Civic engagement is not just concerned with identifying societal and political structures. It is also concerned with how young people understand themselves as civic agents capable of starting and sustaining change. Seeing students as change makers is a civically engaged goal supported by literature surrounding the aims of art education in K-12…

The self-portrait is a reflection of the personality in a visual, physical sense, as a concrete form, a summary of the external characteristics of the artist, but also in a psychological sense, when the self-portrait becomes a mediator of communication with the self, a medium of self-investigation. In this way, the self-portrait exists as a means…

In this article, the author writes about her early years as an elementary school art teacher. In her early years, students received a formalist, discipline based art education. Every lesson began with students, pK-3, viewing a thoughtfully selected collection of paintings created by a famous artist. After viewing this carefully curated selection…

The main aim of the current research was to fill the absence of STEAM activities for primary school students in Turkey. Accordingly, a study in which STEAM activities were implemented was conducted with the primary school students. There were four activities during STEAM implementation. The activities were these: Students recognized circuit…

Altruism is recognized as "a cultural behavior, well beyond instinctive behavior, and even beyond adaptive social behaviors with respect to evolutionary processes" (Wilson, 1998, p. 29) Yet, if artmaking is a cultural behavior it is one that does not appear at first "to contribute to the survival of the species" (Wilson, 1998,…

The author is always on the lookout for new ideas, and found one with her state's new "grade-level expectations" in art. She had printed the expectations from the state department and bound them in book form for herself and other art teachers in her district. When the author was flipping through the booklet thinking, two things caught her eye:…

This article describes an art activity on self-portraiture inspired by artist Tim Hawkinson. Hawkinson created a sculpture titled "Emoter" in which his face, moved by motors, twisted and contorted based on random signals from a TV. This art activity incorporates technology into the art room, brings the work of practicing artists alive, and is a…

This article reports on a community activist arts-based media production research project. Project TEEN Mirrors Of Motherhood (M.O.M.), was designed by the authors, who are art educators and arts-based researchers, in collaboration with Elizabeth House, a Montreal community organization dedicated to meeting the needs of pregnant teenagers and…

The author has always loved teaching a lesson on self-portraits to her eighth-grade students. Portraits raise the bar and, when they are successful, convince the students that they really can draw. Each year they explore the basic concepts of portraiture, but use different media, sizes and styles. The author likes to interject art history and…

Animals have always been close to the heart of humankind. They appear in the earliest imagery as the very first subjects of art. Household pets are a fixture for many a family. This is true in art as well. In shifting the balance away from animals as pure symbols, the Impressionists identified them as members of the household. One of the most…

An autobiographical portrait is an artistic representation that shows not only a person's physical characteristics, but also his or her personality, knowledge, history, and/or lived experiences. Understanding student autobiographical portraits not only helps art teachers gain insight into their students' prior knowledge of and experiences with…

"Letras y Arte: Literacy and Art" is a 3-week summer course at Regis University in Denver, Colorado, offering a social justice approach to art education. In this article, the authors outline the background of "Letras y Arte," contextualize the program in art education, and explain three strategies for engaging students: (1)…

This article presents the idea behind Projected Identities, an art activity wherein students fuse art-making processes and digital image manipulations in a series of exploratory artistic self-examinations. At some point in every person's life they've been told something hard to forget. Students might, for example, translate phrases like, "Good…

In this article, the author states that she has always loved self portraits but most teenagers do not enjoy looking too closely at their own faces in an effort to replicate them. Thanks to a new digital camera, she was able to use this new technology to inspire students to take a closer look at their inner image. Prior to the self-portrait…

This lesson resource focuses on the portrait in a three-dimensional art technique. Materials needed include ceramic clay and a pear as armature for the sculpted head. Exemplars of both two and three-dimensional portraits are to be used as inspiration and motivation for personal expression of the human form. This plan includes lesson goals and…