Whereas we acknowledge that drawing as process and product within the visual arts is complex and wide ranging, this study concentrates on testing the effectiveness of different pedagogical strategies for enhancing accuracy as a learning objective in drawing from observation. Based on our collective experience teaching observational drawing, we…

Bauhaus, the German arts and crafts college, is 100 years old this year. One of the revolutionary features of its pedagogical programme was the methodology of teaching about colour, elaborated by Johannes Itten and Paul Klee, leading Bauhaus masters, and further developed by their disciples, Joseph Albers and György (George) Kepes. This…

Whilst the faculties of literacy and numeracy are rightly recognised as worthy of pedagogical nurturing, this article champions a more venerable articulacy -- "visualcy" -- crucial to a healthy culture, arguing that the one domain of human inquiry which distinguishes the visual arts from other disciplines is surely that surrounding the…

The purpose of this paper is to show how activating perception, imagery and creativity facilitate the mastery of specific skills of visual arts education. Specifically, the study aimed at answering two questions: How can teachers enhance visual and creative expression?; and What criteria should be used to evaluate specific learning of visual arts…

Using works of art with young children is a perfect way to bridge the gap between art activities that are too open or too closed. Teachers of young children sometimes try to find a middle ground by allowing free painting time at an easel in addition to recipe-oriented activities such as putting together precut shapes to create a spider or an apple…

The ability To judge art requires the willingness to engage in critical thinking. A teacher can motivate his students to think in this manner by encouraging them, as a first step, to make any statement they wish about any work of art. (CK)

A program was described whose essential aim was to see things at once both more acutely (structure) and more broadly (context), to develop accurate and alternative means for communicating one's particular visual awareness, and in so doing discover processes involved, making them part of one's consciousness and applying them to "daily" situations,…

Visual literacy contains a vat of underlying understanding that fuses to the bones of students who actively pursue an art education. For everything visible, there is an invisible internal counterpart, and arts education provides vital depth that is currently being drained from Canadian culture. Visual literacy begins with the elements and…

Most schools teach the triadic color system, utilizing red, blue, and yellow as primary colors. Other systems, such as additive and subtractive color systems, Munsell's Color Notation System, and the Hering Opponent Color Theory, can broaden children's concepts and free them to better choose color in their own work. (IS)

The study with 34 gifted fifth-grade students found that a concrete sequential approach to developing visual literacy was more effective than an abstract visualization approach. Subjects either received guided visualization or direct instruction on such art concepts as shape, form, line, color, perspective, variety, and unity. (DB)

Investigates effects of a specific method of art instruction designed to increase the individual's ability to handle visual complexity and detail. Implications of findings for art education are also discussed. ( MG)

Research tells us we can learn complex tasks most easily if they are taught in "small sequential steps." This column is about the small sequential steps that unlocked the powers of digital photography, of portraiture, and of student creativity. The strategies and ideas described in this article came as a result of working with…

This cross-site, collaborative study focused on the instructional practices of three middle school art teachers from Arizona, Indiana, and New York. The researchers found similarities as well as differences among the teachers' strategies. At all three sites, emphasis was on curriculum related to their students' lives, developing technical skills,…

Likert-type rating scales were designed and used to help college students perceive, understand, and value the beauty and content of a piece of art. The subjects for the project were 100 college students enrolled in two art appreciation courses at Texas College. Their classification ranged from freshman to senior, with majors mainly in business,…