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University of New Mexico UNM Digital Repository Special Education ETDs Education ETDs 9-1-2015 Reciprocal Relationships and Creative Expression in Literacy Learning: Ameliorating Disability Circumstances and Empowering Individuals Laurel Ann Lane Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/educ_spcd_etds Part of the Special Education and Teaching Commons Recommended Citation Lane, Laurel Ann. "Reciprocal Relationships and Creative Expression in Literacy Learning: Ameliorating Disability Circumstances and Empowering Individuals." (2015). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/educ_spcd_etds/19 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Education ETDs at UNM Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Special Education ETDs by an authorized administrator of UNM Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. i Laurel Ann Lane Candidate Department of Educational Specialties Department This dissertation is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication: Approved by the Dissertation Committee: Elizabeth Keefe, Chairperson Ruth Luckasson Susan R. Copeland Linney Wix ii RECIPROCAL RELATIONSHIPS AND CREATIVE EXPRESSION IN LITERACY LEARNING: AMELIORATING DISABILITY CIRCUMSTANCES BY EMPOWERING INDIVIDUALS by LAUREL ANN LANE B.A., Education, University of New Mexico, 2006 M.A., Language, Literacy and Sociocultural Studies, University of New Mexico, 2009 DISSERTATION Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Special Education The University of New Mexico Albuquerque, New Mexico July, 2015 iii DEDICATION I dedicate this work, and all the sleepless nights, the tears, and the seemingly endless hours of focused attention that went into its completion to my grandma, Eileen Ubert. Grandma, I credit you for nearly everything that is good, and strong about me. You always knew what to say, and when not to say anything at all—when your presence was enough. You were my enlightened witness and you left this world way too soon. I miss you every day. I hope you’re proud of me. Thank you, Grandma. I love you. I hope you and Grandpa are hanging out with James Garner in heaven. Until we meet again… iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to acknowledge and thank my family members for allowing me to mine their memories for confirmation and elucidation about our life experiences, both individual and shared. I would also like to thank my committee members, Dr. Elizabeth Keefe, Chair, Dr. Ruth Luckasson, Dr. Susan Copeland, and Dr. Linney Wix for their faith in my work that often went well beyond my own, for the wealth of knowledge they provided me during my doctoral journey, and for their support in all manner, concrete and intangible. Days spent in the Center for Southwest Research at Zimmerman Library on the campus of the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, were made not only fruitful in terms of my research, but enjoyable for the encouragement, assistance, good humor, and interest from the men and women who organize, maintain, retrieve, restock, and generally care for the archival collections that we are so fortunate to have available for our use as researchers. While the physical space of the Center for Southwest Research is a beautiful one within which to work, the real beauty of it comes from the people, and I hope to see more of them as I delve more deeply into the past in an effort to better understand how those who came before us can teach us in the present. Thank you: Samuel Sisneros, Chris Geherin, Nancy Brown-Martinez, Terry Gugliotta, Katherine Catanach, Sabrina Dominguez, Francesca Glaspell, Anna Kebler, Claudia Mitchell, and Moriah Montoya. You are all amazing. I am honored to know you, and hope to know you better. Finally, I would like to thank those people, both known and unknown to me, who fill roles as enlightened witnesses for children and adults who live now, or have at one time experienced the impacts of childhood trauma in any form. You save lives every day. v RECIPROCAL RELATIONSHIPS AND CREATIVE EXPRESSION IN LITERACY LEARNING: AMELIORATING DISABILITY CIRCUMSTANCES AND EMPOWERING INDIVIDUALS by Laurel Ann Lane B.A., Education, University of New Mexico, 2006 M.A., Language, Literacy, & Sociocultural Studies, University of New Mexico, 2009 Submitted in partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of: Doctor of Philosophy, Special Education, University of New Mexico, 2015 ABSTRACT Individuals engaged in the production of art, who are untrained, and marginalized by disability, are known as outsider or visionary artists. With them in mind I sought to better understand the relationship between art-making and meaning-making. Students with disability attributes in my classroom were motivated by arts-based activities, prompting me to include art in the content I taught. My own art-making grew out of those efforts, and in order to better understand how to implement my classroom practices, I began an autoethnographic study that evolved into phenomenology, positioning myself in the disability culture first, and then conducting an archival document search seeking evidence of the use of arts-based activities in teaching students with disabilities. I located extensive records on two community schools in Depression-era New Mexico. The schools were progressivist experiments in curricular reform initially focused on bilingual education. Art projects and lesson plans included in teacher diaries spanned seven years, evidencing reciprocal relationships, along with focus on creative expression as central in the culturally-based literacy pedagogy of the reforms being implemented. Contextually, this work is grounded primarily within the ideologies of John Dewey, and Paolo Freire. vi Data were collected and reported using narrative storytelling, observations, and reflections, personal art making, and archival document searches with research journaling. This research contributes to evolving perceptions about the value of reciprocal relationships in literacy pedagogy, and suggests the need to expand scholarship regarding engagement in arts-based activities with persons with disabilities, and the community school as a means to reach underserved populations. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter One: A Context for Art, Literacy, and Disability in Society ……………….1 Disability’s Presence ……………………………………………………………….....1 A Definition of Literacy ……………………………………..……………………..…8 An Expanded View of Both Literacy and Art …………………………………….....12 Two Divergent Examples of Literacy ……………………………………………......17 An Introduction to Art as Language—Archetypes, Icons, and Semiotics …………...21 Chapter Two: A Review of the Literature in Three Sections ……………………… 25 How the Art of Persons with Disabilities has been Characterized Historically ……..25 Overview of this section ….……………………………………………………. 25 Research approaches specific to this research Problem ………………………....31 Early perceptions of disability and mental illness …..…………………………..36 The self-taught artist with disabilities ………………………..………………....44 Early interest in the therapeutic context of untrained artists …………………... 45 The “art of the insane” ……………..…….……………………………………..47 Aesthetics and the self-taught artist …..….……………………………………..60 American folk art ……………………………………………………………….60 Dubuffet’s Art Brut ……………………………………………………………..62 Outsider Art: The birth of a name ……………………………………………...67 Names of repute within the world of outsider art …….………………………...71 Adolf Wölfli (1864 – 1930) ….………………………………………………….72 Madge Gill (1882 – 1961) ……………………………………………………...78 Martín Ramirez (1895 – 1963) ………………………………………………....81 viii Anthony Mannix (1953 - ) …………………………………………………….84 Implications for future conceptualizations of outsider art ………….………….85 Dubious pronouncements and blatant misconceptions about outsider art(ists) ..88 A final word on “the outsider” …...................................................... …………..91 Art making beyond the outsider artist label …….…………………. …………..92 Breaking through antiquated perceptions of art and disability …,……………..92 In school ………………………………………………………………………..94 Within the community ….……………………………………………………...100 Hybrids of hope ………………….……………………………………………103 The role of aesthetic empathy in a new characterization of art and disability ..105 Relationships between Art Making and Literacy for Adolescents and Adults with Disabilities in School and Community Settings …………………………....108 Overview ….…………………………………………………………………..108 Research approaches specific to this section ………………………………….115 Results, implications, and limitations ….……..……………………………….117 Art making, literacy, and persons with disabilities: correlational frameworks …..………………………………………..…………………….118 McLeod and Ricketts (2013) …………………………………………………..119 Sagan (2007) …………………………………………………………………..121 Sagan (2008) …………………………………………………………………..124 Sagan (2011) …………………………………………………………………..126 Culminating discussion for this subgroup …………………………………….128 Art making and adolescents and adults with disabilities ……...........................130 ix Grocke et al. (2009) …………………………………………………………...130 Hall (2013) ……………………………………………………………………132 Hermon and Prentice (2003) …………… …………………………................134 Huet (2011) …………………………………………………………………....136 Joosa (2012) …………………………………………………………………..138 Kidd (2009) …………………………………………………………………....140 Miller et al. (1998) …………………………………………………………….142 Sinason (2007) ………………………………………………………………...144 Stronach-Buschel (1990) ……………………………………………………...146 Wexler (2002) …………………………..…………………………..................148 Culminating

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