I Found It, I Liked It, I Taught It: Preservice Art Teachers’ Use and Transformation of Online Resources in Curriculum Development

Abstract

This study aimed to understand how and why social media and other online platforms are used as curricular resources by preservice teachers during their semester of student teaching. Furthermore, the study examined how preservice art teachers critically analyzed and transformed their approach to using online sources through the use of a curricular intervention. In service of these aims, the following research questions were asked: How do preservice art teachers employ social media and online platforms as resources in their lesson plans at the outset of student teaching? After engaging with an intervention on critically assessing online-based lesson plans, how do preservice art teachers reflect upon and/or transform their own lesson plans? In this process, how do participants transform the original intervention? How does the process of finding, analyzing, and redesigning lesson plans found online and via social media transform the participants’ approach to designing curriculum? Addressing these questions, I implemented transformative learning theory (Cranton, 2016; Mezirow, 1997) to serve as the framework of the study, as this theory recognizes that while meaningful cognitive and behavioral transformations are the sole responsibility of the individual learner, such moments of transformation are greatly aided through learner empowerment and dialogue strategies. During this research, I served as the instructor of a student teaching seminar at a large, public university in the Southwestern United States that met six times over the course of a 16-week semester. Utilizing a design-based research methodology (Bakker, 2019; Crippen & Brown, 2018; The Design Based Research Collective, 2003) informed by co-operative inquiry (Heron & Reason, 2001), the study engaged four preservice art teachers enrolled in their semester of student teaching in a curricular intervention known as the Lesson Planning Activity (LPA). The LPA evolved as it was implemented and amended over three cycles of development, each of which illuminated the participants’ use of online resources for lesson plan development, their perceptions of the usefulness of the curricular intervention itself, and their changes to the LPA. Research data consisted of seminar discussion audio and video recordings, participants’ written feedback to the LPA’s (including written reflections, revised lesson plans, and example artworks), written responses to in-class activities, individual summative interviews, co-designed iterations of the LPA, and researcher reflective notes. Employing narrative data analysis, I constructed storied representations of each participant’s transformative journey through the semester, as well as a narrative retelling of the transformations underwent by the LPA itself. Individual participant stories were then analyzed and discussed as a whole, illuminating similarities and differences in online habits regarding lesson planning, especially between Elementary and Secondary preservice teachers. The story of the LPA culminated in describing a prototype application called The Art of Lesson Planning, which serves as the final iteration of the original LPA. Through developing a prototype app, participants not only aided in the complete transformation of the original LPA, but also sought to make publicly available the critical framework that helped them to 1) assess and transform their own lesson plans, 2) assess the usability of lesson plans found via online sources, and 3) have digital access to quality lesson plans. My analysis of the research findings indicated the following: First, all participants initially utilized social media and online resources to seek out lesson plans and/or curricular inspirations steeped in technique-driven traditional discourses (Thomas, 2020), voicing no interest in searching for topics related to expansive discourses, such as social justice, multiculturalism, diversity, equity, or inclusivity. This initial stance was transformed by the end of the semester. Second, while the LPA itself, as an isolated written and reflection-based activity, did not spur dramatic transformations to the original lesson plans found online, the LPA paired with long-form seminar discussions enabled a transformation of each participant’s preference for traditional discourse-aligned lessons to those which embody expansive discourses. Third, the thoughts, values, needs, and suggestions voiced by the participants were vital in creating a curricular intervention deemed helpful and usable by its’ intended users. Fourth, group discussion sessions were the most powerful force in helping participants critically self-reflect upon their curricular decisions and subsequently transform their approaches to designing lessons that were more integrative of student experience, conceptual depth, diverse artists, and varied subject matter. It is this fourth and final finding that led to the most vital contribution of this research, a prototheory of discourse-based lesson planning strategies for preservice art teachers.