The purpose of this study was to determine whether kindergarten children possess the ability to recognize, match, and discuss lines and line qualities. Using graphics and art reproductions, three matching tasks were constructed which examined young children's awareness of the line qualities of length, width, straightness, direction, movement, and uniformity. Graphics and art reproductions were also used to construct two tracing tasks employed to examine young children's awareness of actual and implied lines. The tasks were administered to 69 kindergarten students from four elementary schools in a public school district in the north central Texas area.

Two curricular needs exist for the elementary art classroom: multi-cultural lessons which are customized to address North Texas ethnicities, and art history materials for early grades, whether taught by art teachers or regular classroom teachers. This thesis addresses both of these concerns by developing lesson plans to meet the needs, and executing an evaluative study with North Texas art and regular classroom teachers of kindergarten and first grade. The teachers represent four districts, including rural, suburban, and urban demographic populations. Findings address time limitations for public school teachers, cultural exchange differences between demographic groups, and differences between presentation of the units by regular classroom teachers versus art teachers.

This study examines the effects that discipline-based art education has upon reading test scores of public school second grade children. The progress in language arts of an experimental group and a control group were followed for two six week grading cycles. The experimental group was treated with DBAE instruction for one six weeks, while the control group received only studio production exercises. Both groups received no art instruction for another six weeks. Gains between mean pre-test and post-test scores indicated a significant difference for the experimental group but not the control group.

This study follows the progress of 11 elementary students who exhibited similar language-arts deficiencies and were treated with traditional and non-traditional language-arts remediation methods. Non-traditional methods were exclusively Discipline-Based Art Education (DBAE) lessons that required students to observe, talk about, and write about art images using a DBAE framework. Portfolios maintained by the students during one complete school year included writings and art production. Writings were marked using a color-coding system developed for the research project and designed to track growth in art cognition. Interviews for affective measure and the Test of Non-Verbal Intelligence, Edition II were administered as pre- and post-tests. Evidence indicated art understanding improved as cognition in language arts improved. Change in attitudes toward art and artists demonstrated a slight positive change. No significant difference was detected in non-verbal intelligence.