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…

This study explored the perceptions of ten community college visual arts faculty in five different community college settings with regard to the theory and practice disjunctures they were experiencing in their roles as instructors teaching foundational level courses within visual arts programs. The study illuminated the responses of community…

This arts-based research inquiry applies innovative approaches to fostering "creativity" in pre-service primary art teachers during their tertiary training. The main research question investigates how to foster "creativity" in pre-service primary art teachers so they can better mentor the children they teach. I argue that…

Quality and meaningful Visual Art education provides opportunities for learning and holistic development to all children at school. Research projects in this regard highlight the problems that teachers experience in this field. The contribution of higher education in the training of educators to provide for teachers in Visual Art education is…

This paper examines the use of creative arts in school counseling. There is a specific focus on the use of visual arts, particularly such methods as drawing and painting. Existing literature, which supports the use of art in school counseling, provides the paper's rationale. In addition, the paper explores different art techniques that school…

The "Arts Achieve: Impacting Student Success in the Arts" project involves a partnership between the New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE) and five of the city's premier arts organizations. "Arts Achieve" provides intensive and targeted professional development to arts teachers over a three-year period. The goal of the…

The author could have chosen any ancient symbolic language, such as Egyptian or Pre-Columbian, but being from Denmark, she developed a unit that would introduce American students to artwork familiar to northern Europeans. Looking at examples of ancient art from Denmark and Sweden, students were to think about the use of symbols in ancient time and…

The print has a long-standing tradition of carrying a political message. This can be seen in the works of artists from the German Expressionists, like Kathe Kollwitz and Emil Nolde, to Mexican printmakers like Jose Posada and Leopoldo Mendez. Whether it was during the Mexican Revolution of 1910, the War in Iraq, or the 2008 presidential election,…

Studio-based research is rich with possibilities for contributing to the body of knowledge concerning creative processes, primarily because it has at its core the "making" disciplines. Nonetheless, for those who teach graduate research courses, this relative new mode of research can be challenging. In this article, the author discusses…

In this article, the author shares the success of her fun and engaging eco-art project for elementary students. Not only did she want to provide students with an engaging project, she also wanted to raise awareness surrounding several key issues, including changes in natural habitats, the sustainable balance of humans and nature, and our role as…

The rain forest murals in the author's school began as a request from her principal to have students decorate the cafeteria with their own paintings. She decided to brainstorm ideas with her eighth-grade students. Taking into consideration the architectural space and the environmental concerns they wanted to convey, students chose the rain forest…

The experience of interest is central to intrinsic motivation for learning, so it is important to understand the nature of interest and its sources. Individual differences in fluid intelligence (Gf) predict finding things more interesting, but it is possible that this effect is merely due to the overlap of Gf with openness to experience, a strong…

Globally, early years policies and documents have set out aspirational outcomes and benefits for children, their families and the wider society. These policies have emphasised the place of early childhood provision within the wider global agenda, by tackling inequality and disadvantage early on in children's lives. However, these strategies have…

The arts disciplines (visual arts, music, theatre, and dance) merit and require formal study. Policy makers should support studies in the arts as core disciplines, as specified in the "Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA)," the federal legislation that sets policy and appropriations for public education. The arts merit and…

Artists today draw on a range of sources--newspapers, magazines, photographs, film, audio, and of course the Internet--to create artworks that serve as visual "texts" of a specific place and moment in time. Using artworks as sources and understanding how to decode them in the service of "drilling down" into difficult topics can create powerful…