Art and artistic activities that play a significant role in the lives of both children and adults are an important requirement for all individuals. Cultures develop, expand, and enrich through artistic activities, which are important for the development of visual literacy, especially in social studies. The present study aims to determine the…

With its ambient, interesting and dynamic use of materials, alternative views of materials and objects, with its playfulness and affecting different senses contemporary fine art can be very interesting for art-educational work. Due to its complexity, however, it suffers from misunderstanding, retreat, and last but not least also fears both among…

This brief article describes how Dawn Southworth, upper school art teacher at the Glen Urquhart School (GUS) (Massachusetts), devised the White Shirt Project to engage eighth-graders in art and society. Each year, Southworth purchases white shirts for her eighth grade students to transform into original works of art. Prior to the culminating art…

This article reports the results of a quartile analysis of the "2008 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Visual Arts Report Card." The analysis was made from original datasets supplied by the National Center for Education Statistics. It focuses on 8th-grade students who were currently taking art or recently had taken art.…

The ecological realities of many communities are desperate but not determined. As teachers inevitably encounter these realities in their communities, they can respond by activating students' imaginations to conceive of better alternatives. Greene (1995) outlined how the imagination has the power to envision alternative realities and better…

This article analyzes the potential of a series of Youth Action Coalition's (YAC) Arts-for-Change (AfC) youth programs for literacy and identity development, as well as for engaging youth in addressing issues of social justice. Drawing primarily on transcripts of interviews, surveys, and participant-observation fieldnotes inventorying changes in…

Using visual resources from everyday life in art lessons can enrich students' knowledge about the creation of visual images, artifacts, and sites, and develop their critical understanding about the cultural impact of these images and their effects on people's lives. Through examining an exhibition in the windows of Selfridges department store in…

For centuries people from around the world have celebrated storytelling and puppetry for their educational and social functions. In the comprehensive curriculum, storytelling combined with puppet performances enriches the classroom experience by providing students with opportunities to engage in open dialogue, creativity, and structured play.…

Children and burgeoning adolescents' creativity blossom in play-based environments. Likewise, students as active social agents have the opportunity to examine the structures and processes that shape them. The photographic image intimates an aura of credibility, providing the students pause to reflect upon their socialized interactions. These…

Writing about the teaching artist practice should mean writing about art making. As both teacher and artist, the authors are required to be cognizant of their own art-making processes, both how it works and why it is important to them, in order to make this process visible to their students. They also need the same skills to write about how and…

This section is full of stories from teaching artists working to clarify what needs to change within their practices and moving toward solutions--whether it's supporting a classroom of learners in new and unexpected ways, reassessing one's approach in the classroom, shepherding an individual child toward success, or professionalizing an entire…

In this article, the author describes 8 Tags, a project that she used with her eighth-grade studio art students to encourage them to come up with original and creative solutions to an assignment. She also wanted to incorporate their knowledge of the elements of art and principles of design. In this project, students were challenged to create an…

The author has always loved teaching a lesson on self-portraits to her eighth-grade students. Portraits raise the bar and, when they are successful, convince the students that they really can draw. Each year they explore the basic concepts of portraiture, but use different media, sizes and styles. The author likes to interject art history and…

Manurewa Intermediate students were given an experience only the arts can provide as they collaboratively researched, responded to and celebrated a school mural project. The mural project was initiated by Shane Hansen through the Principal Iain Taylor and coordinated by Dianne Macdonald, a Professional Learning Leader at Manurewa Intermediate…

When teaching still-life drawing to her eighth-grade students, the author decided they needed a challenge on their final assignment. She thought that making it personal would be more appealing to students than drawing a typical still-life arrangement. She decided to have students create a small collage-style arrangement as a subject for a…