Date of Award

5-1982

Degree Type

Report

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Journalism and Communication

Committee Chair(s)

Burrell Hansen

Committee

Burrell Hansen

Committee

Ross Allen

Committee

Harold Kinzer

Abstract

This is a report of an after-school, non-credit, photo-enrichment course that was developed and offered to students at the Logan Junior High School during the period March 30 through May 6, 1981.

The artistic intent of this course was to teach students how to see with a camera, recording images on transparency film, and later arranging transparencies into idea-development or story-telling sequences.

The educational intent was to see if such a course would motivate students to perform better in other classes and improve their school relationships in general.

The course was of too short a duration to develop any hard facts to support an affirmative answer to the question of educational (behavioral) intent. This is not to say that the course did not motivate such changes, or that the opposite was proven. There was no evidence of improved, static or degraded behavioral states.

There was, however, evidence that teacher/ administrator/ counselor biases had something to do with a student's perceived performance. Moreover, there was a degree of unanimity in this respect.

Because of the search for motivational factors, I re-discovered Seymour Halleck's construct of "stylism," and found it to be applicable to the student population of the project to a large degree. Again, and because this was not a sought-for answer, but a matter of serendipity, I developed no materials to justify the extent, much less the existence of such an observation. And so it is just that: an observation, and probably the most significant finding of the study.

Because of the significance of "stylism," I have developed the literature search to explain it, and the report of the project to demonstrate this construct in action.

It may be that by coming to terms with this construct, educators can develop a protocol for teaching students previously considered to be an educational enigma. Suggestions to this end are offered in the conclusions.

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