This research project explores the use of 'happy accidents' as agents for facilitating more meaningful and critical exploration in secondary school art. Owing to a preoccupation with standardisation and quantifiable results, the more nebulous and invisible qualities of art have become deprioritised within many curricula. This paradigm creates…

When educators started incorporating the letter A into the STEM acronym to form STEAM some science educators had reservations. Seen from a western, rationalistic way of knowing (Colucci-Gray et al. 2017, 23) the STEM community had detractors regarding the idea of integrating art into science. Hence, scientific language is often thought of as being…

Both a practitioner's guide and a school reform model, the new edition of this popular book shares exemplary arts-integration practices across the K-8 curriculum. Rather than providing formulas or scripts to be followed, each chapter carefully describes how the arts offer an entry point for gaining insight into why and how students learn to assist…

This paper examines the interplay of creativity, education, and the expressive arts. We begin by presenting a narrative literature review focusing on the use of artistic tools to promote creativity, self-expressiveness, and meaningful aspects of emotional and social learning. This review reveals strong connections between the different components…

Wellbeing education (WE) is increasingly offered among secondary schools internationally to promote the physical, social, emotional and mental health of young people. Current and emerging evidence proposes that scope exists for the enhancement of universal WE, and that arts-based approaches have significant potential for school programmes in…

Currently, studies on STEAM education or arts integration focus on students' experiences rather than teachers' challenges. Thus, the purpose of this dissertation is to set an example for policymakers, educators, and researchers, to provide better support for art-integrated mathematics and biology teachers by understanding their professional…

This research study is a qualitative action research study that examines the best ways to support the emotional needs of students as they matriculate through high school. Specifically for this study, high school educators who teach in the four academic content areas (English, Math, Science, and Social Studies classes) implemented Calming Corners,…

The United States has a visually stunning history of documenting its natural lands. In the late 1800s, Hudson River School painters captured national parks in the west (National Park Service, 2017). Ansel Adams is famously known for his rich black-and-white photographs of Yosemite and other national parks from the 1920s. In the 1930s, the Works…

This qualitative teacher -- research study investigates how secondary students in English classes might use art materials and the construction of abstract artworks to explore, develop, and express their responses to and interpretations of literary works. The study was guided by the following research questions: 1. What happens when students are…

Middle school is a transitional period in which many students experience content-specific teachers, travel between classrooms, and explore extracurricular activity options for the first time. Historically, African American middle school students have not fared well in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) on standardized…

Middle school is a transitional period in which many students experience content-specific teachers, travel between classrooms, and explore extracurricular activity options for the first time. Historically, African American middle school students have not fared well in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) on standardized…

By crafting a dramatic script about struggling high school readers that I then shared with real students in my Reading classes, I applied Arts-based education research (ABER) methods. Through the writing, presentation, collection, and reflection on student feedback, as well as during the script rewriting process, I was allowed to engage in a…

Studio Thinking 3 is a new edition of a now-classic text, a research-based account of teaching and learning in high school studio arts classes. It poses a framework that identifies eight habits of mind taught in visual arts and four studio structures by which they are taught. This expanded, full-color edition includes new material about how the…

The present longitudinal study examined whether extracurricular activities in the arts and corresponding scores in art classes have a positive association with general academic performance. Data were collected from 488 seventh-grade children (259 boys and 229 girls) for over two years. Information regarding their participation in extracurricular…

This paper discusses the potential of participant art-making as an ethnographic analytic method for materialising otherwise invisible experiences in the everyday lives of people. To describe this methodology, I share examples from a two year project conducted in a photography classroom in the northeastern United States. Teenage participants made…