Collaborative Murals Project for 8th Grade Students

This capstone project is an inquiry into and evaluation of an 8th-grade art education mural painting curriculum unit for a Title 1 School in the Garner, North Carolina Public School System with the purpose of program development. The unit focused on identity and ownership for underserved students. This research into curriculum building emphasized the themes of collaboration and empathy to foster a sense of community amongst students with the goals of developing identity and inclusion through mural making. The use of Action Research was used to investigate specific narrative stories of my lived experiences leading and teaching a murals unit twice.

Taking a comparative analysis approach, I was able to reevaluate programmatic elements, content, and organization and implemented a second unit with a community-based practices that promoted collaboration, inclusion, and a sense of identity. Among the findings were ways in which free-choice narrative, culturally responsive teaching, and collaboration work synchronously with guidelines, scaffolding, and rules to have murals develop successfully, while promoting identity and inclusion for this school community.