Anxiety as function of self-concept and instructional method in beginning drawing students at the high school level

Includes bibliographical references (pages 85-89)Art educators genera1y agree that adolescents often experience anxiety in connection with classroom art work. The anxiety is particularly linked to figure drawing, because the student???s self-criticism is especially harsh in regards to his inability to draw a realistic representation of the human figure. While feelings of frustration are often directed at art in general, there seems to be an even stronger linking of feelings of failure with self-concept. The adolescent may decide he has "no talent" and give up art as a self-expressive activity. The present study attempted to investigate whether an instructional method which was based on teaching visual perceptive skills would help minimize anxiety in high school beginning art students in a classroom situation. Two groups of high school students were given differing instructional treatments. Instruction for one group included a description of the student's past artistic development, clarification of the role of the brain in symbo1-formation which may prevent accurate perception and demonstration of a specific method of perceiving and drawing accurately. For the second group, instruction was mainly generalized instructions to "observe carefully", without stress on how to perceive. Both groups were tested for self-concept and for anxiety level. Results of the analysis of the data indicate that an instructional method based on visual perceptive skills is conducive to a significant reduction of anxiety, which is linked to self-concept, and to improvement of drawing quality