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Meeting the Needs of Artistically Talented Students Who Reside in Real and Virtual, Rural Communities in the United States Gilbert Clark, Marjorie Manifold and Enid Zimmerman Gifted Education International 2007 23: 319 DOI: 10.1177/026142940702300313 The online version of this article can be found at: http://gei.sagepub.com/content/23/3/319

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Gifted Education International 2007 Vol 23, pp 319-329 ©2007 A B Academic Publishers

News around the world Gilbert Clark*, Professor Emeritus Marjorie Manifold*, Assistant Professor Enid Zimmerman*, Professor Emerita Indiana University, USA

meeting the needs of artistically talented students who reside in real and virtual, rural communities in the united states Abstract In response to a lack of attention to developing the abilities of talented art students who reside in rural communities, three art educators present a discussion of community-based art education as a strategy for addressing the needs of these students. They consider a variety of artistically talented student populations who reside in geographically rural communities. Some reside in real, rural communities and some may participate in virtual, global communities. A federally funded project in the United States is reported that focused on the identification, art curricula, and assessment procedures for artistically talented students in local, community-based art education programs. In addition, they describe a university-supported study in the United States that focuses on students who share their artwork online in virtual communities. Resources within real and virtual communities are suggested that can support the interests and development of artistically talented art students.

*[email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]

' Authors are listed alphabetically. They each contributed equally to this article.

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There has been a focus on special programs in the United States for students at risk in urban environments, where crime, homelessness, declining scores on tests, teen pregnancy, and other disturbing issues make front-page news. Needs and problems of students from rural communities are less visible and certainly less well reported than in urban areas and it often is difficult for rural schools to provide programs that offer the same services and experiences that larger urban and metropolitan areas can provide (Jones & Southern, 1992). While students in rural schools have valuable local resources, distances from large population centers limit access to other resources, such as major art galleries, large museums and libraries, live theater, concert halls, or other facilities found in large suburban and urban areas (Nachtigal, 1992; Swanson, 1995). In this article, we will describe community-based art education as a concept for teaching artistically talented students that has greatly influenced our research and practice. We will report about a federally funded project in the United States, that Clark and Zimmerman coordinated, focused on programs for artistically talented students in three states. We also will describe Manifold's university-supported grant in the United States about talented art students, nationally and internationally, who share their artworks online in virtual communities. Resources also are suggested that can support the development of artistically talented art students in rural communities.

Community Involvement and Rural Schools Parents of students from rural backgrounds often place high value on their families' heritages, cultural histories, and traditions, although curricula rarely incorporate these values when implemented for students in rural schools (Barkan & Bernal, 1991; 320, Gifted Education International

Tonemah, 1990). We believe rich and unique cultural backgrounds often possessed by families living in rural communities, as well the window on the world that technology provides to global communities, should be taken into account when developing effective programming opportunities for artistically talented students. A number of studies point to a need for community involvement in successful programs for art development for talented students in rural schools (i.e. Amran, 1991; De Leon & Argus-Calvo, 1997; Clark & Zimmerman, 2004). Descriptions of these programs clarify how teachers, parents, and community members can be actively involved in developing arts programs for talented art students in rural areas that built upon resources in their local communities. Although general studies of students' interactions in online communities reveal cyberspace as a place where students may interact with others beyond the confines of their local environments (Tapscott, 1998), only very recent studies have explored these sites as communities for art learning (Manifold, 2005).

Project Arts In 1993, Clark and Zimmerman received a three-year Jacob Javits Gifted and Talented Program Grant funded by the United States Office of Education. This grant was designed to serve students with high interests and abilities in the visual arts in seven, rural elementary schools in Indiana, New Mexico, and South Carolina. The program, Project ARTS, was focused on serving high ability students in rural schools who came from economically disadvantaged and racially and / or ethnically diverse backgrounds. Its purposes were to identify students in grade three, implement curricula in grades four and five with the same students, and evaluate the successes of these efforts. Local

teachers, parents, community members, and staff all participated in all aspects of Project ARTS (Clark & Zimmerman, 1997, 2000, 2001, 2004).

Cooperating Schools and Communities Four cultural groups that were quite homogeneous in each of their rural locations participated in Project ARTS. The vast majority of people in these communities represent distinct, well-established, rural subcultures in the United States. Two schools in southern Indiana, in two different communities, were located in rural, agricultural settings with populations from predominantly Scotch-Irish, German, or southern Appalachian backgrounds. Two schools in New Mexico participated, one with a population of Hispanic Americans whose ancestors have lived in New Mexico since the mid-1500s, and the other a conservative, traditional pueblo that has a population of American Indians. Also participating were four rural schools, located near the southern, coastal tip of South Carolina, home to coastal, sea islands and to African Americans of Gullah descent who originally were brought as slaves from Africa. It was a Project ARTS policy to avoid directive interventions into the climate or organization of cooperating schools or into the nature of their arts offerings. As the project began, we helped each school staff decide to emphasize, as thematic organizers for their curricula, their community history, cultural backgrounds, and the arts within their local communities.

Identifying Talented Visual Arts Students in Rural Communities It is important to be expansive when identifying performance levels of students in

rural areas who may lack previous learning experiences in the visual arts. Identification measures such as pre-established creativity or achievement test scores, often are used in urban or suburban school districts, although such cut-off scores would not be appropriate for identification in most rural schools that serve economically disadvantaged and / or ethnically diverse students because very few students would be accepted by attaining these types of test scores. Project ARTS staff administered a range of local measures adopted at each site to over 1000 students in the third grade in seven schools, with input from teachers, parents, administrators, artists, and other community members. There are few nationally standardized art tests, however, available to measure drawing abilities and tests that do exist have been seriously questioned (Clark & Zimmerman, 2004). Most state art achievement tests do not require students to produce artwork or respond to questions about the arts (Sabol, 1997). For research purposes, two standardized instruments, an abbreviated version of the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT) (approved by the publisher) and Clark's Drawing Abilities Test (CDAT) were administered to all third graders. An abbreviated TTCTi and the CDAT were chosen as they are two reliable and valid measures sometimes used in identification of talented visual arts students in the United States. In addition, standardized state achievement tests scores were used for research purposes. The abbreviated TTCT (Torrance, 1972) was administered to all grade three students in participating schools to assess its use for identifying high ability students. This TTCT version consisted of three tasks: (a) list as many unusual uses of junked automobiles as you can; (b) make some pictures with titles (in preprinted rectangles); and (c) see how many objects you can make with 12 preprinted triangles. Volume 23 No 3, 2007, 321

Past uses of the CDAT have been analyzed and reported, based on age, gender, grade, and socio-economic status and its reliability and validity have been established (Clark, 1989; Clark & Wilson, 1991; Clark & Zimmerman, 2004). The CDAT was used by Clark in Project ARTS to demonstrate differentiations of art abilities among third grade students in all schools. Scores were based on samples of their artwork that required completion of the same task, using the same amount of time, with the same materials and instructions by all students. Project ARTS students also were administered standardized achievement tests as part of each district's testing program. These tests were idiosyncratic for each state and scores across the sites could not be compared. Analysis of variance was used to compare each state's achievement test scores, and TTCT and CDAT scores.' The TTCT measures fluency, flexibility, and elaboration and is based on both verbal and visual responses. It also measures inherent abilities relatively unaffected by past experiences. The CDAT measures problem >solving skills and differential drawing abilities, but scores are sensitive to past art learning experiences. CDAT scores usually accelerate with age and instruction, whereas scores on the TTCT remain relatively constant over time. One important finding was that, for third graders at each school, there was a positive correlation among scores on the TTCT, CDAT, and achievement tests. Each of the three states used a different, standardized achievement test, and students with higher levels of creativity and drawing abilities also obtained substantially higher scores on language, mathematics, and reading subtests and this confirmed that populations of high achieving students in general will Details of research methodologies and data tables can be found in Clark & Zimmerman, 2001.

include high achieving, visual arts students. Local Identification Procedures Although standardized tests were used primarily for research purposes, Clark and Zimmerman encouraged each school to develop its own local identification measures and the unique characteristics of students at each site were taken into consideration when identification procedures were being developed. Local identification tasks included nominations by students, parents, and teachers; assessments of student's portfolios and out-of-school projects; previous art grades; observations of students; assessment of sketchbooks; and works of art displayed at a community art exhibition. Students who performed well on the TTCT, CDAT, and several of the local measures (as well, as those who demonstrated high potential to do well) were identified for participation in Project ARTS.

Project ARTS Curricula Art students from diverse cultures in rural settings often possess traits, folkways, and learning styles that differ from those of the dominant culture. Teachers were encouraged at each, participating school to form parent and community-based advisory groups to help bring these and other local cultural resources into their art curricula. Teacher development workshops were initiated at all sites that emphasized developing and implementing differentiated curricula for artistically talented students. Focus was on art products based on real-life problems and these were evaluated and displayed in public areas. The two Indiana schools produced unit outcomes that included a photo scrapbook of students' families, home environments; videotapes about a day in the life of an

average student; drawings and paintings of the local environment; an illustrated local recipe book; and an Indiana treasure box that included artifacts, craft items, cultural objects, and printed information (Figure 1). Students in the pueblo community in New Mexico produced art forms that focused on traditional patterns and designs and drawings and paintings based on local environmental themes and architecture (Figure 2). For the first time, local artists and artisans came into school to present their art works and parent groups were active in consultation during curriculum development. In the other school with a mostly Hispanic population, map making, drawing, painting, and printmaking, folk history, and book illustration were all emphasized (Figure 3). Students also created a mural, based on local history, which was painted on the school's walls. In all three South Carolina schools, a common curriculum was developed based on local Gullah life and culture. Field trips to artists' studios, local historic and cultural sites, and visits by artists to the schools comprised a large segment of the curriculum. Students studied

Figure 3

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 4 Volume 23 No 3, 2007, 323

and created artworks based on the role of storytelling in Gullah culture, family roles, food and meals, education, and religion (Figure 4). Students also made games and toys, grew indigo to create dyes, and learned to make baskets. During the third year, these differentiated curricula were extended to include packaged sets of local artifacts and print materials that were assembled at each site and sent to students and teachers in other Project ARTS schools. In addition, video-conferences took place and students were able to meet electronically with students from other project sites. In this way, the arts of other cultures were included, compared, and contrasted with local arts traditions. Programs at all of the sites featured exhibitions and performances of student work in a variety of public arenas. Project ARTS students took many trips to local historical sites, art galleries, local performances, and artists' studios, and also displayed their artworks at local festivals and galleries in their communities.

Assessment and Project ARTS Emphasis on creating assessments that were responsive to local efforts matched Project ARTS' community-based orientation to art education. In assessing Project ARTS, many different measures were used to determine student and teacher progress and achievement. These included (1) students' portfolios of unfinished and completed works; (2) contents of peer critiques, selfevaluations, contracts, diary notes, teachers' reflective journals, and students' journals; (3) journal notes produced by teachers, (4) ongoing video interviews, (5) artworks produced by students, (6) teacher, student, and parent assessments, and (7) group presentations and public art exhibitions (Herman, Aschbacher, & Winter, 1992; Zimmerman, 1992). 324, Gifted Education International

As a result of these assessments, Clark and Zimmerman (1997) found students were encouraged to value art in their own cultures as a bridge to understanding art created in a variety of contexts, including artworks produced by students at the other sites. There was evidence that most students chosen for the program developed skills and understandings about art and increased their awareness and appreciation of the arts in their local communities. The majority of teachers felt local measures developed in Project ARTS were successful for identification, curriculum development, and program assessment of artistically talented students residing in local communities. Project ARTS programs concluded in 1996 and now, more than a decade later, notions of community have been expanded through the use of new media to include virtual communities situated in cyberspace. Educators have studied communities' of talented young artists who gather in virtual communities to learn, create, and share their artworks (Manifold, 2005).

Artistically Talented, Rural Youth in Virtual Communities Manifold's ongoing university research project, funded by a Proffitt Research Grant from Indiana University's School of Education, is concerned with exploring aesthetic expressions and art making activities of youth from a variety of backgrounds who share similar interests in narratives conveyed through media such as television, videos, movies, digital imagery, and comics (2005, 2006, in press). The content of these narratives often deal with popular culture and students from any geographic region, both nationally and internationally, with access to technology that supports narrative forms of expression may access and share in a common appreciation and criticism

of these narratives. When young people share such interests in a particular thematic narrative they form online, virtual communities called fandoms. As an educator interested in rural, community-based art education, Manifold has become a participant-observer of several online fandoms. The fans studied by Manifold are between the ages of 14 and 24 and participate in activities such as fan related collaborative or independent art making, writing, and masquerade play (cosplay), which involves dressing and performing in costumes based on popular visual culture characters. Over 250 young people who live in a variety of geographic communities around the world and participate in fandom communities are involved in Manifold's study. Data is being collected and analyzed through reading many forum thread~, live journals4, blogSS, fan art galleries 6, E-mails posted on fan community sites, and followartists. fan with interviews up Approximately 10% of these students have identified themselves as living in rural communities around the world and the majority identify themselves as residing in urban or suburban localities. About 1.0%, however, do not choose to identify their ages, e-mail addresses, or the location where they live. Students who identify themselves as living in rural areas report a lack of access to computer technology and often claim that they must go to public places to access an Internet community. Of twenty-one youths who initially identified themselves as living in rural or small town communities, three young women, aged 17, 18, and 21 were chosen as case study participants. They

' Forum threads are a series of comments and responses posted on-line to specific questiOilJI, ' Live journals are real time, interactive conversations among groups of fans. ' Web logs or blogs are posted thoughts that chronicle ideas one wants to share with others on a frequent basis. ' Fan art galleries consist of images created by fans and posted on each fan's individual web page.

identified themselves as living in North America (northeast California, south central Texas, and Manitoba, Canada). These three young women were identified as talented based on observations of their artwork assessed by Clark who has vast experience judging student artwork on the CDAT. Identification of their talents also was obtained from email conversations with these students regarding their overall academic performance in school, and multiple interests and accomplishments evidenced by awards, scholarships, or other recognition received in visual arts, music, and other school subjects. In addition their live journals and blogs supplied evidence of their outstanding visual art abilities. The artworks and journals of these three students were followed over a three-year period during 2003 to 2006. At the beginning of this period of time, these students were interviewed briefly through e-mail exchanges and were later interviewed at length and in-depth. They shared examples of their artworks, costume making, and poetry and fiction writing that they had produced during the study. Throughout the three years, they also reflected upon and discussed their life experiences in both their real and virtual communities and these responses were analyzed through content analysis. Rather than participating in their local rural community, these youth, who were older and more skilled technologically than the elementary school students served by Project ARTS, focused on a new type of community, a virtual community, that supports their talents, interests, curiosity, and desires for learning resources and information leading to mastering specific art making skills. The content of these three youth's artworks were images based on figures copied or adapted from popular

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culture narratives and often are rendered in Western cartoon or Eastern manga style. For example, "Kaily" from the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California created a colored line drawing based on a favorite anime/manga story (Figure 5). A selfportrait in western cartoon style, drawn by "Kelly" from rural Manitoba, depicts an angry young woman who has just argued with her mother (Figure 6). Cosplay costumes, when they are appropriated, are predominantly based on stories from Eastern cultures. "Jaci," from a small town in Texas. posted an image of herself in cosplay as her favorite role-playing character "Shiba, (Figure 7). Youth in online fandom communities generally begin learning to create art by copying works of their favorite artists in popular imagery. The purpose of the copy is not to master the style of the original work so much as to learn technical skills, such as use of proportion, gesture, shading, and

Figure 5

•

Figure 7 326, Gifted Education International

Figure 6

composition or construction. More skilled artists within a fandom often will post tutorials giving tips for rendering artworks or making costumes. These tutorials demonstrate ways of using line and shade to depict hair, for example, or show how to cut and attach cardboard together to suggest scales of a cosplay costume. Advanced artists often mentor new, promising artists of the fandom community by offering critical advice and feedback as well as encouragement and inviting others of the fandom to view and positively comment on the works of a less experienced artist. The goal of the fandom artists is to develop a personal art style that sets their work apart from other fanart images or cosplay costumes and performances presented by fans within the virtual community. One of the ways this is achieved is through drawing upon the unique aesthetic traditions of an individual artist's real, local cultural community. When individual fandom artists adopt ideas from their local communities that they incorporate in their works, others of the fandom are exposed to aesthetic ideas and expressions from across global cultures. In this way, shared interest in mass--media narratives conveyed through popular culture can become portals for learning about unique cultural expressions around the world. In order to maintain virtual community ties, however, these youth also require Internet access and appropriate computer hardware and software (whether at home or in local schools and libraries) in order to pursue their interests practically and to practice their art skills. These resources are not always available and they need teachers and parents to encourage them to pursue their interests in visual culture, even if these adults do not personally enjoy or appreciate similar interests or are not willing to help them negotiate a balance between intense fan interest and reality-based career goals. Kaily,

Kelly, and Jaci report that engagement in virtual communities provides an outlet for their needs to engage with others' intellectually about topics that interest them and opportunities to learn artistic and social skills that might benefit them in their adult lives. The virtual community, however, cannot serve as a substitute for real local community. Interviews with these young women revealed their desire and need to be accepted and invited to actively engage in both environments. As long their local communities support, or do not discourage their online fandom participation, two of the three young women expressed interest in the possibility of remaining in their local areas to live and work after completion of their postsecondary education. The third young woman feels her local community does not support her and she wants to leave for an urban environment where she thinks she might find more broad-or like-minded individuals and support.

Summary and Conclusions In this article, we reviewed our participation in almost fifteen years of developing programs for, and studying, artistically talented students in rural communities as they interacted in real and virtual communities. We propose that a variety of appropriate measures can be used to identify talented art students in specific communities. Although standardized measures such as the COAT can be used for identification, measures adapted for local expectations also should be designed with participation of a variety of interested community members. Identification of art talent also may be extended to online communities where teaching and support are assuming new and developing formats. The results of Project Arts reveal that

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artistically talented students from rural communities can benefit from learning and exploring the rich cultural traditions in their local communities that can play a vital role in development of their art skills and abilities. Virtual, on-line communities also can serve to connect artistically talented youth with others who share similar art interests and may have knowledge and skills to assist in advancing their art learning needs. Together, all these resources may assist artistically talented youth in rural settings to develop their art abilities and validate their interests and imaginations to express themselves visually. Students can extend their.. understandings of their own local communities and global communities by communicating with each other through engagem~t with artists, historians, and other keepers of tradition and knowledge ,within ~r ~e. , communities and through the mediation of computer technologies. Teachers, parents; and ~ommunity members should provide support and resources for talented art students from rural areas who may be isolated from their talented peers. Such resources arise from both the real or viri:ual valuing of cultur~ e"''ressions of lillY. community. Talented art students from rural areas should be encour~~ged tQ explore and interact with others either in or far beyond their home communities and the Internet provides an excellent . context for such personal development. A principal at one of the elementary schools in New Mexico explained why she thought Project ARTS was so successful: "Due to the Javits team at our school, participating students were more aware of art and efforts of community artists .... The children really value art around the school and art has built a sense of community in the school and beyond" (Clark & Zimmerman, 1997).

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BEN WEDGBURROW, age 13 Voices and Visions, Worcestershire Education Volume 23 No 3, 2007, 329