| This research was conducted to assess the effectiveness of discipline-based art education (DBAE) and interdisciplinary art (IA) teaching methods on art production, higher level thinking skills, and attitudes toward science and social studies. Two of the sixth-grade classes at a rural West Tennessee school were taught using the DBAE method and two were given the IA treatment.;The evaluation of art production was two-fold using an Evaluation of Student Art Projects (Herberholz & Herberholz, 1994) which anonymously measured each group of projects on creativity, expressiveness, organization of elements and principles of art, craftsmanship, and how the artwork related to academic content. The second appraisal of art products involved emergent categorization with reference to Herberholz and Herberholz's (1994) categories of styles and student artistic development. Higher level thinking skills were determined from the Evaluation of Student Essays which measured academic knowledge, composition, and Bloom's higher level thinking stages of analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. Student attitudes toward social studies and science before and after treatment were measured using the Estes Attitude Survey (Estes, Johnstone, & Richards, 1975). T-tests, an analysis of variance (Anova) and data analysis were used to evaluate art production. T-tests were also used to evaluate student essays before and after each treatment.;Analysis of data indicated no significant differences between the art products of students in DBAE or IA. There were no significant differences in the attitudes or higher level thinking skills between students undergoing the DBAE or IA treatment. The emergent categorization of art production showed that DBAE produced more overall creativity and originality than IA. The researcher believes that students can benefit from a combination of both methods. |
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