Three independently developed educational leadership courses used the arts to depart from lecture and passive learning, prime students to solve school problems creatively, and build social justice awareness. Photo captioning was used to promote intrapersonal leadership development around professional identity formation and social justice awareness…

This article describes how kindergarten students represent their understanding of mathematical knowledge. The study examines the students' use of oral expressions, drawings, written language, and gestures when communicating mathematically with their classmates and teacher.

What is childhood like today? Is it a world fraught with endless joy, fun, and games, or are children experiencing a much different reality? A child's social interactions can be a source of great enjoyment and are essential to early development. Conversely, young children routinely experience tension, ambiguity, and conflict as they navigate the…

A research study conducted in an urban district middle school setting applies cognitive science principles to science vocabulary. Within the context of a personal story told by the lead investigator, the results of the study are shared and suggest that more active, engaging strategies with complex core curriculum may improve retention and…

To evaluate the effectiveness of mindfulness-based structured versus unstructured coloring on test anxiety, 52 participants (53.8% female; M[subscript age] = 10.92 years, SD = 0.82) were randomly assigned to either a structured mandala (n = 26) or free coloring condition (n = 26), and completed a standardized anxiety measure to assess anxiety…

Research exploring urban youths' value orientations toward the human-nature relationship was conducted with 59 students from a school in Minneapolis, Minnesota (USA) and 51 students from a school in Guangzhou, Guangdong (China). Quantitative findings suggest that the majority of participants in both groups shared a similar value orientation,…

This study explored how using graphic novel features in the writing process influenced the motivation and engagement of fifth grade boys to write. Participants used graphica features to visually draft their narrative essays before crafting their final writing piece. During the drafting process, students were encouraged to engage in the revision…

STEM disciplinary language is a necessary component for STEM success. It can be developed through experiences and attention to the development of STEM activities that are rich in language and can be acquired through practical experiences and systematic practice. Secondary students participated in an informal STEM summer camp where they learned to…

This activity began with a picture book, Nurit Karlin's "Fat Cat On a Mat" (HarperCollins; 1998). The author and her students started their project with a 5-inch circular template for the head of their cats. They reviewed shapes as they drew the head and then added the ears and nose, which were triangles. Details to the face were added when…

This study examined social perceptions among 191 Arab and Jewish children who live in mixed neighborhoods in Israel. Human Figure Drawing assessment was used to examine the children's social perceptions. The drawings that the Jewish Israeli children created portrayed Arabs as the enemy, whereas the Arab Israeli children expressed a more positive…

The fear of embarrassment in middle- and high-school students often inhibits their attempts at drawing realistically. Many find it difficult to reproduce what they see accurately, and as a result, complain, act out or refuse to do the task in order to save face. In this article, the author describes a lesson that does three things: (1) it attempts…

In this article, the author describes a project which came about from listening to some of her students talk about the awful food they had at lunch. Each one of them was engaged and eager to talk about his or her experience. In this project, students recreate their experiences through sculpture. (Contains 1 online resource.)

James Rosenquist's giant Pop-art panels included realistic renderings of well-known contemporary foods and objects, juxtaposed with famous people in the news--largely from the 1960s, '70s and '80s--and really serve as visual time capsules. In this article, eighth-graders focus on the style of James Rosenquist to create their own Pop-art panel that…

The purpose of two experiments was to contrast instructions to generate drawings with two text-focused strategies--main idea selection (Exp. 1) and summarization (Exp. 2)--and to examine whether these strategies could help students learn from a chemistry science text. Both experiments followed a 2 x 2 design, with drawing strategy instructions…

Capturing the nature of students' mental representations and how they change with learning is a primary goal in science education research. This can be challenging in spatially intense domains, such as geoscience, architecture, and engineering. In this research, we test whether sketching can be used to gauge level of expertise in geoscience,…