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…

This paper aims to inspire art educators to become advocates of change by dismantling oppressive structures and discriminatory practices that negatively impact the learning outcomes of students with dis/abilities in school. I reflect on my high school teaching experience in an inclusive art classroom in Ghana, where the curriculum, the human-built…

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…

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…

An immediate critical task of the arts education field is to resolve the polarities of low-quality integrative and overly marginalized discipline-specific approaches to teaching in schools. In pursuing this challenge, the author defines three teaching approaches--arts as craftsmanship, arts as play, and arts as inquiry--and calls for re-weighted…

"Art Teaching" speaks to a new generation of art teachers in a changing society and fresh art world. Comprehensive and up-to-date, it presents fundamental theories, principles, creative approaches, and resources for art teaching in elementary through middle-school. Key sections focus on how children make art, why they make art, the unique…

Craft education in Finland is, in many aspects, in a state of change. This concerns the independent position of craft as a school subject, the content of the compulsory craft courses containing textiles and technical work, the implementation of the new concept of a holistic craft process in the National Core Curriculum and so on. This bears…

Many children in the United States have little or no opportunity for formal arts instruction, and access to arts learning experiences remains a national challenge. In addition, the "quality" of arts learning opportunities that are available to young people is a serious concern. Understanding this second challenge--the challenge of creating and…

In the United States, the likelihood that an art teacher may teach a child with autism in an inclusive classroom is high, since one out of every 166 children in the country is diagnosed with autism. Federal law mandates that every child has the right to a free and appropriate education. Some children with autism have exceptional artistic abilities…

A checklist for the first year art teacher provides a means to set goals and select activities to improve instruction. The list addresses specific needs of the art teacher in nine areas. (JD)

Art does not live alone anymore and teachers should be prepared to take any concrete object in the environment, any curiosity of the child, any abstract idea, and lead the child to more than just self expressive drawing or the appreciation of a painting. Stresses the need for teachers to be able to seize opportunities for interdisciplinary…

Describes a high school art teacher's efforts to involve the school staff in cross-curricular instruction. After discussing how the teacher initiated the project, the article examines her research, and how she created and implemented a cross-curricular lesson plan. The appendix provides a sample lesson plan. (SM)

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,…

Because of aesthetic and technical demands, the industrial arts department is often the natural home for teaching film-making and film-study; a wide variety of resources are available to help the industrial arts teacher prepare himself well to be on the leading edge of the fastest-spreading curricular change. (AJ)