The authors place a continuing education conference devoted to linking the arts, social practice, and social work within the context of a movement to advance arts activism. They illustrate how social workers, artists, and community arts activists can collaborate in building public awareness about serious social issues, creating alternative…

Dada, an art movement that became well known in the late 1910s and early 1920s, challenged traditional notions of art and aesthetics. Dada artists, for example, tossed colored scraps of paper into the air to compose chance-based collages, performed sound poems devoid of semantic value, and modeled a headpiece fashioned of sardine cans. To most art…

Creativity, content, and policy have multiple relationships. Creativity and disciplinary content are inextricably linked. In dealing with creativity, the first education policy choice is whether to recognize and act on that fact. Care is needed in using the term "creativity" in advocacy contexts, lest the relationship between creativity and…

How "could" one borrow a view? The works of artist, Ray Kass (b. 1944) are as much, if not more, about the experience and process of perception and art-making as they are about the final objects he creates. Kass is notorious for not solely his art making, but also for his thinking. He thinks, he writes, he teaches, he discusses, he organizes…

Art education offers a way to reach students and make schools more relevant for them. Art teachers can create alternative formats that allow students to explore and learn about their lives. Thereby, students and their communities become the focus of the curriculum and students' responses are valued as individual expression. While teaching art in…

When an art tutor adopts the role of assistant to a disabled artist it is difficult not to move from helping with the physical handling of materials on the one hand into the actual creative process on the other, thus influencing how the artwork looks. Ecas is an Edinburgh-based charity which promotes opportunities for physically disabled people to…

This article explores "prosthesis" as a metaphor of embodiment in art-based research to challenge the utopian myth of wholeness and normality in art and the human body. Bearing in mind the correspondences between amputated bodies and the cultural dislocations of art, I propose "prosthetic epistemology" and "prosthetic ontology" as embodied knowing…

This collaborative action research study of pedagogy examines an introductory high school visual arts curriculum that includes artworks pertinent to labor studies, and their impact on students' understanding of the power of art for social commentary. Urban students with multicultural backgrounds study social realism as an historical artistic…

In recent years, the author relates how she had been on a journey to explore the role of art education in fostering ecological literacy. While she had tracked discussions about eco-art education back over three decades in the literature, the author relates how she was still working through exactly what eco-art education is and how it contributes…

Artist-in-residence programs frequently act as professional development initiatives for teachers. Little understanding of the relational nature of artist-teacher learning exists. In this article, we discuss "Learning Through The Arts"[TM], describing conflicting expectations as artists and teachers learn from each other, and explore the…

This manuscript explores the interplay of the concepts of "thisness" and singularity with art making. It explores the particularity of the individual--person, object, animal, plant, place, event; the clarity and joyousness of "thisness" or specificity; the exquisite presence of now; and the relationship of these qualities to contemplation and art…

Traditional forms of teaching and learning based on textual forms of representation and rational thought may limit how we perceive our world. Artistic forms of expression and their implications for adult education are discussed.

Based on a naturalistic study of an intergenerational art program at a colocated child and long-term care facility, the purpose of this article is to discuss the implications of the program's learning opportunities, primarily for young children, in light of current conceptualizations of childhood, aging and disability. Through a critical,…

Can sharing drawings about pedagogical issues develop trust in a mentoring situation? What other themes and feelings emerge when non-traditional forms of mentoring are utilized? During a seven-week student-teaching period, a student art teacher and experienced art teacher drew and wrote in a sketchbook about daily teaching experiences. These…

Art instruction aims to raise the standard of taste. It includes instruction in seeing and interpreting the beautiful in nature and the arts, in drawing, both free-hand and instrumental, in designing, coloring, and modeling, in manipulating paper, cloth, leather, wood, metal, or other materials, to produce a result having elements of beauty. Art…