Arts Classroom Research Articles

Sex and Sexuality in the English Language Arts Classroom

Sex (sexual acts) and sexuality (sexual orientation and gender identity) have become common topics in the news and public discourse. Although sex and sexuality influence adolescents’ experiences with school and schooling conversely shapes youth sexualities, research shows that schools do little to help adolescents make sense of their developing sexual identities. We believe that ELA classrooms are a natural fit for addressing this shortfall. Using the journey of one ELA teacher, we illustrate the ways that issues of sex and sexuality influenced and shaped students’ and their teacher’s classroom experiences. We seek to encourage ELA teachers to rethink the implications of sidestepping issues of sex and sexuality in their classrooms.

Language Arts Lessons: Cultivating a Critical Translingual Landscape in the Elementary Language arts Classroom

This column speaks to the value of a critical translingual framework in the elementary language arts classroom and highlights three practices to support young children’s critical encounters with language and modal diversity.

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(Responding to) Youth epistemologies to create a third space: a reclamation of learning in an English language arts classroom

PurposeThis paper aims to focus on the construction of a third space within a high school. Specifically, the authors consider how youth of color engage the educational context of an 11th grade English language arts (ELA) class as a basis for (re)imagining their history, culture and themselves to construct counter-narratives away from framing their lived educational experiences as failures, deficient and depicted in “damage-centered” (Tuck, 2009) ways. The research engages the process and challenges of creating this type of space within a school setting, as well as examining the ways in which students envision these locations.Design/methodology/approachCritical ethnography centered the emphasis on youth engagement for social change, as well as the inquiry on how the classroom space was constructed, shared and navigated by the students and ourselves (Madison, 2005). In addition, the research design reflects critical ethnography through the use of prolonged participation in the field (nine and half months), a focus on culture (specifically school and classroom culture/climate) and a critical theory-based framework [hybridity, third space and youth participatory action research (YPAR)].FindingsThree major themes emerged from the data that demonstrate how instructors and students collectively engaged in a third space through the YPAR project. These themes include developing an ethic of care with students and among instructors, cultivating an atmosphere of social justice awareness and the contrast of the classroom space with the wider-Hillside Vocational High School environment.Originality/valueThe study engages the use of YPAR within a high school class that became a unique space for students to learn and develop. The ELA class did not just reflect adding the first space and second space together or merging the two. Instead, it seemed to demonstrate the creation of a new type of space or the development of a third space. In this space, students could bring and bridge their out-of-school and in-school experiences to develop new knowledge and ways of seeing the world.

Primary-school-based art therapy: A mixed methods comparison study on children’s classroom learning

ABSTRACT Background: In the UK an estimated one in ten primary school pupils have diagnosable mental health problems which may impact their education. Aims/context: This study examined a primary-school-based art therapy service for children experiencing social, emotional and mental health difficulties to assess the intervention’s acceptability and possible changes in classroom learning. Methods: A mixed methods before-and-after study was conducted with 25 children in art therapy and a comparison group of 25 children per subject for reading, writing and maths attainment. A focus group with 10 teachers and interviews with 37 children were used to examine perceptions of art therapy and classroom learning. Results: Academic attainment was similar between the art therapy and comparison children. Both groups’ learning rate resembled that of national minimum expectations. Children and teachers perceived art therapy to be helpful for engagement with classroom learning, relationships with teachers and peers, and learning time. Conclusions: Further research is needed to develop this primary-school-based art therapy programme, assess transferability, and examine wider educational outcomes. Implications for practice: Primary-school-based art therapy may be particularly helpful when it is perceived as: a safe place, sessions being social and fun, facilitates coping strategies, expressing, thinking and talking, as well as making artwork. Plain-language summary In the UK an estimated one in ten primary school pupils suffer from mental health problems, and this can affect their educational attainment. Thus, it is important that therapies help children to gain positive outcomes both in mental health and educationally. We looked at one art therapy service, which specifically focuses on helping children to understand their own and others’ minds (metallization), within one primary school in London. Thirty-seven children referred to art therapy with social, emotional and mental health difficulties were included. Ten class teachers participated. The aims were to see if the children, and their teachers, found the approach acceptable and if there were any indications of changes in classroom learning. There were no differences in reading, writing and maths scores between children attending art therapy and comparison children receiving usual education support. However, all the children learned at the same rate as the national minimum expectation. Art therapy may have prevented the increasing educational attainment gap that social, emotional and mental health difficulties can bring. We held a focus group with the class teachers and interviewed the children and both reported experiencing art therapy as helpful for engagement with classroom learning, relationships with teachers and peers, and learning time. Specific aspects of art therapy which they considered helpful were: art therapy being a safe place; learning coping strategies; expressing, thinking and talking in art therapy; making artwork; and sessions being social and fun. The teachers also appreciated: advocating and sharing information; psychoeducation and collaborative work; reflecting on actions; encouraging independence; framing school as a positive place with trusted adults; working with transitions and endings. We recommend further research, including more art therapists, schools, teachers, parents and children, to further develop and assess this approach to art therapy in primary schools.

Exploring the Implications of Melanie Yergeau’s Neuroqueer for Art Education

Abstract Yergeau’s concept of neurological queerness disrupts dominant cultural expectations of prosocial behaviors in the classroom, questioning how intention and sociality operate to remove the voices of neurodiverse individuals. Considering haptic engagement and material investigation in the arts classroom as potential sites for neurodiverse rhetorics to emerge challenges art educators to think about what access means within the classroom environment, as well as the narratives they ascribe to students’ asocial or antisocial behaviors. The neurologically queer have their own rhetorics of expression, which, if permitted to emerge within the arts classroom, create possibility for agency and expression. Art is a powerful rhetorical tool for self-advocacy and legibility, as it demonstrates what cannot be expressed through prosocial means. Counter-rhetorics of art and art making dismantle normative assumptions that privilege speaking and writing.

Queer Up! Application of Queer Representation in Art Education

Abstract Gender representation is inherently a part of child-oriented media that plays a significant role in childhood identity development, and the lack of positive queer representation may lead to unfair treatment of queer youth. An art classroom cannot be a space for exploration and risk-taking if art teachers are unaware of how to structure an appropriate environment for queer curricula. Recognizing the circumstances, we categorize queer representations in media as queer main-text and queer subtext. (Queer representation can be utilized as a foundational approach for cultivating pre-service art teachers’ visual literacy regarding two aspects: (1) the sensibility of decoding visual spectacles of queer representations, and (2) the actions of encoding visual messages for educational application. With a mind-set of advocating for diversity, pre-service art teachers can critically and logically refute normative interpretations of LGBTQ+ representations in media, create a space for open exploration of LGBTQ+, and reveal and neutralize top-down power relationships within K—12 art classrooms. Further, pre-service art teachers will be better primed to take on a leading role in advocating for LGBTQ+ themes, and they will be encouraged to create an appropriate place for queer students to feel welcome to express themselves, but also a place where students can experience open-mindedness and empathetically embrace diversity.

The Right Fit? Classroom Mismatch in Middle School and Its Inconsistent Effect on Student Learning

Research on college admissions shows that all students tend to benefit from overmatching, but high-status students are most likely to be overmatched, and low-status students are most likely to be undermatched. This study examines whether mismatching takes place when students are sorted into classrooms in middle school. Given prior research on effectively maintained inequality, we theorize that classroom sorting acts as an opportunity for privileged parents to obtain a qualitative advantage for their children. Our research uses administrative data from Indiana and hierarchical linear models to analyze classroom mismatch in sixth through eighth grades. We find that privileged students are more likely to be overmatched in both math and English language arts (ELA) classrooms but that overmatching is beneficial in math but detrimental in ELA. This suggests that inequality can be effectively maintained only if parents have an accurate understanding of what constitutes an advantage.

Instructional patterns for the teaching and learning of argumentative writing in high school English language arts classrooms

Argumentative writing has long been considered an essential skill for disciplinary learning. For researchers and curriculum developers to develop ecologically valid instructional approaches to argumentative writing, a pivotal prerequisite is the understanding of how teachers use various instructional methods in tandem to teach different argumentative components. This exploratory study identified instructional patterns for the teaching and learning of argumentative writing by observing 187 English language arts class sessions taught by 31 highly regarded high school English language arts teachers (529 students; 40% of the students were males). Multidimensional scaling identified three instructional patterns that vary in the level of teacher centeredness and dialogic interaction. These instructional patterns may reflect the occurrence of explicit teaching, dialogic learning, and in-class writing that was sometimes accompanied with teacher conferencing or coaching. Common across all of these practices was the teaching of claim and evidence. Warranting, counterargument, and response to counterargument, which are more complex forms of argumentation, tended to be taught by instructional practices involving low- to mid-level teacher centeredness and high-level dialogic interaction (e.g., small grouping, discussion). Overall, our findings highlight the gaps between what researchers suggest as effective approaches to teaching argumentative writing and how argumentative writing is currently taught in classrooms.

Without borders: youth debaters reimagining the nature and purpose of public dialogue

Purpose This paper aims to analyze how a group of middle-school debaters integrated their identities and epistemologies into the traditional literacy practice of debate to advocate for more expansive and inclusive forms of academic and civic discussion. The adult and youth co-researchers of the Debate Liberation League (DLL) detail their creation of a critical debate praxis through the use of spoken word and translanguaging and illustrate how they sought to redesign a foundational activity of English Language Arts on their own terms. Design/methodology/approach Drawing upon critical race and borderlands theories, the authors use critical ethnographic and participatory action research methods to explore how the DLL deconstructed the boundaries of what counts as public dialogue and offered an alternative model of what intergenerational and multi-voiced democratic discourse could look like in English Language Arts (ELA) classrooms and beyond. Findings The findings demonstrate how DLL students broke down normative binaries of affirmative/negative and objective/subjective in their debate performances and introduced testimonios as evidence for civic claims to make space for their voices and reimagine deliberation. Originality/value This study foregrounds dialogic data generation through a collaborative, intergenerational research approach. It highlights the constructed nature of literacy “rules,” demonstrates youth expertise in reimagining ELA, and offers a pathway toward a more compassionate public sphere.

System Error: Versatility and Facility as Empowering Values for the Digital Arts Classroom

During my four years (2014–2018) teaching digital artmaking in a public high school, a regular challenge was overcoming the ways that the software and hardware systems in the lab often failed to ac...

Symmetry for Multimedia-Aided Art Teaching Based on the Form of Animation Teaching Organization and Social Network

Symmetries play a vital role in multimedia-aided art teaching activities. The relevant teaching systems designed with a social network, including the optimized teaching methods, are on the basis of symmetry principles. In order to study art teaching, from the perspective of the teaching organization form, combined with the survey method, multimedia-aided art classroom teaching was explained in detail. Based on the symmetrical thinking in art teaching, the multimedia-aided teaching mode of art classroom was discussed. The reasons for the misunderstanding of multimedia-aided art teaching were analyzed, and the core factors affecting the use of multimedia art teaching were found. In art teaching, more real pictures were shown aided by multimedia; students could experience the beauty of symmetrical things in real life and were guided to find the artistic characteristics of these kinds of graphics, analyze them, and summarize them. The results showed that this method enriched the art multimedia teaching theory and improved the efficiency of art teaching. The blind use of multimedia technology by teachers in art classroom teaching was avoided. Therefore, the method can develop individualized teaching, develop students’ potential, and cultivate innovative consciousness and practical ability.

Making Space: Complicating a Canonical Text Through Critical, Multimodal Work in a Secondary Language Arts Classroom

AbstractThe authors document research completed in 10th‐grade language arts classes where a canonical play was read alongside a graphic novel in the hopes of shifting student understandings of power and privilege in literature. Using teacher action research as a methodological framework for this qualitative study, a teacher and researcher engaged in long‐term fieldwork and participant observation as a means of investigating what happens when nontraditional texts are paired with canonical works in diverse secondary classrooms. Findings illustrate that by placing a work of the dominant literary study tradition in dialogue with a contemporary graphic novel, students accessed multiple perspectives that allowed for emotional, academic, and critical learning. Additionally, findings speak to the value of multimodal composing as a way to privilege student voice in conversations across various literary narratives and forms.

“Know Who They Have in Front of Their Eyes”: A Justice as Praxis Paradigm for Teaching and Learning

Inequitable access to learning opportunities has intersectional consequences for Black students in general and gifted education. Equally important, all students (regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic class, and grade-level), more often than not, lack invaluable opportunities to learn about the innumerable contributions of students and families of color in the United States and worldwide. To address these injustices, Ladson-Billings advocated for a shift from “justice as theory toward justice as praxis.” In this article, I unpack the components of justice as praxis work, and I discuss how I engaged in this work in my secondary English Language Arts (ELA) classroom. I address the following questions: What does it mean “to be seen” from the perspective of a Black male academically high-achieving student? What is needed for teachers to adopt a justice as praxis paradigm to improve their teaching and learning with students who have not been well served in public schools?

Reading Motivation in High School: Instructional Shifts in Student Choice and Class Time

AbstractResearch has shown that student choice of text and increased time spent on reading independently are two factors that can result in an increase in students’ reading motivation and enjoyment. The authors investigated implementation of evidence‐based practices to show how they played out in a high school English language arts classroom. The research was guided by two questions: (1) How does choice affect the reading motivation of a group of high school students? (2) How does silent reading time in class affect these students’ perceptions of reading? Findings reveal that students valued freedom of text choice, leading to increased reading self‐concepts and reading value. In addition, dedicating class time to reading and literature circle discussions helped students have more positive reading experiences than otherwise. These findings suggest benefits from flexibility in literature selection and instructional time, thereby providing a space in the classroom for student‐driven reading and discussion.

Art history’s agility: K-12 practices for higher education consideration

As policymakers and other stakeholders continue to intensify their questions and critiques of art history’s place in the higher education curriculum in the United States (U.S.), researchers have not pointedly addressed its place in the K-12 curriculum. How has art history been incorporated into K-12 art classrooms in the past, and how is it being incorporated today? Is this more humanistic component of the K-12 art curriculum under the same duress as is art history on college and university campuses? This article examines the place of art history in K-12 art classrooms over time and notes that it has been emphasized during periods of concern for the U.S.’s position in global affairs (1960s and 1980s). At present art history in the K-12 classroom is integrated through field trips, within assessment, and in helping students gain new sociocultural perspectives. As we argue, art history’s agility in the K-12 art curriculum, in the past and present, can provide unique, and potentially insightful, perspectives to the conversations concerning art history’s diminishing significance in higher education and potential ways to align itself for future survival.

Growing interreligious and intercultural competence in the classroom

AbstractBuilding on various models for intercultural and interreligious competence (IC/IR competence), this essay argues that classroom learning about religious and cultural diversity will engage students' “sociological imaginations” and lead to increased IC/IR competence. The current strategy for increasing intercultural competence (attitude, skills and knowledge, to be developed in that order) does not reflect best practices for educating about social difference. Instead, knowledge acquisition about other cultures and religions is the “front line” task for increasing alterity competence, and the liberal arts classroom can represent a “safe space” for learning about cultural and religious differences in a depersonalized, sociological manner. Supporting this argument are self‐assessments of IC/IR competence collected from primarily European and white American students enrolled in “Religions of the World” or “Intercultural Communications,” allowing an analysis of IC/IR competence in light of the two distinct disciplines and contributing valuable data toward a broader theory of IC/IR pedagogy.

Glimmers of Care: Attending to the Affective Everyday in Ninth‐Grade Literacy Classrooms

AbstractIn this qualitative study, the authors examined how care was enacted, understood, and valued by teachers and students in nine ninth‐grade English language arts classrooms. Following two yearlong cohorts of teachers, the authors explored sociopolitical interpretations of care, specifically focusing on how care was an everyday, political phenomenon in the classrooms. Drawing on observations, teacher and student surveys and interviews, and students’ multimodal compositions and artifacts, the authors analyzed glimmers of affect within and across classrooms. The authors framed their findings around two vignettes to illustrate how clusters of analytic glimmers revealed three dimensions of political, everyday care in the classrooms. First, care was shaped by the structures of space and pedagogy in classrooms, such as the requirements imposed on student composition. Second, the manipulation of the actual space of classrooms—the positioning of desks and bodies—shaped care. Finally, the materiality and modality of student production in classrooms highlighted both the platforms on which students demonstrated forms of care and the authoring decisions they made. The authors conclude with specific suggestions for using glimmers as a methodological approach in other affective studies and for designing classrooms that provide avenues for students to shape the enactments of care in classrooms.

Using Popular Music Pedagogies to Foster 21st-Century Skills and Knowledge

Recent changes in educational policy have placed 21st-century skills at the forefront of arts education, presenting arts educators with an opportunity to reassess instructional practices. Popular music pedagogies are approaches to learning and practicing popular music that may be useful for addressing 21st-century skills and knowledge in arts classrooms. In this article, the author describes how art and music teachers infused music, art, and technology in two related arts projects for Grades 3 to 5 that explored the artwork of Jean-Michel Basquiat, jazz music, the work of DJ Kool Herc, and a deejay application on electronic tablets. Through the use of popular music pedagogies, teachers addressed many aspects of 21st-century skills and knowledge. Furthermore, the artwork of Jean-Michel Basquiat and the music of DJ Kool Herc resonated with students due to their historical significance and the everlasting artistic themes found within their work—individuality, innovation, communication, expression, and authenticity.

Quality teaching frameworks and arts education: Seeking a compatible approach

ABSTRACT As school education systems worldwide adopt standardized performance measures, teacher effectiveness frameworks have become more influential. This article draws on Australian mixed methods research that aimed to understand the processes behind quality arts pedagogy. Following an in-depth quantitative study, nine high-performing case study arts classes were selected, spanning dance, drama, media arts, music and visual arts. The Quality Teaching Framework (QTF), based on authentic pedagogy, was used to observe and to analyse twenty-seven arts lessons, three per case study. This framework, trialled and validated in prior large-scale research, was adopted by the New South Wales public education system. While the framework’s categories were useful in detecting aspects of quality arts pedagogy, we also observed shared practices that were absent from the QTF. The article focuses on these absences. To support the creation of original work, these classes included generative processes not adequately explained by the framework, which made no direct reference to creativity. This led the research team to: (1) question the extent to which generic standardized (GS) teaching frameworks explain the dynamics of arts classrooms, and (2) reflect on whether certain processes are not easily categorized within standardized measures and whether this can lead these processes to be undervalued.