In 2015, Aretha Franklin took the stage at the 38th Annual Kennedy Center Honors ceremony. Before beginning a performance that would bring the president of the United States to tears, she placed a sparkling purse on top of the piano, a signifier of her refusal to sing without first being paid (Glum, 2018). Centuries earlier, in 1649, Artemisia…

The emphasis on science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) disciplines in schools has caused advocates for art education to propose the addition of the arts to the study of STEM, transforming STEM into STEAM. One method of implementing STEAM is Design Thinking (Henriksen, 2017). STEAM education and Design Thinking are both models for…

African American artists have participated in every major art style and movement since before the founding of this nation. However, until recent decades, this "grand epic" had been marginalized within the traditional survey canon of American art. Art historians have undertaken considerable scholarship (Bearden & Henderson, 1993;…

Although attempts are currently being made to understand the connections and differences between art and design education (Zwirn & Zande, 2015), there is little reflection on a key problematic that binds them together: the relationship between form and function. In this article, authors Tyson Lewis and James Thurman briefly share a three-part…

Can a building's ornamentation grow and change? Can it inspire artists, educators, and other scholars to be creative in new ways? In this article, the authors, an instructional faculty team of two studio art professors and the fine arts librarian at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE), describe how its collection of Louis H. Sullivan…

Few would disagree that a primary aim of art and design education is to cultivate student creativity. While there are diverse approaches to teaching for creativity in art and design education, developing creativity generally focuses on discovery, materials exploration, and idea expression (process) as well as making and presenting final works of…

In order to understand the importance of design in art education, contemporary pedagogy, and for students, the author outlines what design education and the field of design means, and explains the unique skill sets that designers possess. As teachers attempt to make educational experiences more relevant, design must be leveraged as a key component…

In the "Studies" article "Multiple Interruptions: Creative Encounters in Public Art and Public Pedagogy, A North--South Dialogue," Danny Wildemeersch and Astrid von Kotze write about the productive force of blurring institutional boundaries. They state: "As we negotiated our different relations of engagement with theory…

Aaron Knochel, Assistant Professor of Art Education at The Pennsylvania State University in University Park, introduced his preservice art education students to a growing field of design practice that focused on developing open source, affordable prosthetics to kids that could otherwise not afford them. Many of these projects involve three…

In this article, we consider socially engaged design practice, and examine its potential for informing design curriculum and pedagogy in K-12 art education programs. Our hope is to prompt discussion and debate about socially engaged design's potentiality for preparing students to participate in a world in which "nothing is truly, or can…

According to Vande Zande (2007), understanding the Design Process can help students become stronger critical thinkers. With this in mind, Andrew Watson decided to undertake an observational case study in which he focused directly on Design Thinking and addressed it more intentionally in his teaching. The hope was to understand how students saw…

The recent push for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education introduces (through the emphasis on engineering) a "design process" to science classrooms; some educators have also pushed for the "artistic or creative process" becoming a part of STEM education. In certain cases, this might be an opportunity for greater…

Problem solving is essential to everyone's life. People survive if they are nourished, sheltered, and protected--and they construct ways to obtain nourishment, shelter, and protection through problem solving. Though problems vary in complexity--survival at the one end and the pursuit of comfort at the other--we are reliant on our ability to…

This article describes a unit in which students were able to create projects that went far beyond the initial scope of what the authors imagined due to the scaffolded and sociocultural learning environment (Vygotsky, 1978). The article begins with an explanation of constructivism, design thinking, and Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and…

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…