Animation is one of the last lessons that come to mind when thinking of kindergarten art. The necessary understanding of sequencing, attention to small, often detailed drawings, and the use of technology all seem more suitable to upper elementary. With today's emphasis on condensing and integrating curriculum, consider developing animation lessons…

This lesson teaches students that a drawing does not have to be realistic to be a valued piece of art. It's fun to have students look at abstracts and ask them what they think they see. As they excitedly yell out "It's a bird," "It's a flower," "Huh? I don't see that!" they begin to realize the beauty of an abstract. It can be so many things to so…

In this article, the author describes how her third-grade art students made linear face drawings. Inspired by Pablo Picasso, an artist who tried to maintain the quality of child-like art, the students invented their own abstract line faces true to Picasso's artistic intentions. (Contains 1 online resource.)

Even long before children are able to verbalize which careers may be interesting to them, they collect and store ideas about scientists. For these reasons, asking children to draw a scientist has become an accepted method to provide a glimpse into how children represent and identify with those in the science fields. Years later, these…

A growing number of schools are embracing new mobile technologies, such as iPads, with little (or no) prior empirical proof of their usability. We investigated whether iPads, which allow children to write and draw with their fingers without the need of a pen, are relevant devices for drawing activities at elementary school. A within-participants…

In design studio, sketching or visual thinking is part of processes that assist students to achieve final design solutions. At Queensland University of Technology's (QUT's) First and Third Year industrial design studio classes we engage in a variety of teaching pedagogies from which we identify "Concept Bombs" as instrumental in the…

In this paper we focus on how South African students' ideas about the human body are constituted in their descriptions of three different scenarios involving the pathway of a sandwich, a painkiller and a glass of water through the body. In particular, we have studied the way in which the students transferred ideas between the sandwich and the…

The research reported in this article explored in 2013 the classroom fear of two samples of UK primary school pupils (aged 7-8 and also 10-11 years old). The investigation was approached within a framework of critical theory, in which emancipatory aims were embraced. The authoritarian nature of most classrooms necessitates that teachers control…

Developing a professional teacher identity can be complex as pre-service teachers engage with a process informed by their previous experiences of teachers and teaching, by learning in their pre-service course, by field placements, and by societal expectations. Using drawing as the method for gathering data, pre-service teachers in an Australian…

Exploratory factor analysis was used to identify models underlying drawings of the greenhouse effect made by over 200 entering university freshmen. Initial content analysis allowed deconstruction of drawings into salient features, with grouping of these features via factor analysis. A resulting 4-factor solution explains 62% of the data variance,…

Students with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) have unique educational needs. The concrete representational abstract (CRA) instructional sequence has been shown effective in teaching students with mathematical difficulties. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of the CRA sequence in teaching students with ASD. A multiple baseline…

This article documents a collaborative project involving preservice early childhood education students' development of inquiry-based learning experiences alongside kindergarten students within a science methods course. To document this project, I utilized a multiple methods approach and data included classroom observations, transcripts from lesson…

As part of a 3-year longitudinal study, 136 sixth-grade students completed an engineering-based problem on earthquakes involving integrated STEM learning. Students employed engineering design processes and STEM disciplinary knowledge to plan, sketch, then construct a building designed to withstand earthquake damage, taking into account a number of…

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…

This 2-year collaborative research project focused on young children's working theories about identity, language, and culture, how early childhood teachers can nurture and encourage this learning, and how this in turn impacts on children's participation in early childhood education (ECE) communities. The project builds on a previous Teaching and…