were not aware of cur- riculum guides for the arts (typically located at district offices). When teachers used resource books for their arts activities, they usually relied on a potpourri of popular magazines, in-service materials and craft books that they purchased with their own money, or borrowed from others. Whereas textbooks usually offer a structured and a systematic approach, the available

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resources left the burden of creating a pedagogically sound curriculum out of an arbitrary collection of sources to teachers who lacked the requisite background. Teachers’ resource books were concerned with similar goals of the school: using art for celebration and cultural purposes, decoration of corridors, principals’ offices, and lunch rooms. Although these goals are good in themselves, they can be problematic when they direct the curricu- lum, becoming an end in themselves rather than an added incentive or a final stage to present the result of good art instruction. Art education, then, is in danger of being subordinated to quick production and visibility.

Apparently, the lack of arts contents, sequence, and development of knowledge and skills was not perceived as a problem by teachers, principals, or parents. Here, the combination of teachers’ lack of art background with the lack of resources for art shapes arts practice: Teachers chose projects that were mainly easy to teach, easy to manage, and attractive to youngsters.

The frequency of arts instruction in Grades K-3 ranged widely, varying from school to school, influenced by building leadership as well as in- dividual teacher commitment. One of the principals in Danville required arts products to be publicly presented in the school corridors and changed every month. This decision, although unpopular, required teachers to in- clude art lessons every 2 weeks. The other Danville principal stated that she did not regard the arts as a priority. That statement added to the general message that art could be dispensed within the general curriculum. The Chicago principal, although generally supportive of the arts, had no specific demands and little close monitoring on the amount of arts instruction in that school. Although she went out of her way to secure funds for external resources (bringing to the school artists in residence and outside perfor- mances), a number of teachers chose not to include art in their classrooms. In all three schools, the primary grades, and in particular, kindergarten classes, had more arts instruction compared with the middle and upper grades. The great majority of primary grade teachers tried to include arts activities once every 1 or 2 weeks.’ Part of the reason that kindergarten had more arts instruction lay in the fact that children come with no skills in academics and are seen to have a shorter concentration span for academic activities. Another part of it was the tradition of kindergarten as play oriented (and therefore, by school definition of art, more oriented to the arts).

DISCUSSION: THE GAP BETWEEN SCHOOL GOALS AND TEACHERS VIEWS OF THE ARTS

The observations point to a major chasm between scholarly and teachers’ advocacies for the arts on the one hand, and classroom practices on the

’ Interestingly, contents, activities, and evaluation were strikingly similar across grade levels: primary, middle, and upper.

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other. A key factor in that chasm is the discrepancy between school goals and the essence of art as it is perceived by teachers. School goals can be categorized into two broad classes: academic achievement and disciplinary. The pressure for academics is directly related to what is widely considered to be the primary role of school: the acquisition of knowledge, high achieve- ment in academics as represented in high scores in standardized tests. Teachers’ views of art, however, exclude the cognitive aspects from it. Accordingly, art curricula are often lacking in intellectual substance. Rather than deal with a body of knowledge and skills, art curricula are decorative, trivial, and typically associated with the less important aspects of school life. As the more intellectual substance is excluded from the definition of art, art does not share with school’s primary values.

The second clash between art (as perceived by teachers) and school values occurs at a rather subtle level. Schools, by their definition and function, are heavily structured environments, centering around discipline, evaluation, and the following of rules (cf. Dreeben, 1968; Henry, 1966; Jackson, 1968). Schools aim to produce a similitude of results, to inculcate rules rather than to break them. They are places of clear and well-defined standards. But these are the very opposites of the values that teachers expressed as asso- ciated with art. The open-endedness, self-expression, and creativity, which teachers highlight in their views of art, are incompatible with school’s omni- present practice of evaluation and the production of accountable results. Equally unacceptable in school is the expression of individual feelings and emotions (especially when noisy). The school aims to shape and mold these feelings (at least, their outward manifestations) rather than nurture and promote them.

As a result of these conflicting goals, teachers find themselves in a double bind when called upon to integrate the arts into the curriculum. Two sets of values are at dissonance: the open-ended, criteria-free, individualistic, expe- riential, and exploratory expressed in relation to the arts on the one hand; the predetermined, rule-governed, authoritative, disciplinary, and struc- tured associated with the school on the other. Not only does art instruction require the integration of different contents, it also involves the integration of a whole new set of pedagogies, in which teachers typically have little practice. Institutional values then become even more prominent in the absence of teachers’ own convictions about art education.

How do these discrepancies resolve themselves in classroom practice? As we observe time and again, the unique, exploratory aspects of art are given up in favor of the disciplining aspects of school. Assignments are chosen based on the imitation of a product, where criteria are clear and easy to judge even if formal evaluation never takes place. The reconciliation of the need to evaluate (as a means to maintain authority) with teachers’ disdain of negative feedback in the arts, is achieved by giving unchallenging assign- ments in which everybody (i.e., everybody who tries) can succeed.

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In the process of adjusting their concepts of art to classroom practice, teachers need to give up an important part, perhaps their most cherished perception of art: expressivity and creativity. The same imbalance of frag- mented versus holistic, mechanical versus experiential so prevalent in academic subjects is apparent here too. In the emphasis on isolated skills, clearly measurable achievements, standardized test scores, and meaningful experience is often neglected within the school. Teachers and principals alike sense the loss and lament the imbalance. The arts, symbolizing the essence of experience and intuition, are regarded by teachers as capturing these lost qualities. Introducing more of the arts into the school promises, for many, to restore some balance. But the discrepancy is too large, and the pressure towards school values is much too strong for art to be legitimized. In my observations, only those few teachers who had some artistic profes- sional background, had an alternative, discipline-rooted set of schemas and paradigms for teaching the arts and the specific knowledge of subject-matter contents and the skills to communicate that knowledge. These teachers pro- vided a middle ground between the rigid and the open-ended extremes, creating a domain where feelings could be conceptualized in materials and different modes of presentations, addressing the core of arts discipline, drawing on conceptual organizers inherent to the arts. For the rest, an easy way to resolve that conflict was to adhere to recipe-like activities that con- tributed to institutionally sanctioned goals.

IMPLICATIONS

The leap from a description of the actual to the ideal always involves addi- tional, value-laden assumptions. There are two interconnected levels of implications that emerge from this case study: (1) one involving the clarifi- cation of values and visions, and (2) a practical one. The existing gap be- tween the ideal and the actual curricula is often covert, rarely questioned explicitly. I believe that it is at this level of value clarification that we ought to be engaged first. For it to be successful, the discussion should encompass practitioners and scholars, administrators and teachers, to deliberate and negotiate ideas and goals. Practical implications point to the necessity of substantive guidance and resources at the preservice and in-service levels. The gap between arts education practice on the one hand, and scholarly and school-based advocacies involves an extensive training of teachers as well as the provision of materials.

It is deep-rooted ideas that shape our aspirations and behaviors. As long as the primacy of arts in human knowledge remains unrecognized, art in- struction is likely to remain as it is. To change practices of art instruction re- quires “consciousness raising.” The acknowledgment that much of what is expressed is rooted in our culture, in a learned symbol system, in our rich

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inner lives: The acknowledgment that the translations from beliefs to practices are not immediate but involve a serious and time-consuming engagement.

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