Ralph Pearson's Design Workshop was a center of progressive art education in New York. However, based on the correspondence courses that he developed, he was able to reach artists and art educators across the United States. Women artists and art educators dominated his courses and went on to play an important role in spreading progressive art…

In this article, Cindy and I explore our creative megapuppetry activism. As avocational advocates of social change in the state of Tennessee, we describe our lived experiences of educating adults about social issues in public spaces through protests, rallies, and parades. We use this description as a phenomenological autoethnography, investigating…

With millions of users, the social media site Pinterest compels the exchange of information about diverse topics. The do-it-yourself (DIY) content community has risen to prominence on Pinterest in recent years as users frequently consult the site to begin new projects. On Pinterest, DIY communities exchange tips and cocreate generative knowledge…

With the emergence of COVID-19, public interest in data visualization has surged. Data visualizations also, importantly, raised questions related to the data and the social context in which it occurred. Extending beyond but remaining connected to COVID-19, this context involved the racial and social inequality and economic disparities brought to…

Statement of Purpose and Method of Study: This non-experimental descriptive study compared the behavior and academic performance of students in grades sixth, seventh, and eighth enrolled at Urban Academy. This study compared the academic performance and behavior of students who were randomly assigned to a visual arts course with the academic…

As states are continuing to refine teacher evaluation models, there are opportunities for student learning in the arts to be documented and connected with teacher evaluation. The Tennessee Portfolio of Student Growth in the Arts ("the Portfolio") has provided a new perspective on documenting the relationship between student growth and…

Teachers often find themselves grouped into categories by administrators. Common labels for teacher groupings include grade level and subject matter, for example, 3rd-grade teacher or math teacher. Those teachers who serve multiple grade levels are usually also the only representatives for their subject within the school or the district. They…

This longitudinal case study explored one rural elementary art teacher's praxis for two years after she participated in professional development sessions on place-based education (PBE). These sessions focused specifically on PBE within the discipline of art for K-12 art educators in a geographically-large southeastern school district. Through…

As place is intimately tied to students' lived experiences, investigations into place can illuminate knowledge of students, schools, and communities and serve as inspiration for future place-based curricular endeavors. This study, through a dual-layered, arts-based educational research (ABER) design, offered student teachers the opportunity to…

John Dewey is known as the father of American experiential education. His views on building understanding in children through experiences in a correlated curriculum continue to influence educational practice to this day. His writings and experiments with experiential education also influenced music and arts education, most recently through the…

Over the last several years, Tennessee has rapidly expanded the use of student growth portfolio models for the purpose of teacher evaluation. Participation, both in the number of districts and teachers, has increased steadily since portfolios were first introduced during the 2011-12 school year, and we expect that participation will continue to…

This article highlights two separate museum partnerships involving "The Memphis Brooks Museum of Art" in Tennessee, with high school students and undergraduate art education majors from The University of Memphis. An overview of the partnership is offered along with recommendations for museum educators who would like to create…

This article examines arts participation as a context for youth to develop purpose. Two analyses were conducted of interviews with arts-involved youth to explore the relationship between their arts participation and purpose, which was defined as an "intention to accomplish something that is both meaningful to the self and contributes to the…

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,…

In this article, the authors describe VSA arts Tennessee's pilot arts in education project and the many good questions that have arisen from it. From VSA's inception in 2002, Lori Kissinger, Executive Director of VSA Tennessee, planned to find a way to partner with the Tennessee Department of Education based on other state models. VSA arts…