Social and emotional learning (SEL) standards and policies are quickly being adopted across the United States. States and school districts are now requiring demonstrations of SEL in schools and hoping for evidence that school subjects, including art education, can successfully meet those requirements and provide that evidence. This article reports…

A visual culture learning community (VCLC) is an adolescent or young adult group engaged in expression and creation outside of formal institutions and without adult supervision. In the framework of an international, comparative research project executed between 2010 and 2014, members of a variety of eight self-initiated visual culture groups…

One of the traditional privileges for teachers in the United States has been control over the curriculum. Unlike most countries in the world, the United States does not have a national curriculum "per se", enabling teachers to make curriculum decisions that most benefit local students. However, the Elementary and Secondary Act, also known as the…

Conceptions of student creativity have shifted historically as ideas about art and education have changed. The ways people think about art, including those related to creative practice, require continual reconsideration in times of change. Art educators have begun reconsidering a range of art concepts and principles to better support contemporary…

This article is the report of a large-scale, international research project involving focus group interviews of adolescent and young adult members of a variety of self-initiated visual culture groups in five urban areas (Amsterdam, Budapest, Chicago, Helsinki, and Hong Kong). Each group was established by young people around their interests in the…

This article addresses dimensions of contemporary policy that are influencing art teaching and learning. In the light of recent policy, and its challenges to creativity, art educators have been placed in the position where we need to make trouble through a re-definition and extension of professional responsibility. In response to negative impacts…

Describes how art education in the 1940s and 1950s was influenced by national social and political issues. Elaborates on conceptions of good citizenship and the new nationalism and internationalism which were emphasized. Claims this curriculum model withheld from children knowledge of the complexities of art and society. (BSR)

This article is based on nearly 25 years of working with and studying folk art and folk artists. While certified art educators and their university teachers may think they are inclusive in their understandings about art and learning processes, generally speaking, they are either unaware or tend to ignore folk artists' ways of understanding the…

Examines the social and cultural conditions in which U.S. art education was constructed, considering the social interests that underlay its formation. Traces curriculum theory from around 1870 to the present. States that the history of curriculum involves a story of social transformation, political interests, and economic agendas. (GEA)

Practices intended to promote equity, reproduce inequity. Theories based on belief in individualism concentrate attention on individual differences, removing social differentiations. Being concerned with the formation of common culture, art educators present aesthetic objects as culturally neutral, devoid of the context from which they were…

Explains that an important relationship exists among democracy, visual technologies, and education. Stresses that one of the essential responsibilities of art education must be to teach students about the power of technological imagery and how to use that power for democratic forms of expression. (CMK)

Asks how art should be taught in the postmodern world. Argues that art education must change in two ways: (1) discussions of fine art must focus on the meaning of postmodern art and concepts; and (2) incorporating postmodern concepts to address the broad range of visual culture encountered by students. (DSK)

Focuses on ways in which a group of high school students responded to fine art and other forms of visual culture, such as advertising images, cartoons, and propaganda posters. Discusses three emergent themes in student responses: (1) purposes of imagery; (2) interpretation of images; and (3) relationships among images. (DSK)

Discusses philanthropy in three parts: (1) development of foundation philanthropy, (2) Andrew Carnegie's vision to "civilize" the United States, (3) historical background and purpose of the Minnesota Owatonna Project. Concludes by stating that there is nothing inherently good or evil about philanthropic bureaucracies, pointing out that…

Art education has emerged in relation to a number of cultural influences. These influences framed school art in terms of four strands of purpose. The first strand is the use of art education for developing skills for a labor market. The second strand views the purpose of public access to art as cultural education and a leisure time activity for…