This article presents a preservice art teacher training project completed in the fall of 2021 as part of an elementary practicum course. The project was designed to focus on cultivating resilience in elementary school students, especially those from economically disadvantaged situations, who may have accrued increased learning loss during the…

Scholars emphasize how exercising the ability to critically evaluate both sides of an issue can reveal false dichotomies and promote an awareness of common ground among differing perspectives (Journell, 2019; Noddings & Brooks, 2017; Zimmerman & Robertson, 2017). As an art education professor in higher education and former elementary art…

Several preservice teachers are scattered on the floor, looking anxiously at parents and their babies as they come into the room. This is their first day at an urban community center in Ohio, where economically disadvantaged parents come to learn parenting skills while their babies are provided with care. Wide-eyed and reluctant, each student is…

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…

How can digital art--based research counter Indigenous eradication and settler replacement enacted by land-grant universities (LGUs)? How can non-Indigenous settlers ethically engage in decolonizing work? With these questions, our art-based research project emerged from a spring 2021 Pennsylvania State University (PSU) graduate seminar, Land…

Recent trends in art suggest that contemporary artists are increasingly more interested in "making" social change and less interested in "making" stand-alone objects. In this spirit, artists and educators are exploring what art can do to address future global challenges associated with accelerating climate change, displacement,…

Today several contemporary artists are using their artistic talents to help bring attention to the immigration debate. Westover School, the independent school where author Sara Poskas teaches, decided to address these issues by inviting one such artist--award-winning artist and architect Mohamad Hafez, a native-born Syrian, raised in the Kingdom…

In this article, the authors reflect on a storytelling tunnel book project, from their interdisciplinary course Art & Social Justice for nonmajors at Nazareth College, a small, private, liberal arts college in New York. The authors argue that in an era of increased political polarization, rising racism, and xenophobia, storytelling is a…

Despite the dramatic increase in the number of graphic novels created and published, and the growing popularity of graphic novels among students, some teachers think that certain sexual and violent imagery in graphic novels renders them unsuitable for teaching (Weiner, 2003). Additionally, the lack of cultural diversity and the depiction of…

In this article, the authors discuss how incorporating traveling sketchbooks into their preservice art education and high school classrooms allowed students' situated knowledge to cross the boundaries of age and location. They begin with an overview of the evolution of sketchbook use in art education and the emergence of traveling sketchbooks.…

Near the end of February 2020, the Art Education Club officers at California State University, Northridge introduced members to a collaborative collage artmaking project, inspired by Marty McCutcheon's "Check It Out" project. Club members--preservice art education students, mentor art teachers, and higher education faculty--had recently…

Author Jennifer Bergmark describes an art project with the purpose of providing a collaborative creative experience to break down school-community barriers and provide a space for conversation and community building. A goal for the school where this project took place, Stratton Academy of the Arts, located in Champaign, Illinois, is to create a…

Many students are actively involved with social networking sites; they follow friends in virtual worlds and post personal information and photographs online daily. Although they may not realize it, students are publicly "documenting" their private lives on social media to allow others to learn about them. Understanding documentation as a…

In this time of heightened political and social unrest in the United States, the higher education classroom has become a space where preservice art education students can discuss issues of identity and social interaction, including stories of "surviving" holiday dinners. Students often report that during meals with family and friends,…

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.…