GhernaC Capstone Qualifier Presentation

I'm going to show you my study design and rationale.

So a little bit of background to the study. Um the P. I, which is me um

Has been conducting this art program with students

with disabilities at the study site since 2019.

My background in special education and the arts

are my impetus for conducting this study.

It was this work that inspired me to pursue this to pursue this degree program.

I feel there is incredible potential for the arts to

help my students reach therapy goals that ultimately promote,

promote their well being.

I also hope to contribute to the existing literature related to arts and

health for this population and specifically in areas with a rural designation.

This project is an instrumental case study focusing on a specific population,

Children with disabilities and a specific site for White High School.

I'm not investigating a standalone phenomenon.

Rather,

I aim to collect data and research to address

access to arts and health for Children with disabilities in

rural areas and the role that an arts and

health program could have in a public school system.

This site is Fort White High School. Located in Fort White florida.

It is a rural public school in a very low low income area.

It serves grades six through 12 and the study focuses specifically on students with

disabilities placed in self contained special education

classrooms at Fort White High School,

which means that they're not part of the mainstream general

student population.

Forward High school previously offered no formal art

education opportunities for this population of students.

So they really didn't have many options outside of P. E.

Until I started this program.

So

I wanted to include both students and staff in the

study in order to collect data from multiple angles,

students and staff both complete a pre imposed survey.

But students will also be observed during our sessions which required me

to provide different types of consent and assent for each group.

Students subjects were recruited based on these factors.

They had to be a current student enrolled at Fort White High School.

Current placement was in a self contained classroom.

They had to be between the ages of 11 and 17, English speaking.

Um that's for the student and parents or guardians.

They had to receive services from

occupational therapy.

They had to have OT goals related to areas of independence,

self determination and or choice making.

Some potential subjects were chosen

who had been receiving OT services at Fort White

High School for at least two consecutive years.

This didn't have to this wasn't a qualifying factor for

all students but I did make sure to include some

that

had that extra

time with OT because I use that as control information.

The total amount of number of subjects recruited.

I was 11

Recruitment packets contained a letter from me to parents and guardians.

The consent forms in a self addressed stamped

envelope to ensure return of the forms.

15 packets were sent home and of those 15 I was able to recruit 11 students subjects,

three girls and eight boys and with a diverse range of abilities.

Staff subjects are all female except for one male administrator.

13 out of 15 staff that I invited to

invited to the study agreed to participate.

They're all female,

save for the one male administrator and they're all between the ages of 18 and 65.

They were recruited based on these factors.

They had to be currently employed by the Columbia County School District.

They had to have current placement at Fort White High School.

They had to be 18 years of age or older and

the role of the school involves teaching or supporting student subjects.

Students subjects were given consent forms or their

parents and guardians were giving consent forms.

The consent was obtained for participation in the

study and for photography opting out of the study

did not affect versus participation in the regular

weekly art sessions and opting out of tata.

It was not a disqualifying factor for participating

in the study assent was obtained from students determined

by their parents or guardians to be capable of

understanding the study and their role in it.

Staff subjects were given a recruitment letter

and a documentation of waiver of informed consent

recruitment letter was returned to me

indicating interest and their preferred survey format

because I did give them a choice to have a google form survey or

a printed copy.

Staff were also given a consent for photography with the ability to opt out

Alright. And then finally the study activities. Uh

First off are the surveys both students and staff subjects will be were given

uh pre surveys and they will be given post surveys.

All staff subjects who consent to participate will complete those surveys.

But for the students subjects um all student subjects who are able

to respond will be given the opportunity to complete a survey.

Uh The reason that I say that they will be given an opportunity to

complete the survey is because some students

subjects were not able to really understand

what was being asked of them and some were not able to respond.

And the version of the survey that they receive

will be based off of their communication needs.

I'll show you in a moment that there

are two different versions of the student survey.

Student responses were recorded or will be recorded by me.

Uh And there will be six weeks of student participation in visual

art activities that are designed to support their occupational therapy goals.

Initially the study was supposed to be eight weeks of data collection

but it did have to be shortened due to the I.

R. B. Process

and during those activities,

I will be recording observations during and after each

session a little bit more on those art activities.

Um Coming back again to that process based approach.

All the art activities were designed to support these goals of independence,

choice making and self determination.

Um Students are given a variety of materials tools and processes to

create art with I model different processes and different ways to make art

and I pretty much give them free reign on on what the subject matter is.

Of their their art

adaptations are made on an individual level with input from the OT to ensure safety.

They are encouraged to explore interests and experiment with ideas.

And teachers and paraprofessionals are asked to fade,

which means just take a step back and not do things for

students allowing students to genuinely engage in their own creative processes.

Here's some examples of some art activities that we've done so far

for the study.

Um This was I like to call it painting with tissue paper.

Um

And we also made puzzles. A lot of students have goals that involve uh

building puzzles within a certain amount of time,

with a certain amount of accuracy.

So I thought it would be fun for them to make their own puzzles.

And they did. They had a lot of fun.

You can see this student made, I think she made four separate puzzles.

She really had a lot of fun.

All right,

so

now I'm going to talk a little bit about my methodology.

Um So this is a mixed methods, data collection analysis.

I decided to do mixed methods because I wanted to gain

insight into multiple aspects of the project from different perspectives.

I also wanted to try to achieve triangulation.

Um and did so by having three distinct sources of data

that give me a more comprehensive results to my study.

Alright,

so I do have quantitative data that's being collected through my observation logs.

I have

sort of numerical codes that are assigned to describe specific behaviors that

or like indicators of progress towards ot goals that are recorded um

during and after each session.

And then I also have quality quantitative data coming from skilled

responses on both the student and staff pre imposed surveys.

Um So I want to show you kind of what that looks like. So here's the student survey.

Um you can see here that I have skilled responses to the questions that I asked.

The students are all based on

um areas of independence and self determination and choice making.

Um So this survey with the numbers, skilled responses was given to students who have

who are able to

communicate and respond to me. And then this one using a balance scale

is based off of feelings and it's given to students

who have more communication needs such as students with nonverbal um

autism.

I just wanted to sort of see how they would respond to that and

give them a way to express to me how these things make them feel

alright. The staff surveys had skilled responses as well.

Um These are all asking about

their perceptions of art and the role of art for Children with disabilities.

Um

I did generate all of the questions on these surveys myself, I did not use uh

and you sort of

pre made

pre made scale or inventory.

I did review several and none of them really met the

needs for the specific population that I was working with.

Um and all responses to the staff survey are completely anonymous.

Uh Staff subjects were actually given the opportunity

to complete their survey on google forms or to

get a printed version of it um to fill out that was completely up to them.

And the google forms was emailed to their staff email.

It's based on similar logs that are used by the occupational therapists.

And it actually collects both qualitative and quantitative data.

So these are the

numerical codes and so each area.

Each domain here sort of has its own

behaviors or indicators of progress that

I can expect to see

and then I circle

uh whatever applies for that session and I also described the activities that we

engaged in and I take notes on anything else that I might want to add

that I noticed from the session.

Alright,

so qualitative data is coming from the open response questions that are in the

students staff pre imposed surveys and from my notes from the observation logs and

uh notes and observations that are also from that I might derive from the oT data,

both current and past data.

Alright, so this is the student open response.

This was only given to students who are able to respond.

Students with communication needs did not get the

free response. They only had a skilled response.

And then staff free responses to these questions are basically aimed at collecting

their perspectives on the role and impact of art for Children with disabilities.

Um Actually asked them to specific questions and then I

asked them to go back to their skilled responses,

choose a statement that they disagreed with and one that they

agreed with and then explain their reasoning for both of them.

Mm hmm.

So from the qualitative data the way that I'm going to analyze it,

I will be coding the data for themes and

trying to measure progress from the qualitative data.

So all qualitative data from survey responses

will be coded and analyzed for themes.

Um

The

qualitative

data

analyzing software that I'm going to be using is

google forms which come

sort of generates its own

ah analytics.

And I'll also be using Excel to complete the coding.

And I'm considering using a program such as max Q. D. A. But I have to look into

whether or not I need to change my protocol in order

to use it and if I need to approach the I.

R. B. About it. I actually did not find out about max Q. D. A.

Um and other programs until recently

uh through the coding class that I am taking concurrently with my capstone.

Um I will be using grounded theory methods for inductive data analysis

and quantitative data from skilled responses will be analyzed for patterns

and any statistical data that I can derive from that.

Um data from observation logs will be analyzed

and compared to current occupational occupational therapy data.

Then that comparison is going to be compared

to past occupational therapy data that's going to serve

as control and that past occupational therapy uh information

is going to be for the same students that

I'm collecting current

data on for my for my survey,

which is why it acts as a control.

Alright, so my study aims are to support independence,

self determination and choice making through engagement with visual art

to formally investigate the goals and objectives shared

and supported by occupational therapy and arts and health

document and

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