In the 21st century, along with fine arts, media art has become an important genre for young children. Undoubtedly, early visual arts give children a powerful language with which to express themselves aesthetically, cognitively and creatively through the use of symbolic representations. However, digital play remains a controversial issue in early…

Creative youth development (CYD) is a dynamic area of community arts education that successfully bridges youth development and arts education. CYD is an intentional, holistic practice that combines hands-on artmaking and skill building in the arts with development of life skills to support young people in successfully participating in adolescence…

In this article, the authors discuss mixed-media projects done with elementary students in a summer art camp and preservice elementary teachers taking Visual Arts in the Elementary Classroom, illustrating their consideration of how stories carry the curricular potential to bring students' out-of-school experiences into the classroom. In order…

Most students attend summer school not because it's their idea of a good time, but because they need to in order to advance to the next grade. To many students--and even some teachers--summer school feels more like punishment than an opportunity to learn and explore. In July 2010, working with a nonprofit organization called Big Thought, officials…

Just as the economic downturn and narrowing of the curriculum have prompted school districts to cut art classes, a nonprofit organization in Baltimore gives disadvantaged youth the opportunity to create art, earn a stipend, and learn valuable job skills. Each summer, Art with a Heart hires about 40 young people to make marketable art--tables and…

This paper examines the impact of two approaches to teacher professional development in arts integration--a summer institute model and a model combining the summer institute with instructional coaching. In an experimental design, the intervention trained third and fourth grade teachers to integrate visual arts and theater into reading curriculum.…

A well-established principle in the literature on learning, which maintains that variability of practice enhances long-term retention, served as the foundation of a summer program intended to ameliorate reading skills in incoming freshmen. During a 4-week period, students received reading instruction in the context of four areas: humanities,…

In this article, the author describes the Mississippi University for Women's studio art course that teaches students the ins and outs of mural making from inception and design to application of the final glaze. While students in other courses may spend the semester working toward a final exam or paper, this four-and-a-half-week summer course…

"Letras y Arte: Literacy and Art" is a 3-week summer course at Regis University in Denver, Colorado, offering a social justice approach to art education. In this article, the authors outline the background of "Letras y Arte," contextualize the program in art education, and explain three strategies for engaging students: (1)…

Letras y Arte: Literacy and Art, is a summer course that pairs college students and children from a Latino neighborhood for literacy and art learning. Started five years ago, Letras y Arte provides opportunities in four areas: (1) literacy opportunities that foster distinctive identities and voice; (2) immersion in a broad view of literacy that…

The literature indicates that the demand for program evaluations is likely to increase and that those evaluations will be conducted across diverse disciplines. Preparation of discipline-specific evaluators may present challenges. This study reviews the experiences of a group of arts educators who participated in a discipline-specific evaluation…

Recent research indicates that the taught curriculum in art and design secondary school education pays scant attention to meaning-making in visual art. This article explores possibilities for teaching interpretation through a report on an action-research project based on Tate Modern's Summer Institute for Teachers. In doing so it argues for the…