"A primary task ... is to restore continuity between the refined and intensified forms of experience that are works of art and the everyday events, doings, and sufferings that are universally recognized to constitute experience."--John Dewey, "Art as Experience" (1934)Dewey's primary task has resurfaced in the visual culture movement and is a…

Secondary school theatre programs in the United States range from a single class or an annual play or musical to programs with comprehensive curriculums and production seasons headed by several certified theatre teachers. Whatever the size of the program, whenever adults are engaged in dynamic educational and artistic experiences with children…

Discusses the concept of a policy window for arts education and provides historical background of the different policy windows, positive and negative, that affected arts-education reform movements since the creation of the National Endowment for the Arts. Introduces the three articles in the Symposium on the Policy Role of Education Entities. (CMK)

An aesthetically educated person may be understood to subscribe to values and possess dispositions that in important respects are distinctive. The respects in which such values and dispositions are unique and the methods by which they might be developed are, however, subject to interpretation. This article provides brief summaries of three…

In this article, the author provides a review and critique of key provisions in the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and documents some major effects of the law, which have not been positive for arts education and other subjects not formally tested under the law. Because NCLB is scheduled for reauthorization in 2007 or 2008, the author offers a…

Reports a case study of a non profit arts advocacy group. Explores how Arts Collaborators, Inc. (ACI) advocated arts education, how they chose and developed arts education activities, and how individual and corporate beliefs about art influenced those choices. Offers recommendations about effectively evaluating and incorporating outside influences…

Asserts that testing is widely accepted and politically supported in Canada. Examines why there should be testing in the arts; what should be tested; who makes the tests, takes the tests, and benefits from them; and how frequently students should be tested. Concludes by outlining issues for consideration by policymakers. (PAL)

This is the second installment of Chapter 1, "The Assessment Context," by F. Robert Sabol, from "Assessing Expressive Learning: A Practical Guide for Teacher-Directed Authentic Assessment in K-12 Visual Art Education," edited and written by Charles M. Dorn, Stanley S. Madeja, and F. Robert Sabol. [c] Lawrence Erlbaum…

This author contends that it is sometimes difficult to construe exactly what the visual culture movement really involves. To use the kind of lingo that its spokespersons favor, we are seeing a conflict between transfigured factions surviving from the 1960s. During that fevered era, it appeared to academic liberals that America was becoming…

In this paper, the author asserts that current efforts to transform art education into visual culture studies (VCS) constitute a deeply disturbing educational trend. She asserts that, much like the now largely discredited developments in literary studies of recent decades (whose bankruptcy it apparently ignores), this movement aims quite…

Aesthetics is the philosophy of art (including poetry and literature), and philosophy can be defined as a way of reflecting and clarifying ordinary, everyday thoughts and feelings that people find hard to put into words. One such ordinary thought is the well-known fact that words have a larger, more expansive meaning in poetry than they do in…

In 2004, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) released evidence that points to arts and music teachers possibly being greatest at risk for leaving their current teaching positions. In classifying teachers as stayers, movers, or leavers, the NCES found arts and music teachers to be the highest of all assignment areas of teachers who…

Traces the origins and development of the National Standards for Arts Education. Discusses the long-term effects the national standards might have on preservice and inservice teacher education. Questions whether national standards might lead to a standardization in arts education that would hamper teacher and student creativity. (CFR)

Illustrates why students have a fragmented way of thinking by investigating the representation, or lack thereof, of music in "The Shawshank Redemption" and "Mission Impossible." States that the Internet evoked the idea of the scattered mind and self. Asserts that the arts are custom-made to adapt to the new cognitive structures. (CMK)

During the past twenty years, the accountability movement and its attendant testing have raised fears in the arts education community that schools will feel pressure to divert instructional time and resources toward tested areas of the curriculum, such as reading and math (Eisner 2000). This paper presents the results of studies on the impact of…