The problem-based learning (PBL) approach was implemented as a treatment for higher education visual arts students over one semester to examine its effect on the creative thinking and critical thinking disposition of these students. PBL had a significant effect on creative thinking, but critical thinking disposition was affected to a lesser…

The purpose of this qualitative case study was to examine how preservice teachers constructed meaning of the disciplinary literacies instructional practices in visual arts. Using social constructivism and social constructionism lenses, we combined directed content analysis and the writing process as analytical tools to understand our data. Five…

Although spirituality has gained more attention from postsecondary higher education leaders as a conceptual channel for meaning making, little is understood about student perspectives and definitions of spirituality. These studies explored student narratives on spirituality and leadership at a nonfaith based public institution in Southern…

In this brief report, students were grouped into three distinct categories for analysis, based on patterns that emerged in arts participation during high school, which we named spartans, explorers, and deep divers. The patterns in arts participation represent not just the students, but also the opportunities and barriers they encountered. We found…

Two mural projects in Brunei offer insight into the specific and universal aspects of public art education and community art making. This article describes how the author used his initiative and experience as a muralist to plan and implement two community art research projects in Bandar Seri Begwan, the capital of Brunei Darussalam. A premise of…

Criticality is an important means to negotiate uncertainty, which has become a characteristic of teaching and learning conditions in postmodern times. This paper draws from an empirical comparative case study conducted in the uncertain discipline of fine art visual practice, where critical judgement and meta-cognition are important for…

Background: The Foundation Phase in education provides the primary building blocks for children's foundation and development. From personal experiences as educators, we observed that young learners who work together in small groups during art activities gain selfconfidence faster than indecisive learners who work alone. Indecisive learners become…

Due to the rapid development and advancement within various fields, the scope of knowledge is expanding at a staggering pace. In modern education, experts and teachers makes efforts to eliminate fragmentation of the school curriculum and to modernize the manner of teaching thus optimizing the learning process. In planning art lessons, teachers…

As defined by the Kennedy Center, arts integration is "an approach to teaching in which students construct and demonstrate understanding through an art form. Students engage in a creative process which connects an art form and another subject area and meets evolving objectives in both" (Silverstein & Layne, 2010). In arts integrated…

This article focuses on the emotions of 13 and 14 year-old students related to visual art education activities. Our aim is to understand the interference of the students' emotions with the processes of the creation and reception of their own pictures, as well as their characteristics in an art education context. The article adopts a Vygotskian…

This invited essay of "To Improve the Academy's" special feature on Creative Scholarship presents one example of creative scholarship in educational development as a forward to other forms and approaches in the special feature. This example, the Teaching and Learning Project, merges documentary and art photography traditions with faculty…

Intergenerational community members engage in making a mural to create a visual identity and document a legacy of care and hope.

In this article, I investigate the mural-making experience of Mabel Spofford, an early 20th-century art educator from Massachusetts. Spofford designed and created a mural titled "Gloucester and the Friendly Sea" while attending a Pennsylvania State University Summer Arts Institute course with Viktor Lowenfeld in 1947. By placing archival…

Recent changes in art teacher certification requirements in New York, the state in which I teach, have prompted me to reconsider relationships between language, contemporary art, and art education. New York is participating in the educational Teacher Performance Assessment (edTPA), a national version of the Performance Assessment for California…

Creative imagination is a psychic process of creating a new original image, idea or art work based on the acquired knowledge, skills, and abilities as well as on the experience of creative activity. The best of all primary school learners' creative imagination develops at the lessons of visual art, aimed at teaching them to understand what is…