Summarizes a key finding from a four-year longitudinal study of intrinsic motivation for literacy learning. Finds that this motivation may diminish as students move from elementary to middle grades and may be linked to fewer opportunities for self-expression in their learning environments. (SR)

Maintains that encouraging the natural expression of creativity in young children is one of the most important tasks of music educators. Provides teaching suggestions and recommends instructional materials for helping young children develop creativity and improvisational techniques. (CFR)

Issues and recent events concerning censorship of the arts in the United States are examined, and the threat to artistic freedom posed by recent Supreme Court decisions is examined. Focus is on erosion of the actual or imminent harm requirement of the law and on the court's class-based approach to free speech. (MSE)

Shows how high school students used foam carpet padding to create forms for still-life drawing. Discusses learning to progress from simple-line drawing to a three-dimensional image. Identifies the drawing of shadows, and extreme light and dark values, as points that need to be emphasized repeatedly. (KM)

In the "new," more culturally diverse university, traditional discourse and argument will be challenged. This is already occurring in feminist theories of rhetoric, in non-Western forms of discourse, and in competing approaches to expression within a discipline. The validity of nontraditional modes of thought and style must be reconsidered. (MSE)

Gifted sixth grade students created kits to help their parents survive being the parents of gifted children. The kits contained items that served as vehicles for communicating parenting suggestions, compliments, needs for independence, appeals for love and guidance, unique student characteristics, and humor. (JDD)

Cancellation of the screening of a film, "The Last Temptation of Christ," at Furman University (South Carolina), then at a public library, and the debate over granting of credit to students for participating in a related discussion, are described. Faculty response and the aftermath of the controversy are also discussed. (MSE)

Education needs to move away from the existing product approach to the arts in classrooms. The article highlights some benefits of adopting a more unified approach to the arts and demonstrates how various theories of art might provide useful metaphors for teachers as they continue to explore educational questions. (SM)

Offers a discussion of audience representation versus self-representation in the study of writing. Discusses hypertext, Web pages, hub pages, and links. Probes how writers represent themselves in the way they structure links in hypertext documents on their Web sites. (CR)

Justifies examining still-life pictures of flowers to provide students with an opportunity to learn how one distinguishes between deeply artistic pictures full of emotion and pictures lacking this quality. Claims that students will develop their own artistic expression. Offers pictures by Diego Rivera, Watanabe Shiko, Consuelo Kanaga, and Rachel…

Presents a lesson plan that enabled students to create their own portraits in the style of Pablo Picasso; students utilized their initial collages/drawings, enlarging them with an overhead projector, to paint their final products using oil pastels. Indicates the students also learned about the different "periods" of Picasso's artistic…

Examines six graffiti artists in Toronto (Canada) who had formal art education at either the senior secondary or postsecondary level through tape-recorded interviews. Focuses on who they are, their views of the graffiti community in Toronto, the relationship between their artwork and education, and whom they each perceive as their audience. (CMK)

Children's drawings about reading and writing have unrealized potential for helping uncover the literacy narratives students bring to school and use to make sense of reading and writing. In this article, we highlight how one boy's drawing about literacy revealed his interpretation of his school's policy on violence as a topic of writing, which…

This paper draws upon evidence from a three-year longitudinal study of young children drawing across home, pre-school and school. The study shows how the belief systems of significant adults and more able peers/siblings impact upon the child's access to, use of and beliefs about drawing. Concentrating upon the children when in the Foundation Stage…

This article describes the pedagogy, practice and outcomes of a digital art program developed to enable high school and middle school students to become active participants in new forms of grassroots public media. Students and their teachers become producers and controllers of art-based videos and associated digital dialogue which is distributed…