With its ambient, interesting and dynamic use of materials, alternative views of materials and objects, with its playfulness and affecting different senses contemporary fine art can be very interesting for art-educational work. Due to its complexity, however, it suffers from misunderstanding, retreat, and last but not least also fears both among…

This paper highlights an investigation of how middle school students responded to a theatre performance designed to portray science as a humanistic and relatable endeavour that youth -- similar to the youth in the audience -- engage in during their everyday lives. The play included in this study was generated as a part of a design research project…

This Teaching and Learning Research Initiative (TLRI) project was a 2-year exploratory study focusing on differentiating the curriculum in response to individual learner differences. The project was designed to explore learning and teaching of differentiated scientific content through observational processes and the expression of that learning…

Art teachers often get stuck teaching students about "classical" artists who lived over 500 years ago. As art enthusiasts, teachers may be very interested in their importance, but children might be wondering why they have to learn about yet another dead artist. In this article, the author describes how her eighth-grade art students created their…

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 ecological realities of many communities are desperate but not determined. As teachers inevitably encounter these realities in their communities, they can respond by activating students' imaginations to conceive of better alternatives. Greene (1995) outlined how the imagination has the power to envision alternative realities and better…

For centuries people from around the world have celebrated storytelling and puppetry for their educational and social functions. In the comprehensive curriculum, storytelling combined with puppet performances enriches the classroom experience by providing students with opportunities to engage in open dialogue, creativity, and structured play.…

This book details the Guggenheim Museum's classroom-tested, inquiry-based approach to learning. This user-friendly guide provides teachers (grades 2-8) with strategies and resources for investigating art to enhance student learning across the curriculum. "For the classroom teacher", Art Investigation provides an exciting way to study contemporary…

Writing about the teaching artist practice should mean writing about art making. As both teacher and artist, the authors are required to be cognizant of their own art-making processes, both how it works and why it is important to them, in order to make this process visible to their students. They also need the same skills to write about how and…

This article discusses Al Souza's "Orlando City Maps," which was created not by adding colored ink to paper, but by cutting the printed paper away. Seven layers of pages are stacked upon one another and, except for the intact bottom layer, oval-shaped holes are cut through each page to reveal the layers below. When designing "Orlando City Maps,"…

This section is full of stories from teaching artists working to clarify what needs to change within their practices and moving toward solutions--whether it's supporting a classroom of learners in new and unexpected ways, reassessing one's approach in the classroom, shepherding an individual child toward success, or professionalizing an entire…

Stories in the "ALT/Space" section of each issue of "Teaching Artist Journal" illustrate and document a wide variety of topics surrounding the work of teaching artists while simultaneously revealing some larger truths about what it means to be an artist who teaches. This particular section focuses on the process and realities…

Transforming Education Through the Arts and Media (TEAM) is an arts integration program based on the concept of the 21st century transliterate learner who acquires knowledge and interacts across a range of tools, platforms, and media. Over a period of four years, TEAM was implemented in seventh- and eighth-grade classrooms by the Center for…

The last two sections (EJ1039315 and EJ1039319) presented stories about specific moments or lessons. Also, situations infused with complexity where the writers had to toggle back and forth between providing the larger context and the details that support readers' understanding of that big picture were presented. In this section each story is…

This study examined the influence of gender, socioeconomic status, and race/ethnicity on the career aspirations of over 22,000 8th and 10th grade youth. The top five occupations identified by youth as aspirations included artist, lawyer, musician, FBI agent, and actor/actress. Top occupations were also reported for each gender x socioeconomic…