Art as Emotion
Delores Brazzel
Art as Emotion” ©
is the unit created by the researcher for this
workshop. The visual art integration projects/lesson
plans will align with the core curriculum of history,
math, English and other academic courses to provide
relevant and long lasting learning.
“Art as Emotion” coalesces art therapy anger
management strategies along with the art integration
curriculum.
”Art as Emotion” Great Commission Communications Delores Brazzel delzel@bellsouth.net
Introduction
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Alternative education programs are
expanding in the United States due to
zero-tolerance policies, changes in the
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act,
increases in youth violence and school
failure, as well as the knowledge of the
developmental trajectories leading to
antisocial behavior (Tobin &Sprague,
2000).
National Center for Education Statistics
(NCES)
Common Core of Data (CCD)school year 1993
• 2,606 public alternative schools compared to
3,850 public alternative schools in 1997-1998
(Hoffman, 2001).
Common Core of Data for school year 2007-08
show
 10,300 district administered alternative
schools and programs for at-risk students.
 645,500 as the total number of students
enrolled in public school districts who
attend alternative schools and programs for
at-risk students
National Center for Education
Statistics
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“District Survey of Alternative Schools and
Programs: 2007-08 reported that
90,300 students who receive special
education enrolled in alternative schools and
programs.
The southeast region i.e. had almost twice the
student population who receive special
education enrolled in alternative schools and
programs with 25, 200 students compared with
the northeast region 13,000.
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With such rapid growth, there is great
apprehension about anger management of
“at risk” students in the alternative school
setting so that teaching and learning may
remain the primary focus.
Tennessee’s Alternative Schools Comptroller of the
Treasury Office of Education Accountability April, 2005
Conclusions from the Executive Summary of this report include
but are not limited to:
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The quality of alternative school programs varies
significantly across the state.
Many alternative schools do not thoroughly assess
the academic needs of incoming students.
Although most alternative school programs attempt
to model the core curriculum of the regular school
system, limitations exist.
Neither the department nor school systems
systematically measure performance outcomes—
dropout, graduation, attendance – of alternative
school students.
Behavior management standards are not uniformly
Legislative recommendations from the
Tennessee’s Alternative Schools Comptroller
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The Education Oversight Committee or the Senate
and House Education Committees may wish to hear
presentations from alternative school representatives
and encourage legislators to make on-site visits to
alternative school programs.
The General Assembly may wish to revise Tennessee
Code Annotated 49-1-520, Tennessee model dropout
prevention program, to address more explicitly the
dropout tendencies of the alternative school student
population.
The General Assembly should consider appropriating
funds again for alternative school pilot programs.
Significance of the Workshop
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Aggressive behavior and violence leading to
disciplinary and legal difficulties have reached
epidemic proportions among our youth. The
severity of problems and social and economic
costs to society have increased markedly
(Osofsky & Osofsky, 2001).
There is a consensus among educators that
comprehensive research based anger
management programs could have a positive
impact on the total school climate.
Significance of the Workshop
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Art offers a process to aid in articulating emotions such as
anger that may not be expressible in words.
Art is used to externalize and formalize a story, fear, or
experience (St. John, 2006).
Art can provide a safe means to explore and express
feelings. Identifying emotions and normalizing the physical
sensations of feelings can be supported in the creation of
an art product.
Instruction time, necessary for the development and
application of skills students need to be become
productive responsible citizens, is lost due to disruptive
behavior.
Anger management in alternative schools is necessary to
allow students an opportunity to acquire and hone the
skills necessary to become productive citizens
Statement of the Problem
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Anger is often found at the root of the behavior problems for
alternative school students. Among the most powerful
factors for school violence is anger, especially sudden rage.
Students who have not learned to manage their anger are
at-risk for aggression, perhaps even violent explosive
behavior (Skiba & McElvey, 1999).
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The Center for Disease Control’s surveillance of students attending
alternative schools showed that approximately 32.9% of alternative
school students carried a weapon such as a gun, knife, or club
compared to 17.3% of students from mainstream schools.
Alternative high school students were almost three times (13.8% ) more
likely to carry a gun on one or more days of the 30 days preceding the
survey compared to students from regular schools ( 4.9%).
Approximately 60% of students had been in a physical fight at least once
in the pass year compared to 35.5% of students from standard schools
(Escobar-Chaves, Tortolero, Markham, Kelder, & Kapadia, 2002).
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”Art as Emotion” Great Commission Communications Delores Brazzel delzel@bellsouth.net
Art Therapy
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Some facilitators (Zwirn & Graham, 2005) have seen the
need and have designed courses for teachers based on
the idea that integration of art into the curriculum helps
prevent the departmentalization and segmentation of
academic areas, develops connections between
academic areas, and helps students make connections
to the world around them.
Critical Evidence (2005) found that students at risk of not
successfully completing their high school educations
cited their participation in the arts as reasons for staying
in school.
Arts Integration and
Anger Management
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Problem students often become the high
achievers in arts learning settings.
Success in the arts can be a bridge to success
in other areas of learning (Oreck, Baum, &
McCartney, 1999).
Students taught using integrated arts learning
use more self-regulatory behaviors and have a
sense of identity that make them more confident
and resilient (Oreck, 1999, p. 70).
Pilot Study Hypothesis
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The that the effective curriculum integration of
anger management strategies utilizing
technology and art integration in alternative high
schools will increase the students’ positive
coping skills while reducing their anger, school
hostility level, and destructive expressions.
There will be no statistically significant
difference, at the .05 levels or better in students’
level of anger and the anger experience subscales.
Methodology
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Event Sampling Method (ESM) will be the methodology for this
study. This technique is from the field of psychology is also
referred to as Experience Sampling Method and addresses
several evaluation needs (Csikszentmihalyi &. Larson 1987).
The Experience Sampling Method takes place over time, and
collects quantitative and qualitative data.
The research design used to structure this study is a quasiexperimental design with a control as well as multiple groups
and multiple measures.
This study is a nonequivalent groups design which requires
pretests and posttests for the treated and comparison groups.
Experience Sampling Method can be used to obtain empirical
data on the following types of variables: a) frequency and
patterning of daily activity, social interaction, and changes in
location; b) frequency, intensity, and patterning of
Instrumentation
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The Multidimensional School Anger Inventory (Smith, Furlong, Bates,
and Laughlin, 1998) is one of the research instruments that will be utilized.
The MSAI is designed to measure affective, cognitive, and behavioral
components of anger among youth. This scale is based on the School Anger
Inventory (SAI) (Smith, Adelman, Nelson, & Taylor, 1988) which was modified
from the Children’s Inventory of Anger (Finch, Saylor, & Nelson, 1987).
Scales include anger experience, cynical attitudes, and destructive expression
The Multidimensional School Anger Inventory has high rate of reliability
and validity; 71 – 100. Students will respond to 27 anger expression items
using a four-point Likert-type scale
1 = I’m not angry at all
2 = I’m a little bit angry
3 = I’m pretty angry
4 = I’m very angry. I’m furious
The anger expression portion of the questionnaire asks about how frequently
the student expresses anger in various ways using these responses:
1 = Never
2 = Occasionally
3 = Often
4 = Always
Data Collection
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Data will be collected in a consistent manner. The
pretests and posttests will be collected as soon as they
are completed.
The items of the pretest and posttest will be examined
for reliability.
The items selected for analysis will have test-retest
reliability ratings of .52 or higher.
Variables will controlled through consistency and
planning as much as possible.
Social science measurements especially behavioral
measurements are difficult to accurately assess.
However, the data will be as scientifically collected and
evaluated as possible.
Manova I – Overall there is no statistically significant difference in the pretest and
posttest results of anger management strategies in the four areas of the anger
experience – Anger; Hostility; Positive Coping, and Destructive Expression.
Descriptive Statistics
Anger
Hos tility
Pos itivecoping
Des tructive
testing
Before
After
Total
Before
After
Total
Before
After
Total
Before
After
Total
Mean
2.4135
2.4712
2.4423
2.1354
1.8750
2.0052
1.9609
2.1016
2.0313
1.8125
1.6389
1.7257
Std. Deviation
.48640
.45367
.46360
.76792
.51819
.65785
.69029
.47919
.58888
.69058
.48091
.59198
N
16
16
32
16
16
32
16
16
32
16
16
32
Results
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The fact that there was not a significantly
significant difference in the anger experiences
before and after application of the anger
management strategies could be attributed to
other factors
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such as length of time (abbreviated application) and
consistency (strategies not applied everyday);
teacher had principal designee and other
administrative duties also
students’ absences due to suspensions, further
behavior issues and other external forces (Brazzel,
2005).
Discussion
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This study did not show a statistical significant difference
in students receiving anger management intervention.
However, long term studies in the area of anger
managements strategies in alternative school students
are limited, but should be expanded.
Anger management strategies learned and implemented
by these students will help them not only in the short
term but in the long term as well.
Anger management strategies will become part of these
students just as other critical thinking skills that they
acquire.
These anger management skills will be an invaluable
part of their education and serve them well throughout
life. Anger management training could be life altering for
many of these students