The Early Childhood Education program at Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC) prepares more than 600 students each year to be educators in early childhood (birth-Grade 2) classrooms as teaching assistants or to continue their education in 4-year institutions. In March 2020, as COVID-19 devastated urban neighborhoods, a journey was…

Creativity is more important than ever in today's knowledge-based economy. Although many students doubt their own creativity, very few exercises are designed to help them access this ability. We believe that self-expression and self-reflection are important for understanding personal creative ability. Jung introduced the mandala to promote these…

This article assists art educators, especially preservice teachers, in increasing their understanding of the symptomology and behaviors of students on the autism spectrum that may limit artmaking. Here, the author examines specific behaviors and symptoms of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), from both a psychological and developmental perspective.…

Recent reforms have introduced integrated science, technology, engineering, and math education (STEM) that has highlighted an interdisciplinary approach to train students as better problem solvers. In addition to STEM disciplines, art, language, and other disciplines integration are also stressed (STEM+). In this paper, a STEM+ (STEM + art +…

In this article, I reflect on my use of collage-making as an arts-based method in self-study doctoral research. My self-study was guided by sociocultural learning theories that assume education is an individual activity and a social phenomenon. I ask, "How did collage-making allow me to refine my teaching and learning?" I utilized…

The purpose of this article is to reflect on the events that occurred at Pulse nightclub and how a social justice camp collided to create opportunities for campers, preservice teachers, and faculty mentors to use creative activities to connect community members during a time of tragedy. The author begins with a brief introduction to critical…

This article describes a unit of work framed by a rationale for activating English language learning through arts-based practices that are suitable for preservice teachers who are nonnative speakers of English (seeking certification for teaching English as a second language). Because teachers of English are expected to use language arts to promote…

This article describes a general education course offering, Physics and the Arts. During the development of this course, physics and arts faculty collaborated closely. We cover the usual physics phenomena for such a course--light, color, and sound--in addition to gravity, equilibrium, and spacetime. Goals of the course are to increase students'…

The Eco-Sculpture Assignment demonstrates that art may be used as a conduit to scaffold metacognition in marketing courses. Theoretical underpinnings are drawn from the literature on pedagogy used in general, marketing, and art education contexts. The assignment is described in detail, followed by examples of learner response that illustrate…

Information lies at the center of information studies, the information professions, and information education. Yet there are few agreed upon pedagogical strategies for engaging students in our central concept. In many educational programs the nature of information is assumed to be obvious and therefore left uninterrogated. Alternatively, students…

Today's global digital culture not only engages young people in daily consumption of visual images, texts, and artifacts, but also provides them with the tools to actively participate in the production of imagery and narratives. Whether they post a picture on Facebook, create a blog, or make a YouTube video with their peers, they engage in what…

The author states that she finds it challenging to create new and innovative lessons for her college-level design students. Most of her students are first-year art students, and some never took art in high school. Here, she describes a lesson as one solution she developed that made the students look at themselves, and integrate their personalities…

Critical thinking is thought-focused on how to solve a well-defined problem when several alternatives solutions to the problem exist. Because critical thinking may help to build tolerance toward others, the author believes it is a worthwhile subject to investigate, given that people are living in an increasingly multicultural society full of…

This article presents an examination of the effects of using an inquiry-based learning pedagogy to teach ceramics to pre-service teachers (my students) at the Hong Kong Institute of Education. At the beginning of the study the students were asked to conduct experiments on the properties of clay. The results indicate that half of them were able to…

This research sought to explore the impact upon pre-service teachers' orientations towards the arts of a performing arts week within a one-year postgraduate teacher education programme. There is evidence from a range of data collected before, during and after the week that it had helped to strengthen participants' self-image as artistic…