Youth benefit from involvement in the arts. At the same time, youth from families with low incomes are about half as likely to have access to arts instruction as youth from families with more resources, due to cuts in arts education which disproportionally affect schools in under-resourced communities that have been economically and socially…

In this research, I explore the potential of a material-led, embodied pedagogical approach to cultivate diverse modes of thinking, knowing and becoming within a pre-GCSE curriculum. Drawing from my experiences as both an artist and educator, I acknowledge the transformative power inherent in recognising the agency of all forms of matter, whether…

The purpose of this article is to explore integrating nontraditional classroom art materials and allowing students to make art for nonart spaces. Art programs must stimulate creativity, innovation, and imagination; provide tools the students can use; identify a context the students can experiment within (Chang, 2015; Gude, 2010); and offer the…

In this study, a practicing elementary art teacher enacts the multiple imaginations rooted in a/r/tography while examining the complex experiences of the teacher engaged in new curricular work. A/r/tography is framed as a type of phenomenology of practice--a living and in-process inquiry--which accepts the artist/researcher/teacher as points of…

On completing a digital methods course, one student told his teacher (the author) he did not know what to make of the class, and it had been a strange experience. This article reports on the curriculum that precipitated this and similar responses from preservice teachers and art students, conversations sparked by the incongruity of crossing…

In this article, I share how SQUAD Art Studio functions as an alternative, community-based, multisite Saturday art lab school for negotiating theory and practice with preservice art educators. SQUAD Art Studio educators' work confronts developmentalist images of children and preconceptions about young children and digital media. We revalue images…

The primary purpose of this paper is to identify the level of interest and knowledge about fine art materials (in selected works of art) that can influence pre-service primary school, chemistry, and fine art teachers' implementation of this content into their teaching. This knowledge can help them be aware of how a specific fine art material can…

This paper is based video data from a project called SALTMusic, for young children diagnosed as having "language delay." The interdisciplinary action-research project was co-delivered by speech and language therapists and early childhood arts practitioners, with children and their parents. Addressing a concern that children's lack of…

Objects of material culture have meaning. American flags, worktables, bulletin boards, interactive whiteboards, and large white-faced clocks signify "classroom" while color wheels, cupboards, cabinets, sinks, drawing supplies, and that particular scent that lingers after years of exposure to painting materials even more specifically…

Visual art teachers have often been the producers and directors of their own curricula, turning to various resources and objectives (local, state, and national) to form their own sets of standards. Common Core State Standards (CCSS) have provided new opportunities to integrate the arts into content-based curricula. The author, a classroom art…

The purpose of this study was to explore the anxiety and stress-reducing effects of drawing, using different drawing materials by promoting the development of student confidence. The drawing activities were designed to foster the exploration of identity, emotion, and sense of self, while encouraging the exploration of materials and mark making.…

Teaching artists often find themselves working in schools and communities that are new to them, whether these are situations close to home or farther afield. This issue of Four Questions highlights teaching artists who travel extensively as part of their teaching and artistic practices and bring their expertise, energy, and creativity to…

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…

There is a wonderful community of art educators connecting a once-isolated profession through blogging. Art educators around the world are sharing ideas and communicating with their peers through this amazing resource. In this article, the author describes the bottle cap mural at Tulip Grove Elementary School which was inspired by this exchange of…

In February 2010, the author arrived in the city of Sofia, Bulgaria, to teach mural painting at the National Academy of Art for his five-month Fulbright U.S. Scholarship Program lecturing award. He targeted Bulgaria as his host country in his 2009-2010 Fulbright U.S. Scholarship Program application because of its rich mural painting culture. He…