More than fifteen years ago, the Hewlett Foundation commissioned the researchers at SRI International to create the first comprehensive, statewide study of arts education in California. The resulting report, 2007's "An Unfinished Canvas," revealed the degree to which California was failing to provide standards-based courses in arts…

In 2019, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation engaged SRI Education to "refresh" a 2007 study, published as "An Unfinished Canvas" (Woodworth et al., 2007). In 2022, SRI released "Creativity Challenge" (Woodworth et al., 2022). Both studies were commissioned to assess the status of arts education in California,…

Creative Youth Development (CYD) is a long-standing practice that fuels students' potential by intentionally integrating creative skill-building, inquiry and expression with positive youth development principles. In CYD programs, young people create original work through arts experiences and apply their creative skills to solve problems. These…

The economic state of California is representative of the larger financial health of the United States. The budget cuts and the faltering status of art education in public schools has contrasted much of the rhetoric and statistics for art education and employment in the visual arts. Yet, contemporaneously, California has also witnessed the largest…

To mitigate educational challenges, K-8 students enrolled in the Migrant Education Program (MEP) at Fuerte School District spend the majority of their after-school class time in a Saturday Academy program completing required curricular tasks associated with structured research-based programs to strengthen reading, writing, mathematics, and science…

Targeting students in grades K-8, Art in Action's program consists of 12 age-appropriate lessons per year led by parent and teacher volunteers. The curriculum is based on historically significant artists and their works of art. Through semi-structured discussions, students examine a variety of masterpieces, learning about the artist as well as…

CoTA (Collaborations: Teachers and Artists) is a professional development program that empowers teachers to access the arts in everyday instruction to support student achievement. CoTA schools commit to intense, 3-year collaborations for ten weeks each year where teachers learn to capitalize on arts content and strategies to promote knowledge and…

Two classrooms on opposite sides of the world happened to be working on a very similar project at the same time. In both Shanghai, China, and Palm Springs, California, students were learning how to turn their flashlights and other light-emitting objects into paintbrushes. Light painting is a form of long-exposure photography in which the shutter…

The last two sections (EJ1039315 and EJ1039319) presented stories about specific moments or lessons. Also, situations infused with complexity where the writers had to toggle back and forth between providing the larger context and the details that support readers' understanding of that big picture were presented. In this section each story is…

Targeting students in grades K-8, Art in Action's program consists of 12 age-appropriate lessons per year led by parent and teacher volunteers. The curriculum is based on historically significant artists and their works of art. Through semi-structured discussions, students examine a variety of masterpieces, learning about the artist as well as…

In what ways can teachers build on youth culture to improve learning opportunities in the classroom? In this fascinating and highly readable collection, Korina M. Jocson brings together more than two dozen scholars, artists, educators, and youth workers to illustrate how nondominant youth can be engaged through various social justice arts…

A remarkably consistent picture of the value of the arts in a comprehensive Pre-K-grade 12 education emerges from a review of two decades of theory and policy recommendations about arts education. Over the past decade, the National Governors Association, the Education Commission of the States, the National Association of State Boards of Education,…

This article focuses on current examples of project or design-based learning at the secondary school level in the context of the increasing importance of creativity and innovative thinking in the twenty-first century. The authors argue that students today learn more effectively in pedagogical practices that emphasise holistic thinking, active…

People have high regard for the arts, whatever the medium. From painting to the written word to performance and beyond, the arts help define people, both as individuals and as a society. And yet a strange dichotomy exists within one's society, where the arts are paid rhetorical respect even when they are not always adequately funded. Arts…

The purpose of this publication is to share models and case examples of the process of inclusive arts curriculum design and evaluation. The first section explains the conceptual and curriculum frameworks that were used in the analysis and generation of the featured case studies (i.e. Understanding by Design, Differentiated Instruction, and…