Students are often required to create work in a vacuum, handing in papers to an inauthentic audience for the purpose of receiving a grade. As a result, students often neglect to consider the effects that their work can have on others. In this article, the author highlights an art project from her middle school in Kings Park, New York, that…

Environmental art education is growing in popularity in college and university programs as the arts begin to play a more prominent role in environmental and sustainability education. As this emerging field of study is an interdisciplinary endeavor that draws from the more established fields of visual art education and environmental education,…

Conducted collaboratively by an art educator and a literacy educator, this qualitative study focused on pre-service art educators' perspectives on integrating literacy in their teaching of art as they took a required course on literacy across the curriculum. Data included interviews, questionnaires, course assignments, and field notes from class…

This collaborative action research study of pedagogy examines an introductory high school visual arts curriculum that includes artworks pertinent to labor studies, and their impact on students' understanding of the power of art for social commentary. Urban students with multicultural backgrounds study social realism as an historical artistic…

Can art and science find a happy home in the same unit? We think the answer is yes, if the central problem interests the students and allows them to try out multiple abilities. The sixth-grade unit described in this article, which we called "The Dragon Project," grew mainly from two roots, a study of ancient China and a later probe into…

Genuine artistic activity in any medium provides a lens through which to examine the world as well as to express a reaction to it. Opening a wide variety of subjects to artistic explorations also opens the door of learning, specially to students with varied levels of ability. It was with these thoughts in mind that the two authors met to revise a…