The study of ableism, often defined as disability discrimination and prejudice, is still nascent when compared with racism, homophobia, and sexism. Anti-ableism highlights the inequities of institutions, including public education, in the United States that are structured for the success of the White middle class and offer little hope and…

Drawing is a ubiquitous feature of early childhood education and classrooms. Its versatility makes it the kind of connective tissue that can integrate subject matter effortlessly; it is cost-efficient and does not require teachers to have specialized drawing skills in order for it to be effective. In other words, young children do not need to be…

Children "create stories in their drawings" and in the conversations and play that "surrounds and supplements" this drawing, are important. Indeed, children often engage with drawing as a way to narrate the questions and predicaments they find to be most pressing about themselves, about others, and about the changing world…

As part of a lengthy lower school (K-3) project, students investigated a vintage vending machine in their Art and Technology classes, created objects to vend, built their own vending machines, and discovered many wonderful things. The uniqueness of the vending machine captured students' imaginations and propelled the project's many steps, from…

In this article, Chelsea Odden describes a unit she designed for her advanced drawing course that integrated reflection strategies at various points, creating opportunities for students to reflect on their artmaking more often and in different ways (Hetland, Winner, Veenema, & Sheridan, 2013). Designing the unit with several different…

In this article, the authors discuss how incorporating traveling sketchbooks into their preservice art education and high school classrooms allowed students' situated knowledge to cross the boundaries of age and location. They begin with an overview of the evolution of sketchbook use in art education and the emergence of traveling sketchbooks.…

The anxieties of students, who may be confident achievers in other academic subjects, frequently stem from embarrassment about their struggles to draw realistic-looking images (refer to Pavlou, 2006). These apprehensions are exacerbated when students, perhaps due to having had limited exposure to varieties of artistic styles, have been led to…

New understandings of drawing, emerging from the conjunction of methods and models from cognitive science and arts-based research, have important practical applications for art education and beyond. This article gives a brief account of recent drawing and cognitive research and discusses the relevance for art teachers. Through their research, the…

This article explores the technology fluency of the preschool "digital native" and how this familiarity with technology influences learning in the classroom. The study involved introducing tablets as a tool for mark making and observing how students engaged with the technology creatively. This study considered the continuously rising…

In my classroom, a typical live demonstration often resulted in a crowd of fidgety, wiggling, middle school students standing on tiptoes and squeezing between others to see the easel. I struggled with finding ways to keep students engaged and focused when presenting new material. There were always a number of students who could not see the…

The demands of art projects in public schools may not fit with reality for many exceptional students because the project outcomes are often too specific (Henley, 1992). One strong motivator for students is looking at and discussing visual culture, involving all the images they see and all the visual experiences they have every day. This pedagogy…

This narrative inquiry describes how Arts-Based Research (ABR) allows for reflective visual journaling as a way to create unexpected understandings of one's self, students, and practice. Informal sketching is seen as an exploration of how drawing can generate and communicate unique insights. Using (ABR) allowed the author to experience the…

In this article, the author provides a brief synopsis of a study he conducted about the nature of children's drawing among first and second grade students. Laroche noticed that when first and second grade students sat at a table of four or had their individual desks grouped in fours, frequently the drawings from that group of students had similar…

A student's lack of belief in his or her own ability to do well in school can be a driving component of disengagement. In response, the author created art activities aimed to build students' confidence in their ability to learn, carry out a given art task, and identify a competence; such asset-based thinking approaches encourage students to reach…

"The Moving Figure" unit of study examines the relationship between observation, expression, and memory drawing techniques with second year college-level Illustration students. The goal of the exercises is to foster the development of a personal artistic voice in drawing by asking the students to directly place themselves in-situ within…