This article recounts how during COVID-19, the author's fine arts class was forced into an online mode. The old class design, which was based on physical classrooms and physical locations, was now unsuitable for online teaching. With Malaysian education's emphasis on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, and art dismissed as a minor…

Given the unavoidable prevalence of death in the world, the author writes that she finds it interesting that teachers devote little if any class time to the topic of grief. Teachers often avoid talking about recent losses, cloak death in metaphors and euphemisms, and feel discomfort around grieving students. Yet death still comes to classrooms.…

This article articulates how a community-based art education (CBAE)-driven theoretical framework can inform and inspire leaders in the field who are in a position to rethink or revitalize the curriculum of an art + design education department. While this framework was specifically developed to invigorate the program the author currently oversees…

The authors have a lot in common. They are white, cis women, former K-12 art teachers, and recent doctoral graduates. They both entered their first classrooms with good intentions to create lessons reflecting diverse students. Yet, after a few years of teaching, they developed a sinking feeling in the pit of their stomachs. They developed a…

Contemporary art educators design artmaking experiences around questions, ideas, and themes to help engage students in personally relevant meaning-making (Anderson & Milbrandt, 2005; Gude, 2004, 2013; Walker, 2001). Preservice art teachers are trained to plan lessons and curriculum to move beyond the so-called school art style (Efland, 1976;…

Despite vital professional development support through the National Art Education Association's Data Visualization Working Group and other scholars' engagement with the topic in the literature, pedagogical literature that connects contemporary data visualization methods to art teaching practices is limited. While acknowledging that many of us have…

The study of ableism, often defined as disability discrimination and prejudice, is still nascent when compared with racism, homophobia, and sexism. Anti-ableism highlights the inequities of institutions, including public education, in the United States that are structured for the success of the White middle class and offer little hope and…

Teachers spend hours each week scouring the internet for lesson ideas. Hours of scrolling, clicking on links, and typing keywords into search bars on Pinterest, Facebook, and their favorite blogs. They do not walk through library stacks to do their research, and books are no longer the primary reference point. Most art teachers find the…

Drawing is a ubiquitous feature of early childhood education and classrooms. Its versatility makes it the kind of connective tissue that can integrate subject matter effortlessly; it is cost-efficient and does not require teachers to have specialized drawing skills in order for it to be effective. In other words, young children do not need to be…

With the emergence of COVID-19, public interest in data visualization has surged. Data visualizations also, importantly, raised questions related to the data and the social context in which it occurred. Extending beyond but remaining connected to COVID-19, this context involved the racial and social inequality and economic disparities brought to…

This article describes a collaboration between the "Rubin Center" and my "Methods of Teaching Art" class and explores how constructivist practices support democratic citizenship and idea-based art education curriculum building. The collaboration came about as a revived attempt to expand the performance-based and experiential…

This article explores collaborative social justice art education, community building, and activism through teacher workshops that utilized contemporary art to generate curriculum and dialogue. It models one possibility for professional development that casts teachers as learners in a supportive yet critical environment. It draws on critical…

This article describes findings from two surveys to determine how the modes of learning, processes of making, and aesthetic products made by youth in extracurricular contexts compared or contrasted with learning and making in school-based art education programs. Survey respondents included over 400 adolescents and young adults (ages 14-21) who…

In "Teaching Critical Thinking," bell hooks (2010) addresses education as the practice of freedom by explaining that we use "our intellect and our imaginations to forge new and liberatory ways of knowing, thinking, and being, to work for change" (p. 170). Speaking to the arts, Maxine Greene (1995) said that "of all our…

The author writes this article to remind art educators of the importance of crafts in art education. They have noticed that scant attention is given to crafts in contemporary art education in the United States. Through this article, the author would like to reflect on why crafts are essential in art education by considering their role in…