Date of Award

3-10-2011

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education (EdD)

Department

Educational Leadership

First Advisor

Angela Sewall

Abstract

The study examined the use of an art-based, art therapy assessment and accompanying survey to test construct validity of the survey instrument, reliability, and effectiveness as a screening tool in the primary grades, K-2, in a public school, a private, parochial school, and with a comparison group of already identified special education students in another parochial school. The goal was to identify children who may need evaluation or intervention to promote success in the learning environment. Art is a simple, natural way to discover mental functioning through the expressive nature of experience and its underlying physiological and psychological processes. The need for early detection of barriers to learning and the usefulness, convenience, and relevance of a one-drawing assessment that can be administered to students in a primary grade classroom were explored. By use of a mixed-method, concurrent transformative design, it was determined that the drawings may provide screening information about learning problems that can lead to early identification and referrals for further evaluation. Early identification of learning barriers may strengthen mental, emotional and social adjustment as well as increase academic achievement. Ratings of the drawing survey were made through independent blind ratings by three art therapists. These results were not significantly correlated with standardized test scores in reading (.85) or math (.19). There was a highly significant correlation (.02) with the ages in months of the children and a very high inter-rater reliability Intraclass coefficient (.94). Formative and summative evaluations by the researcher of the 48 drawings entered in the study identified students who were either at-risk or in need of further evaluation at the time of the study. Of the 26 students in the public school group, 12 students (six in each grade) seemed to need further evaluation for emotional problems or trauma resolution. Four were recommended for evaluation of visual-motor and/or neurological functioning with one student at-risk for some sort of learning disability. One student may need evaluation for hyperactivity. Ten students (39%) were academically gifted with exceptional test scores in Reading at 90% or greater. Four students (15%) were exception in Math with test scores 90% or greater. By comparison, of the 15 students in the parochial school group, all appeared to need some sort of further evaluation, especially for emotional problems or trauma resolution. In this group, four students (27%) were academically gifted wiht Reading test scores of 90% or greater, four students (27%) were gifted in Math with scores of 90% or better. It is reasonable to assume that more services for the students in the parochial school would improve educational functioning and school performance in learning. There was very little difference found statistically between the study groups for gender or testing site. It is recommended that more research using the art therapy assessment survey tool be made with item by item validation for possible revision of the instrument for use with this young age group.

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