Thinking Critically About Social Issues Through Visual Material

Thinking Critically About Social Issues
Through Visual Material

m

Kate Rawlinson, Susan Nelson Wood,
Mark Osterman, and Claudia Caro Sullivan

Abstract This article addresses an arts-integrated social studies cur-
riculum for grades three through five entitled Artful Citizenship, designed by
The Wolfsonian–Florida International University. Funded by the U.S. De-
partment of Education’s Arts in Education Model Development and Dis-
semination Grant program, the development and implementation of the
program was conducted concurrently with a three-year evaluation of the
curriculum’s impact on visual literacy and critical thinking skills conducted
by Curva and Associates. The research was conducted in low-performing
urban schools in Miami-Dade County and targeted students at risk for
failing Florida’s standardized achievement tests in reading and math.
Artful Citizenship was created by a museum with a collection spe-
cializing in art and design—mass-produced objects that reveal how design
reflects and shapes social, political, and technological change. Because of
the collection’s nature, the aim of Artful Citizenship was to use inquiry-
based strategies that focused on the critical understanding of objects as
agents of social change (as opposed to understanding their aesthetic or art-
historical significance). The longitudinal study provides a framework for a
definition of critical thinking that relates to a school-based intervention tar-
geting social studies skills. The study also documents the effectiveness of
Visual Thinking Strategies as a foundational strategy for developing critical
thinking skills upon which a multi-modal teaching approach that integrates
visual material and promotes artistic response can be built.
In this article, we share findings from the study that have major im-
plications for designing museum-school partnerships and help illuminate
the interconnection between visual literacy and critical thinking when
related to complex social issues.

Journal of Museum Education, Volume 32, Number 2, Summer 2007, pp. 155–174.
©2007 Museum Education Roundtable. All rights reserved. 155

156 kATE rAW lI nS o n E T Al .

Partitioned from its low-income neighborhood by a high chain link fence,
Miami Gardens Elementary, in its original form, was a hopeful product of
education-reform thinking—open classrooms without walls. Uncomfortably
retrofitted most recently around a central cafeteria, the school’s thin walls
slice irregular pie-shaped classrooms from the once open space.
On a visit to the school, our group passed through several classrooms,
each crowded with about thirty students, teachers talking, intent on what
they were teaching. Students, easily distracted, turned eagerly in their seats to
watch our movements. The doorless classrooms promoted a kind of esca-
lating vocal competition among teachers struggling to be heard by students.
If you sat near one of these openings, you might hear the neighboring teacher
more readily than your own. Exposed in quick succession to 30-second sound
bites of elementary reading, math, or science, we were struck by the varied
delivery styles of the teachers and palpably compressed energy of children in
crowded, windowless spaces.
As difficult as the chaotic school setting proved to be for us, we were de-
lighted to observe a class of students in the midst of an Artful Citizenship
discussion facilitated by their teacher. The students leaned forward, waving
hands high, eager to contribute their ideas about the artwork projected on
the white board. In the other nearby classrooms, such enthusiastic hands
were noticeably absent.
The Artful Citizenship project, funded by the U.S. Department of Edu-
cation’s Arts in Education Model Development and Dissemination Grant
program, illustrates one approach to moving collection materials out of
museums and into the hands of teachers. In this article, we detail the nature
of this museum-school partnership; how it facilitated critical thought within
the context of a school-based social studies curriculum; and the many lessons
that we learned about selecting materials, working with schools, and as-
sessing the impact on student learning.

From Home to ScHool:
SituAting A muSeum-ScHool PArtnerSHiP
Artful Citizenship might first be understood as a kind of “civic engagement”
or local outreach, in part because it was conceived by The Wolfsonian’s
museum educators to be conducted beyond the museum’s galleries.1 One
challenge was working with Miami-Dade County Public Schools (MDCPS),
the fourth-largest public schools system in the U.S. According to the 2003

T h I n kI n G C rI T I C Al ly A B o U T S o C I Al I S S U E S 157

census, more than a quarter of the district’s 400,000 students were born
outside the U.S., and 68 percent of the school children speak a home language
other than English. Of the one hundred largest counties in the nation,
Miami-Dade’s median household income is among the ten lowest; the large
number of children living below the poverty line face many risk factors and
are likely to have difficulty in school.
These serious circumstances had led Wolfsonian staff members to
develop several visual literacy projects (Artful Truth and Page at a Time) with
students and teachers of the district.2 The Artful Citizenship program
emerged not only from the content of the collection, but also from imple-
mentation experiences and evaluations conducted for these programs.
Artful Citizenship was designed to target critical thinking as well as
visual literacy skills of low-performing third- through fifth-grade students
through the integration of the museum’s visual material into the teaching of
social studies content.3 The general goals of the three-year intervention were
to (1) empower students to become good citizens by understanding citi-
zenship skills; (2) increase the understanding of art as an agent of social
change; and (3) ultimately increase academic achievement as evidenced
through improved standardized test scores. These goals were to be reached
by increasing student visual literacy and critical thinking skills through the
use of images from The Wolfsonian’s collection of art and design objects,
which is rich in images addressing social and historical content. The project
was designed as a process that would increase a student’s ability to identify a
social, personal, or political conflict; analyze the problem in a cultural or his-
torical context; and, ultimately, perhaps even design solutions for the social
issue through artistic response activities that placed the student in the role
of a designer working on socially-focused projects.
The Artful Citizenship curriculum was implemented in three schools
with large numbers of at-risk students struggling academically and receiving
Free and Reduced Price Lunch (FRPL) assistance (see Table 1). The target
schools included: Miami Gardens (91.7 percent of students qualified for
FRPL at the time of the study); Phyllis Ruth Miller (79.2 percent of students
qualified for FRPL); and Fienberg-Fisher (87.2 percent of students qualified
for FRPL). The comparison school, Miami Shores Elementary, had 71.9
percent of students qualifying for FRPL. The program was administered to
select third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade classes in the three treatment schools,
beginning with the third grade in year one (which was the study cohort)
and following those students to fourth grade and then fifth. Although


table 1

% Students % Students % Students
% Student receiving perf. below perf. below
membership free/assisted grade level grade level
School by ethnicity lunch math (2005) reading (2005)
Miami Gardens White 2
African American 41 90 63 58
hispanic 56
Fienberg-Fisher White 10
hispanic 81
Phyllis r. Miller White 7
hispanic 20

approximately 1,200 received the curriculum over the three years, the final
number of students who composed the study sample was 189.
The distance of the three schools from the museum’s front door ranged
from three blocks to twenty-three miles: from South Miami Beach and its
stimulating business and Art Deco-styled residential district, to a somewhat
run-down residential neighborhood ten miles away on the mainland, to an
isolated neighborhood from which one student did not recognize the At-
lantic Ocean when he saw it during the project’s culminating museum visit.
We designed Artful Citizenship to improve the critical thinking and visual
literacy skills of the students inside these schools, since multiple museum visits
were impossible. Our project team—consisting of four Wolfsonian educators,
Philip Yenawine from Visual Understanding in Education, and a core group of
four MDCPS teachers serving as curriculum advisors—dedicated three years to
developing and field-testing the curriculum. Both formative and summative
evaluation, provided by the Tallahassee-based evaluation team of Curva and
Associates, were critical to understanding the longitudinal impact of the arts-
integrated social studies’ curriculum. Vital feedback during the three-year
study was also provided by eighty classroom and art teachers who took on the
responsibility of teaching the curriculum in their classrooms.

tHe DeSign oF tHe SociAl StuDieS’ curriculum:
crAFting A Delivery moDel
Shifting from museum-based to school-based content delivery that would use
the museum’s materials to cultivate critical thinking, as opposed to single-


answer thinking, required us to address four challenges: (1) addressing state
and national social studies’ standards through a methodology that could be
replicated nationally; (2) identifying a proven strategy that, with practice, could
be reliably implemented by teachers in the chaotic environment of the ele-
mentary classroom and supported through professional development ac-
tivities; (3) creating a curriculum to support teacher-facilitated implementation;
and (4) establishing a classroom environment that modeled good citizenship
skills, such as respectful listening and tolerance of differing opinions.

Addressing standards. Given the mandates of the federal grant guidelines
to integrate art into other core disciplines, and the museum’s goal to increase
appreciation of the role of art in society, the focus of the curriculum was to
impact student learning in three ways: to develop visual literacy skills; to im-
plement arts learning in the academic content areas of social studies and
language arts; and to create opportunities for integrated artistic response.
Although the teaching of social studies in elementary classes is mandated
statewide, it is one subject area not tested in the school’s accountability
formula. As a result, citizenship education is largely neglected and social
studies is most commonly taught when integrated into those subject areas,
like language arts, that are heavily tested. Due to limited time brought about
by the demands of the state’s regimented standardized test preparation for
reading and math in these schools, classroom educators taught the Artful
Citizenship curriculum during the language arts block, which also enables
them to integrate social studies into their classroom practice.

Identifying instructional strategies. Driving our content-delivery process
was the need to prepare students as well as teachers to read complex visual
images. We considered two interpretative strategies: the Visual Thinking
Strategies (VTS) methodology and an artifact analysis approach that is more
commonly used in cultural history museums, though equally effective when
considering art objects and their context.4
The greatest difference in these two inquiry-based approaches is the
questioning strategies they use. VTS utilizes a learner-centered, open-ended
questioning sequence that begins with: “What’s happening in this picture?
What do you see that makes you say that? What more can you find?” An ar-
tifact analysis approach uses the more directed questioning strategy of a re-
searcher, such as: “What material is this object made of? How large is it?
When might it have been made? What might it have been used for?”


Although both methods are useful tools for illuminating the social content
of an art object or an artifact, two major issues—developmental appropri-
ateness and teacher implementation—as well as other qualities led us to choose
VTS as a visual literacy strategy for Artful Citizenship. VTS provided the vehicle
for building fundamental visual literacy skills, foundational for additional
student-centered teaching and learning methods implemented in the project.
The methods used in combination promoted student engagement with visual
materials in a variety of modes: viewing, reflecting, and talking about visual
images, as well as reading, writing, and responding artistically.
To support teachers as they learned to facilitate VTS discussions, a series
of professional development training sessions were conducted at the museum
by Philip Yenawine. Additionally, Wolfsonian education staff conducted
weekly in-school coaching and debriefings with teachers as they began to im-
plement VTS with their students. In the three-year period, approximately 200
school visits were made by museum staff. Two week-long teacher institutes
were also held during the summers of 2003 and 2004 for project teachers,
taught by Wolfsonian education staff, Philip Yenawine, and two faculty
members from Florida International University’s College of Education. These
workshops provided in-depth exploration of learning theory, VTS theory and
practice, language arts and social studies curriculum connections, and close
study of the Artful Citizenship curriculum materials and methods.

Creating curriculum materials. The choice to deliver the three-year cur-
riculum through school-based teachers necessitated the modeling and
building of teaching skills of educators unaccustomed to using visual ma-
terial or being attentive to visual literacy as a learning outcome. In addition,
a system was needed to facilitate simultaneous and consistent implemen-
tation at three disconnected school sites.
In year one, four educators worked as advisors with our team to develop
a prototype teacher manual containing sequenced lessons for the third grade
to test. The ten-to-twelve-week curriculum included six weeks of preliminary
VTS visual literacy skill-building followed by the multi-level Artful Citi-
zenship curriculum. Organized as a journey, the manuals were comprised of
four sections, and we suggested the teachers and students create travel logs
in class to record the activities of their Artful Citizenship journey.
These initial teacher- and student-created workbooks became the model
for the student workbooks called “My Travel Log,” which were designed and
tested in each of the three grades in years two and three. Utilizing the


workbook format with students greatly eased time and material limitations
that teachers had experienced in their classrooms in year one and modeled a
multimodal arts integration curriculum for them.
The student “journey” was tied directly to established social studies
content for third, fourth, and fifth grades, expanding in scope and complexity
as children matured over the three years. In careful sequence, legs of the journey
addressed: (1) concepts of personal identity within the immediate or larger
“communities” (the concept of “community” changed over grade levels from
home to school to cultural group to state to nation); (2) the changing roles of
citizens to make a “community” work, whether it is a home or school or city,
etc.; and (3) building a geographical understanding of a child’s expanding
world. The conceptual focus for each leg was implicit in their respective titles,
posed as three open-ended questions: Who am I? What is a community? Where am
I? The final and fourth section of the workbook focused on artistic response to
the previous three legs and was called Art in Action.
Each of the legs of the journey began with a visual literacy lesson (called
Look & Think), which used the VTS methodology to explore three themat-
ically linked images; this was followed by a drawing activity (Sketch Away) and
then a writing activity (Write On!) related to those images. These in turn were
followed by a vocabulary activity (Local Lingo) connected to the upcoming
social studies’ lesson (Dig Deeper). In order to also build students’ visual vo-
cabulary, these sections culminated in a lesson that engaged them in ex-
ploring symbols (Symbol Quest), which might be completed in the classroom
or art studio as the teachers preferred.
Although the use of a workbook may seem antithetical to the open-ended
philosophy of VTS, it provided a much-needed model for teachers to learn to
integrate visual materials and the VTS methodology into classroom practice.
Teachers began each lesson unit with an open-ended discussion, drawing out
the prior knowledge of the student and engaging them in the discovery of in-
herent social studies content through three specially selected visual images.
They then followed up the VTS “Look & Think” activity on a subsequent day
with the drawing and writing activities, which further addressed the theme of
the previous day’s images and prompted the student to create a personal re-
sponse to the theme. Most important, these responsive activities also provided
a transitional bridge from the open-ended discussion to the more directed vo-
cabulary and social studies content in the following lessons.
The visually stimulating workbooks proved to be user-friendly for both
teachers and students and were designed to not only deliver information, but


also to allow for student ownership and a place for them to record their
personal responses. For example, at the end of each leg, “My Pages” provided a
place for students to sketch or write as they wished. As reported in teacher in-
terviews, for many, the Artful Citizenship materials replaced time-intensive
and developmentally inappropriate social studies’ textbooks and became the
only social studies’ lessons students received. Teachers commented that
students were more engaged by the visually-appealing workbook and VTS dis-
cussions than other classroom activities, and these provided them with a
much-needed “learning” break from the intensive, rote test prep they were re-
quired to conduct.

Citizenship skills and classroom environment. Based on prior experience
with this methodology, the museum staff knew that the open-discussion
VTS process, coupled with compelling images, promotes benefits aligned
with a quality teaching environment and good citizenship skills, such as re-
spectful listening and debate about differing views on a particular social
issue, which were significant and integral to the goals of the project.
The VTS process models positive teaching skills for the teacher, such as:
shifting the learning process from the teacher relating expertise to passive
students, to one where the students are actively engaging in an empowering dis-
covery process; stressing active and respectful listening, not just by the teacher,
but also among the students; modeling positive student behavior and a way for
students to voice diverging opinions in a constructive way; challenging the
teacher to remain neutral in response to all student opinions, which encourages
increased participation from all students, not just “right answer” students; and
positioning learning as serious, but still engaging and even “fun” work.
VTS instills self-confidence; motivates students to share thoughts and
take chances through group discussion; builds respect and tolerance for the
opinions and experiences of others; values intellectual and psychological in-
trospection and reflection; and models behavior that reinforces thinking
skills that may transfer to other settings.5 It can be argued that these are basic
skills for being a good citizen in thought and even in action.

FeAtureS oF viSuAl mAteriAl:
ADDreSSing relevAnt SociAl iSSueS
To ensure the success of the social studies curriculum, Wolfsonian staff paid
careful attention to the selection of compelling images and visual material


Figure 1: Mural Study “Boys Playing Marbles” for Cycle of a Woman’s Life for the Women’s
House of Detention, Manhattan (c. 1936) by lucienne Bloch, WPA Federal Art Project.
Courtesy of The Wolfsonian-Florida International University, The Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection.

suitable to better foster the discussion of social problems. The curriculum
team, led by the museum staff, considered issues of collection fidelity, visual
appeal and image variety, alignment, and especially social themes.

Collection fidelity. The nature of the Wolfsonian collection, with its em-
phasis on design and propaganda of the 1850–1945 period, was the original
source of ideas for the project. Because of the nature of the collection, the
aim of Artful Citizenship was to use inquiry-based strategies that focused on
the critical understanding of objects as agents of social change (as opposed
to understanding their aesthetic or art-historical significance).

Visual appeal and image variety. Many of the basic principles suggested in
VTS image-selection guidelines matched our own selection criteria.6 For example,
it was important that the images be narrative and the subjects interesting to
eight- to eleven-year-olds. Images depicting children involved in family or other
social activities were especially appealing, as were beautifully illustrated maps
that explored the fauna and flora of the Pacific Rim, playful illustrations of local
products, and services with cartoon-like drawings (see Figure 1). Equally, the


image needed immediate visual appeal—engaging design, color, and use of ma-
terials, techniques, or compositional elements such as point of view.
Implicit in developmentally appropriate, student-centered images for el-
ementary students is a high degree of readability. Although students may
not understand everything depicted or understand the historical context of
the image, most would be able to identify the elements of the image and be
able to discuss what may be happening. Images that allow students to build
on their prior knowledge challenge them to look further and think more,
and images that make connections to possible social content provide the
best growth opportunities.

Alignment. Matching image selection and content with grade-level state
and national social studies’ content standards was another factor to consider.
For example, the painting Building the Tamiami Trail in the fourth grade “My
Travel Log,” addressed the requirement by the Florida Department of Edu-
cation that fourth-grade students “understand ways geographic features in-
fluenced the exploration, colonization, and expansion of Florida.” In the
fifth-grade curriculum, the painting entitled Woman’s Suffrage (Figure 2) ad-
dressed the need for students to “know ways American life was transformed
socially, economically, and politically after the Civil War.”

Social themes. To target critical thinking as thematically important to the
curriculum content, selected images needed to include human figures, thereby
reflecting some aspect of social, personal, and political concerns. Similarly
critical were issues of diversity, acknowledging race, gender, and culture (see
Figure 3). It should be noted that we purposefully did not select images that
reflected the racism prevalent during the collection time period, unless that
was the subject of the lesson. However, within the safe environment of VTS dis-
cussion, children were able to bring to the image their opinions, concerns, and
ideas about problems like racism. In other words, for the purposes of Artful
Citizenship, the visual material served as an open-ended prompt, engaging the
children in authentic discussion about social issues.

tHe imPAct oF ArtFul citizenSHiP:
DeFining criticAl tHinking
To make visible the transactions between various images and the under-
standings created by third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade students, we developed a


Figure 2: Study for a poster,
Woman’s Suffrage (1905), by
Evelyn rumsey Cary. Courtesy of
The Wolfsonian–Florida Interna-
tional University, The Mitchell
Wolfson, Jr. Collection.

longitudinal study.7 The design for our assessment evolved over a four-year
period of studying the impact of our programs on visual literacy skills in el-
ementary classrooms.8
The primary question guiding this study was to determine if partici-
pation in the Artful Citizenship program affected the students’ ability to
interpret visual images and think critically about them and the social issues
they convey. Because the visual literacy project was embedded in social
studies standards, however, so too were the standards of assessment. To
define and evaluate visual thinking in the context of social studies, we used
a specialized rubric that had been developed in prior Wolfsonian studies.
The rubric evolved from close analysis of thousands of student responses,
all captured in writing before and after VTS lessons were conducted, al-


Figure 3: Page 38 from The Story of Alaska (c. 1940) illustrated by Cornelius hugh De
Witt, text by Clara (Breakey) lambert, and published by harper & Brothers, london.
Courtesy of The Wolfsonian–Florida International University, The Mitchell Wolfson, Jr.
Collection.

lowing us to locate and code instances of thought. By sorting examples of
student thinking, we created six categories of proficiency and four per-
formance domains.
Using a six-point holistic scale, student ability was rated by determining
if the written response was: (1) Limited; (2) Developing; (3) Literal; (4) Pro-
ficient; (5) Accomplished; or (6) Sophisticated. The even number of scoring


categories ensured that trained readers would not be tempted to use a middle
number as a compromise score and seemed essential for determining growth
over time, from the pre-test to the post-test, as students would ultimately be
compared to their own earlier work. In other words, students who scored low
initially (a “one,” “two,” or even “three” rating) should show improvement
even though they still may not achieve high levels of competency (i.e., a “one”
might become a “two”).
The four performance domains of visual literacy and critical thinking
were defined in the rubric: description, animation (describing the action
taking place), analysis, and interpretation. These performance domains were
informed by Benjamin Bloom’s Taxonomy, and the indicators in these
domains moved from the lowest-level ability to describe literal elements in the
visual image, to higher levels of visual skill encompassing the ability to connect
elements, analyze context and an artist’s intent, and ultimately evaluate the
success of a work.9 Critical thinking was folded into the visual literacy scale
and defined as a process of increasing complexity beginning with the ability
to identify a social, personal, or political conflict, moving to analysis of the
problem in a cultural or historical context, and, ultimately, perhaps including
the ability to even design solutions for the social issue.
Students at the three participating schools, as well as students in the
fourth comparison school, were assessed twice a year, beginning prior to the
program as third graders and ending at the completion of the program as
sixth graders, for a total of six times.
Using the VTS protocol (“What’s going on in this picture? What do you
see that makes you say that? What more can you find?”), students were asked
to respond in writing to a work of art reflecting social issues from The Wolf-
sonian collection. Although the works selected for the pre- and post-as-
sessments were not identical, they were selected to be parallel prompts
differing at each grade level.
For example, at the third-grade level, one image depicted a barn fire and the
other seemed to be farm workers laboring in a hay field. Both featured male
figures hard at work; both represented a family group gathered together for a
common purpose; both suggested potential social, political, or personal issues.
At the fourth-grade level, one image depicted a crowded bus or subway
(see Figure 4) and the other represented a solitary figure and three twisted,
leafless trees on a barren foreground contrasted against a glowing city skyline.
Again, both images suggest social issues, related to urban life, for example, or
race, class, and progress.

Artful citizenship visual/critical literacy Scoring rubric
168

6 5 4 3 2 1
Sophisticated Accomplished Proficient literal Developing limited
Description Includes rich Describes visual Describes identified Describes particular Identifies two or more Blank or illegible
description of visual elements in detail visual elements elements elements Lacks detail
elements May identify social, May name a conflict May label visual May randomly list May be off topic
Describes a conflict or personal, or political or a problem traits (such as shape, elements
May be inaccurate
problem conflicts symbols, structural
details)
Animation Connects animation Makes inferences May ascribe complex Attributes actions to May attribute some Provides little or no
to a more complex about features of actions, i.e. emotion characters actions to characters evidence
kATE rAW lI nS o n E T Al .

scenario animation or thought
Analysis Demonstrates Demonstrates Relates some ele- Relates some elements Provides little or no Provides little or no
understanding of understanding of the ments of the image of the image to each evidence evidence
the whole by relating whole by relating to each other other
elements in cultural some elements May discuss context Often answers
or historical context questions on prompt
Interpretation Connects visual Connects some visual May connect visual Provides little or no Provides little or no Provides little or no
elements to artist’s elements to artist’s elements to artist’s evidence evidence evidence
intent intent intent May be incorrect If present, may be
May connect content May evaluate the art/ May be incorrect reading incorrect reading
to cultural values artifact reading (may include May give opinion, but
May design solutions Relates tangential tangential informa- lacks support
or evaluate success of information to task tion or opinions)
work


Figure 4: Painting, Subway (c. 1935), by Daniel ralph Celentano. Courtesy of The Wolf-
sonian–Florida International University, The Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection.

At the fifth-grade level, one image depicted a crowded courtroom and
the fight for the abolishment of slavery (see Figure 5), and the other repre-
sented two working-class women talking from the windows of a high-rise
building. Although less obvious in their similarities, both images prompted
the readers to consider issue of race, class, poverty, and social change.
In other words, although the works portrayed different experiences, the
visual prompts were very similar, and the content of the writing task was
identical. To ensure reliability, decreasing the likelihood that scores might be
affected by a weak visual prompt, all students responded to both images.
Half the students in each class received one or the other image for the pre-
test, and then the images were reversed for the post-test. All third graders,
consequently, responded to both third-grade prompts, all fourth graders


Figure 5: Mural study, John Brown (c. 1930-1939), by Stuyvesant Van Veen, possibly for
the War Department Building, Washington, D.C. Courtesy of The Wolfsonian–Florida In-
ternational University, The Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection.


responded to both fourth-grade prompts, and all fifth graders responded to
both fifth-grade prompts.
Samples of fourth-grade work collected midway through the project,
using the painting entitled Subway (Figure 4) as the writing prompt, illustrate
the levels of response:

A developing (low-level) response: The student identifies two or more el-
ements, possibly randomly, but provides little or no evidence of interpre-
tation:

Hats. Signs. People reading newspapers. A girl with a hat on.

An accomplished (higher-level) response: The student describes social,
personal, or political conflicts and demonstrates understanding of the whole
by relating elements in cultural or historical contexts:

I see people going on a subway because the adults have to go to their jobs. This
is after Martin Luther King because Blacks are with Whites. I also see a child
and her mother going to church because the child has a book in her hand. I also
see some of the men reading a newspaper about their country or state. And last
I see worried faces on some of the women or men because something bad is
happening that is read in the newspaper. Another thing I see is that out of the
window it looks like it is raining and there is a flood which is why some of the
men and women are worried. But some other people think it will be over soon.
And last I see an old man talking to the woman’s daughter saying that nothing
bad will happen.

As we discovered, visual literacy takes time to develop, and the three-year
period provided sufficient opportunity to determine student growth in the
three treatment schools, as compared to the control group. Ambitious in
scope as well as aim, the curriculum’s impact was tracked with 189 students
who entered the program at the third grade and finished at fifth. (This
number does not count the hundreds more who received full or partial
treatment over the life of the project, but were not included in the study.) Sig-
nificantly, students who received the curriculum treatment and demon-
strated gains in visual literacy from year one to year three also showed
significant gains in Florida’s standardized test—the Florida Comprehensive
Achievement Test. This was not true of students in the control school.


Students in Artful Citizenship showed 12 percent growth in their FCAT
reading scores and 16 percent gains in FCAT math. (Annual FCAT testing
begins in third grade for reading and math, and students are scored ac-
cording to a five-point scale.)

leSSonS leArneD From ArtFul citizenSHiP
The close participation of the museum education staff during every phase of
the three-year project Artful Citizenship project and the research conducted
by Curva and Associates, the outside evaluation team, enables us to make the
following recommendations for museums to consider:
• Place less focus on a curatorial or art-education agenda and more focus
on an education agenda, incorporating multiple literacies and mul-
timodal learning.
• Create more museum outreach through teacher preparation programs,
printed curriculum materials, Web-based content, and so on to facilitate
rich learning experiences using museum collection in the schools, as
opposed to costly and time-consuming multi- or single-visit programs
in the museums. Artful Citizenship succeeded by engaging teachers and
students in low-performing schools not often served by museums.
• Develop long-term projects that teach educators how to properly in-
tegrate object-based learning into their class work and allow students to
mature in visual literacy skills. Change takes time.
• Advocate for more investment by museums, communities, and educa-
tional funding institutions in research to better understand how object-
based learning and visual materials can be used to shape student
learning.
• Partner with those who share a desire to think more deeply about educa-
tional issues. Perhaps more than ever, museum educators are needed to
help address shifting definitions of “visual literacy” and “critical
thinking.” Perhaps context variables matter more than we have pre-
viously considered. For example, in the context of Artful Citizenship in-
cluded the classroom (rather than museum galleries), a collection rich in
historical and social content, and the standardized elementary social
studies curriculum, so critical thinking was reflected in the ability of
children to think critically about social problems.
• Accept the importance of this work and truly reach out to take part in
“civic engagement.” If we are not part of the solution, we are part of the


problem. Museum collections hold many opportunities to engage, en-
lighten, and enrich our lives and make all of us better citizens in our
communities.

concluSion
Museum collections contain artifacts of change, reflecting the aesthetic and
social values of the past and present. They include a vast number of indi-
vidual objects that address larger issues and offer endless opportunities for
exploring social, technological, and political topics. This richness of visual
material, thematically and historically, affords the ideal context for engaging
young learners in authentic conversations. Projects such as Artful Citizenship
provide a model for using this abundant resource. In this case a model arts-
in-social-studies curriculum was designed for use by classroom teachers,
which embraced open-ended collaborative discussion to foster critical and
creative thought about important social issues, much needed as we continue
into the 21st century.

noteS
1. Gail Anderson, “Museums and Relevancy,” Journal of Museum Education 31, no. 1 (Spring
2006): 3.
2. Fely Curva, Sande Milton, and Susan Nelson Wood, “Program Evaluation Report for
Artful Truth: Healthy Propaganda Arts Project” (report, Curva and Associates, Inc., Tal-
lahassee, FL, 2001; Fely Curva and Sande Milton, “Program Evaluation Report, A Page at
a Time Program” (report, Curva and Associates, Inc., Tallahassee, FL, 2004).
3. Florida Department of Education, “Sunshine State Standards,” http://www.firn.edu/
doe/curric/prek12/pdf/socstud3.pdf (accessed January 28, 2007).
4. Abigail Housen and Philip Yenawine, Visual Thinking Strategies (New York: Visual Under-
standing in Education, 2000); Paul E. Bolin, “Art and Artifacts: The Value of Material
Culture Studies for Art Education,” The Pennsylvania Art Educator 2 (1993): 15–18.
5. Curva, Milton, and Wood, “Program Evaluation Report for Artful Truth”; Curva and
Milton, “Program Evaluation Report, A Page at a Time Program.”
6. Philip Yenawine, “Jump Starting Visual Literacy: Thoughts on Image Selection,” Art Edu-
cation, (2003): 6–12.
7. Louise Rosenblatt, Literature as Exploration, 5th ed. (New York: Modern Language Associa-
tion, 1996).
8. Curva, Milton, and Wood, “Program Evaluation Report for Artful Truth”; Curva and
Milton, “Program Evaluation Report, A Page at a Time Program.”
9. Benjamin S. Bloom, Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, Handbook I: Cognitive Domain. (New
York: Addison Wesley Publishing Co., 1956).

Kate Rawlinson has been the assistant director for Education and Public Programs
at The Wolfsonian–Florida International University for the past seven years.


Susan Nelson Wood is an associate professor and coordinator of English education
at Florida State University and director of the FSU Writing Project.

Mark Osterman is the education programs manager at The Wolfsonian–Florida
International University.

Claudia Caro Sullivan is the education research manager at The Wolfsonian–
Florida International University.

m

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