Describes a lesson for high school students in which they created tombstones from clay because of the distinctive surface quality as well as sculptural bas-relief effects involved in mortuary art. States that in order to motivate the class, crayon rubbings from actual headstones were taken and visuals from cemeteries were shown. (CMK)

Argues that arts education makes it possible for students to imagine themselves out of their current identities, describing how a middle school theater arts program supported female students' positive identities. Observation and interview data indicated that tools gained in the program transformed girls' attitudes toward education and other…

The Federation of Worker Writers and Community Publishers was set up in 1976 by a number of independent writing and publishing groups to support and develop the writing of working class and other marginalized people. Focusing on the development of individuals within a collective organization over the previous three decades provides important…

Relationships between the educational process, society, and the individual are explored through an examination of the nature of truth and the sources of knowledge for each of these elements. A utilitarian model of education is explored with regard to the tensions between individual perception and self expression and the needs and constraints of…

This paper represents a conversation between a high school science teacher and a university researcher as they found common ground in the theory and experiences of designing powerful learning experiences. The teacher describes an instructional unit in which students designed a complex, interactive display showing what life may have been like…

This study is the second in a series examining the relationship between conducting and ensemble performance. The purpose was to further examine the associations among conductor, ensemble performance expressivity, and festival ratings. Participants were asked to rate the expressivity of video-only conducting and parallel audio-only excerpts from a…

This article juxtaposes Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of sense perception and practitioner research as well as demonstrating their potential to become integrated into powerful educational research and practice. The paper elaborates on Merleau-Ponty's metaphor of "chiasm", extends its symbolic meaning to practitioner research and illustrates its…

Early thinking in the modern era often regarded creativity as a somewhat asocial means of individual expression, self-realization, and self-fulfillment. However, it also is a socially influenced phenomenon that serves society. A social approach offers the opportunity of distinguishing between large and small amounts of novelty, as well as between…

In this article, the authors describe Picture Power, a project they implemented during late spring in a full-day Montessori preschool-kindergarten program in Philadelphia. In this project, the authors set out to gather information about children's visual learning. The underlying question was whether artwork could provide useful clues to inform…

The reader-response journal has proven useful in the literature-based composition class; it is also useful in the literature survey at the sophomore or junior level of college. Survey courses have a standard protocol that students have come to expect. In these classes, the teacher is an expert who lectures on historical background, trends, and…

A collection of writings by students in literacy, General Educational Development (GED), and pre-GED programs includes 48 personal narratives, biographical reports, stories, opinions, and poems, including two in Spanish with English translations. (MSE) (Adjunct ERIC Clearinghouse on Literacy Education)

This book provides adolescents the information and skills they need to deal with dating and their awakening sexuality. It offers students in middle school, high school, and college an opportunity to examine and discuss their own feelings, attitudes, and behaviors as they relate to relationships. To allow facilitators in family life education…

The degree of consciousness of one's own familiar surroundings by high and low achieving students of a technical gymnasium in Malmo (Sweden) was studied through essays written about Sweden as a place to live. Focus was on testing the proposition that an individual's ability to express cognitive integration of experience in covariation with…

The examination of the journal (written in 1875) of a student of the Patterson Institute, a "female college" in Kentucky, reveals a young woman with a divided self--one part accepting her teacher's demands, the other undermining the daily writing assignment and the school's rules through acknowledged deception, sly subversion, mockery,…

The ideas and case materials discussed in this study can contribute to the national dialogue on education reform and the search for excellence in all areas of education. The study attempts to clarify what the arts contribute to education. While it indicates that much more needs to be done, it suggests actions and approaches which can be utilized…