The main concern of this article is to introduce the concept of the authentic gesture as a vital, largely self-determined expression of the child and to make it fruitful for art education. Because of the assumed educational importance of the concept, some hints to other learning areas will also be given. This should be done from a historical and…

This article focuses on the drawing practice of Andrew, a 4-year-old boy whose work the author encountered as part of a 12-month ethnographic study of children's drawing in a university-affiliated preschool classroom. The author approaches Andrew's drawing as more-than-human, as a mesh of materials, meanings, properties, and processes in which…

You may recognize her as the formidable Mariah Dillard in Netflix's Marvel series Luke Cage or from popular films like 12 Years a Slave. Alfre Woodard is an award-winning actor on stage and screen, but her work behind the scenes as an arts education advocate is equally notable. As a mentoring artist for the Kennedy Center's Turnaround Arts…

This essay describes how, as a scholar in gender diverse childhoods, I was collecting ethnographic data at the time of the 2016 election, and how this experience led to a series of jarring personal and professional transformations as a scholar writing for social justice. Not only did find that arts-based methods were particularly apt for capturing…

Working as an ethnographer with graffiti writers in Boston, the author has collected a range of materials, and experiences. Graffiti writing is a patently spatial practice, and existing scholarship across disciplines has emphasized this situated relationship between graffiti and the production of, and resistance to, contemporary, neoliberal…

This paper reviews two scholars' experiences teaching about the subjects of graffiti and street art to undergraduate students in U.S. universities. Using auto-ethnographical methods, the instructors review the challenges that they encountered and the various strategies they experimented with to overcome these difficulties. Issues discussed include…

This project was born with the intention of generating and recording the artistic expression of a group of inmates in module 6 of the Albolote (ES) penitentiary center through the creation of collaborative fanzines. A workshop was created, held once a week for 4 months. Through conceptual proposals and aesthetic tools, each participant in the…

The purpose of this theoretical article is to provide an extended definition of creativity that embraces potential cross-cultural variations in this construct. Creativity is defined as a 4-criterion construct, which includes attributes of novelty, utility, aesthetics, and authenticity. Novelty attribute stipulates that a creative work brings…

This paper presents a theorised classroom-based account discussing the author's interdisciplinary approach to engaging first-year teacher-education students in self-critical inquiry using creative writing techniques as an entry point into Arts-based three-dimensional storytelling. Via an interpretation of Lacan's "speaking…

Using the major format identified for successful prevention and intervention work, five "W" questions: what, why, whom, where, and who, plus one: how, this article first summarizes the current body art literature. Then, educational strategies specifically regarding the topic of tattoos and body piercing are presented for school nurses.…

The importance of critical reflection in higher education highlights the importance of creating rich learning opportunities for students. Expressive arts (e.g., poetry, drama) ignites such opportunity drawing from more than students' logical-cognitive understandings to include students' creative, multi-modal and experiential capacities. This paper…

The integration of expressive activities in play groups with preadolescents encourages them to reach more deeply into their own resources, enabling them to handle future challenges more effectively. Developmental and therapeutic rationale, along with research support, is given for the integration of creative activities into a humanistic play group…

Identity is a vital topic for discussion, exploration, and discovery in the art classroom. The artwork of Nikki S. Lee provides an opportunity for students to begin reformulating their notions about selfhood. The work of Nikki S. Lee is significant because it blends documentary, fashion, and staged and unstaged photography to allow viewers to…

This article is based on ethnographic work with two "crews" of young graffiti artists in southern Mexico City. The crews share certain characteristics with gangs or urban tribes, but more with "communities of practice": they live in the "figured world" of graffiti, a community of practice at the local and global…

David E. Kirkland turns our attention to the ways tattoos can represent "human" stories of literacy through the power of inked flesh, the self-portrait it creates, and the words and worlds that surround the body. The body, for Kirkland, is an important site of cultural production that represents the transformative, political, and personal terrains…