Explore how art education can contribute to a more just and sustainable planet. Making the case that ecopedagogy and eco-art can transform and enrich art education, Bertling introduces these two burgeoning movements and then outlines how they can be infused into K-12 art education. Seven innovative curricular strands are presented to help art…

Discover how the crisis of a global pandemic allowed educators to improve learning across the pre-K-adult pipeline. While acknowledging the scale of loss and difficulty the COVID pandemic engendered within the field of education, this book focuses on how sudden and forced changes to teaching and learning created "Pandemic Positives,"…

This research investigates the significance of creative freedom and self-expression through the visual analysis of artworks produced in a workshop under the theme 'Visual Literacy'. This multi-layered qualitative study presents the findings from a participatory arts-based research approach that elicits students' creative expression through their…

This full-color resource will help educators teach about current art and integrate its philosophy and methods into the K-12 classroom. The authors provide a framework that looks at art through the lens of nine themes--everyday life, work, power, earth, space and place, self and others, change and time, inheritance, and visual culture--highlighting…

These stories from art educators highlight how art and visual culture can bridge learning with lived experience. Written "by" and "for" art educators from all backgrounds and contexts, this volume offers guidance for expanding students' opportunities to critically examine current events, histories, and cultural assumptions in…

While it is still disputed in some academic traditions, the potentials of artistic practice as research and arts-based research have demonstrated that creative engagement with materials, processes and ideas lead to holistic insights that move well beyond the goals of objective research and its quest for solid answers. The article retraces our…

This paper describes the findings of an exploratory study for a pilot program in teacher education that employs contemporary Indigenous art as a forum for increasing and enriching teacher confidence and agency in the meaningful inclusion of Indigenous content across K-12 curriculum. Building on a model of transformative education through dialogue,…

Assessment in art is notoriously difficult and is probably best approached with skepticism. Artistry is notoriously difficult to assess. Yet measures of student learning in art are needed for both advocacy and art education policy. Assessments, particularly large-scale assessments, influence funding and educational policy at all levels. This…

As we consider art education for future generations, we envision a change in focus from the "product," or artwork, to the artistic "process"--the thinking behind the artwork. How can we be so sure this shift of priorities is afoot? Indicators in general education point to thinking dispositions as the goal of learning (Costa…

Against the backdrop of objective and subjective violence, two contemporary artworks are interpreted through theories of the Other. Zhu Yu's "Eating People" (2000) is considered through Lacanian psychoanalytic theory and, in particular, through an Ethics of the Real. Teemu Mäki's "My Way, a Work in Progress" (1995) is…

The study examines the use of waste materials as instructional resources in teaching and learning Art lessons. Primary, Junior and Senior High School Art teachers in Ghana mostly teach their lessons without instructional resources because the government is not able to provide materials to create the needed resources. The study therefore explored…

Media arts has been familiar to many through television, film, and digital graphics, and often appears as an extension of the four traditional arts disciplines: music, arts, theatre, and dance. As media arts continues to acquire its own unique identity, particularly through technological means, it has been included as a stand-alone discipline in…

The negative emotional affects of standardized teaching and learning abound in public schools and work to create a melancholic, shared reality for teachers and students. The authors argue that teachers and students must acknowledge this melancholy and pursue shared inquiry around those emotions in order to help bring about understanding and the…

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 white paper describes instructional approaches that apply to successful teaching with the Smithsonian "Learning Lab." After defining its use of terms such as "deeper learning" and "authentic resources" the authors review the research basis of three broad approaches that support integrating digital resources into…