Arts Classroom Research Articles

Collaborative Teacher Inquiry Into iPad Use in Grade 3 Classrooms: Mobilizing Knowledge Through a Long-term School-University Partnership

In this paper, we report on a longitudinal case study exploring Grade 3 teachers’ implementation of iPads in the Language Arts classroom. A school-university partnership was formed based on a collaborative teacher inquiry model. We examined factors that shaped our collaboration. The project resulted in greater teacher sharing of iPad implementation strategies and growth in leadership skills among the teachers. A surprising finding was the degree of reciprocal learning about digital pedagogy that the university researchers experienced during the study and were able to share with their Pre-service Education classes. We emphasize the potential of school-university partnerships for narrowing the current gap between theory and practice in technology-enhanced learning.

What's in a Match? Disentangling the Significance of Teacher Race/Ethnicity

A growing body of literature documents that black and Hispanic students benefit from teachers who share their racial/ethnic background. Despite this evidence, data limitations have prevented researchers from analyzing how students’ actual experiences in the classroom vary by teacher race/ethnicity. The current study addresses this gap. Using over 56,000 new student surveys, I provide the first large-scale evidence on the specific ways in which matched teachers affect student experience. Comparing students within the same school, I find that matched black and Hispanic students report significantly better experiences than their non-matched peers. This relative advantage does not appear to be driven by difficulties reported with non-matched teachers and emerges primarily in middle school English Language Arts classrooms.

Inclusion and Art Education: ‘Welcome to the Big Room, Everything's Alright’

AbstractThis article offers an exploration of the art room as part of a broader project to consider the ways in which normative practices in art and design education can include and exclude students. The art classroom is explored here as a ‘disrupted space’ and one that can promote movement between the structures and boundaries that affect our ways of being in, and experiencing, the world. The art room offers a space for colonising otherness, as well as an ‘alternative’ or risky physical space, a refuge, or one with the potential to disrupt the dominant educational landscape.

Digitizing the Easel: Student Perspectives on Tutorial Videos in the Art Classroom

In my classroom, a typical live demonstration often resulted in a crowd of fidgety, wiggling, middle school students standing on tiptoes and squeezing between others to see the easel. I struggled with finding ways to keep students engaged and focused when presenting new material. There were always a number of students who could not see the demonstration. The pacing never seemed quite right: too slow for the fast workers, too quick for the detail-oriented. Those who missed class on the day of the demonstration had difficulty catching up. My presentations would vary from class to class, elaborating here, forgetting there. Some students would get lost toward the back of the group, where they would covertly play on their phones or hold whispered conversations. Students would forget the information, and I would end up explaining the same thing multiple times during the course of each unit, losing valuable class time. These problems opened up a unique opportunity for exploring a different avenue of presentation. My solution to the crowded easel was to digitize the demonstration, creating tutorial videos covering skills such as portraiture, perspective drawing, ceramic processes, and papier-mâché and posting them to YouTube.

Soundscape Compositions for Art Classrooms

In recent years, the inclusion of popular visual culture in art curricula has emerged as a focal point of investigation and discussion in art education. Its proponents sought to expand the content of study to include contemporary cultural forms such as television, magazines, and the Internet (Chalmers, 2005; Efland, 2004; Tavin & Anderson, 2003).

Facing the technology challenge: Art education concepts and digital media in Germany

Though cutting edge media technologies have been introduced into art education at school in general education in 2001 (Reimann et al), there is still big scepticism about integrating the computer and digital media into the art lessons at school. Some perceive it time consuming, taking away urgently needed time for drawing and painting, others do not agree with the idea of addressing technology issues such as programming and coding as a form of media literacy in the art classroom. The research project “MediaArt@Edu” (Acronym) which is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and realised in collaboration with ZKM, the Center for Media and Art Karlsruhe, as well as the Agency for Employment Karlsruhe, will be presented. It links artistic approaches to interactive technology in creative processes with disadvantaged, and unemployed young people in vocational preparation measures

Infusing Career Development to Strengthen Middle School English Language Arts Curricula

An approach is presented for strengthening middle school standards‐based English language arts (ELA) classroom instruction by infusing theory‐ and research‐supported career development constructs and practices. Over an 8‐week period, 90 urban 7th graders participated in an integrated ELA–career development curriculum. Career agency emerged as an important construct for students. It was related to key markers of ELA achievement (i.e., standardized test scores, grades, and positive change in 6th‐ to 7th‐grade test scores) and elaborated on in nuanced ways by students in their written narratives. Four themes related to career agency were identified in student writings: time perspective, challenges of self‐direction, career development, and social and emotional development. Advantages for students and schools related to synergy, scale, and sustainability are discussed.

A Story of CBAE for Future Art Educators

A community-minded university professor tells the story of five students who were involved in an independent-studies course that involved painting a large wall mural at a behavioral health center. The experiential learning in studio core content was combined with curriculum appropriate for future art educators that included art criticism, recognition of diversity, contemporary art themes, and civic involvement. Through problem solving, collaboration, and learning from one another, the students gained valuable knowledge that they felt could help them in their future art classrooms. Their reflections suggest community art education has something to offer curriculum for future art educators.

Bringing Edward Hopper’s Paintings into the English Language Arts Classroom

This article presents ways to incorporate the works of artist Edward Hopper in the ELA secondary classroom. Students analyze Hopper’s paintings as a text and create their own responses in the form of poetry, short story, photography, and other visual media.

‘Being’ a critical multicultural pedagogue in the art education classroom

ABSTRACTArt educators continuously struggle to understand what multiculturalism ‘looks like’ in the art classroom. This has resulted in multicultural art education becoming superficial, in which art teachers guide students through art projects like creating African masks, Native American dream catchers, Aboriginal totems, and sand paintings, all without communicating the context of the art. This type of multiculturalism essentializes cultures, and builds Western, myopic narratives about groups of people, specifically about their ‘Art’. Critical multiculturalism is a power-focused upgrade of multiculturalism that calls for a critique of power and demands recognition that racism and other discriminations are enmeshed in the fabric of our social order. Teaching through a critical multiculturalism framework helps teachers dismantle Western, normalized narratives and produce counter-hegemonic curriculum that contextualizes culture and reveals its fluidity. In this article, the author shares a teacher action research study in which she describes what critical multiculturalism looks like in her art education classroom. The study focuses on ‘being’ a critically multicultural educator versus ‘doing’ critical multiculturalism. Such a position counters the idea that critical multiculturalism is a thing to complete, but instead is an ongoing process that rests on specific ways of thinking and considering the classroom, curriculum, and students.

Unpacking & Packing Visual Culture: Creative Thinking Strategies

Meaningful questions enrich our engagement and participation in life. The art classroom is abundant with opportunities to develop meaningful questions, including one that drives my practice: How mi...

Preservice Art Teachers’ Attitudes Toward Addressing LGBTQ Issues in Their Future Classrooms

For this study, I surveyed 146 urban university preservice art teachers about their attitudes toward lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) issues, including the stereotypes, biases, and misconceptions of this population that these teachers acquired from the media. A three-part questionnaire asked their response to several gay publications and their familiarity with gay issues, partly to explore their own relationships to the LGBTQ community. This research specifically explored the participants’ attitudes toward teaching LGBTQ topics in their future visual art classrooms in public schools. The results indicated that most of the respondents were ready and willing to learn about and teach these topics in their future art classrooms. However, they expressed anxieties and concerns about encountering a conservative school administration or community culture that would prevent them from actively supporting and covering LGBTQ issues. This article addresses these challenges, discusses the study’s implications, and offers suggestions for supporting and assisting these teachers in presenting these issues in their future classrooms, especially to reduce bullying and help create a safe school for all.

Creating Third Space through Critical Interactions in a High School: Examining Latin@ Students’ Experiences in Neocolonial Society

English Learners (ELs) often face school environments dominated by White, English speaking values, history, and education practices. This qualitative action research study focuses on the third space development for ELs, all Latin@ students, in a high school mainstream English Language Arts classroom within a post‐colonial theoretical framework. The study’s primary focus explores how third space could be opened in a high school classroom through teacher facilitation of critical interaction. The researchers collected data through video observation, student interviews, and teacher reflective journals. The study grew to examine third space throughout the school community in various classrooms using the insights and reflections of the students in the English language classroom, the high school teacher, and a teacher educator. Through the analysis, we found that teachers have ability to actively pursue and facilitate third space, even in a school context that is influenced heavily by dominant history and practices.

Emerging Critical Meta-Awareness Among Black and Latina/o Youth During Corrective Feedback Practices in Urban English Language Arts Classrooms

This article addresses teachers’ uptake of Black and Latina/o youth linguistic repertoires within the official space of an English Language Arts (ELA) classroom and how youth respond to corrective feedback that is focused on the form of their messages, rather than their function. Corrective feedback offered by one Latina teacher indexed larger standard language ideologies that circulate within urban Black and Latina/o schools. I argue that youth’s responses to corrective feedback point to their emerging critical meta-awareness, given their alignment against narrow conceptions of what counts as language for schooling and learning.

A Brush with Research: Teaching Grounded Theory in the Art and Design Classroom

Grounded Theory is a systematic approach to social research that allows for new concepts and theories to emerge from gathered data, as opposed to relying on either established theory or personal conjecture to interpret social processes. Although Grounded Theory is a well-known method within social science literature, it is relatively unknown in art and design literature, even though it is useful for developing social context and human empathy. In recent years, the model has gained relative credibility in many other disciplines, offering potential advantages for interdisciplinary scenarios. This paper provides a detailed review of Grounded Theory from an educational perspective, and then concludes with some proposed pedagogical methods for art and design based practices.

Artful pedagogy: (En)visioning the unfinished whole

ABSTRACTThe hum of florescent lights still drone quietly in the background just as they did in the high school art classrooms of the authors, only now they are teaching research methods and educational theory and practice in the academy, not sculpture, ceramics, drawing, or painting1 Occasionally we refer to Sara's and Kelly's experiences as high school art teachers and assistant professors. We find it important to note that the third author, Nicole, is a graduate student enrolled in the Art Therapy program at Florida State University, which is nestled in the Art Education Department.. Once high school art educators, drawn to teaching and learning with and through the arts, the vantage points of the authors have now shifted as they find themselves situated at two large research universities. In these higher education spaces the authors are once again finding ways to artfully engage in the reciprocal process of teaching and learning. Although the locations have changed, the authors still feel seduced by the world of art and all the possibilities therein.

The Scientization of Creativity: "Innovate or die!"

The tech-bubble, its ultimatum to innovate, and its subsequent bursting at the turn of the twenty-first century placed an economic emphasis on creative, original, innovative, iterative, and relevant ideas to drive growth in the marketplace. The resulting Creative Economy is now the new economy that tech, business, and higher education professionals seamlessly live, work, and create. Corporatized creativity, its discourse, and its call to innovate in the university seems, however, different in-kind than the object of study in a liberal art's classroom. Corporatized creativity discourse vastly differs from Immanuel Kant's long-standing definition that creativity produces both original and exemplary work. In the current economy, creativity must be both original and appropriate to the problem to solve. Additionally, the corporate sphere depends on not only knowing how and idea comes about but also how to be able to replicate its process and methods. The current corporatized creativity discourse 'scientizes' creativity or rationalizes and institutionalizes its processes and does so in order to monetize its creative productions for the marketplace. Within the new creativity discourse, a subtle but vital shift in vocabulary highlights the importance of also shifting the learning outcomes in most university classrooms. Traditionally, humanities courses teach the concept of creativity and its various applications from exalted individuals who produce objects across media and history. Now, every classroom is or will soon be expected to actively teach how to be creative no matter the course, subject, or student's aptitude or talent for it. For that to happen, this paper contents that teaching the concept of creativity in the classroom needs to make a fundamental change to teaching how to be creative.

Meeting the Needs of the On-Demand Generation: Bringing Twenty-First Century Technology into the College Arts Classroom

Meeting the Needs of the On-Demand Generation: Bringing Twenty-First Century Technology into the College Arts Classroom

Productive pedagogies in expressive arts lessons in Malawi

The national government in Malawi implemented a new Curriculum: the Primary Curriculum and Assessment Reform in 2007. The purpose of this study was to investigate the enactment of one of the Learning areas, Expressive Arts in three urban and three rural schools in Zomba district where teachers were first trained to teach Expressive Arts. The study is framed by the Productive Pedagogies framework (Lingard, Hayes, Ladwig, Mills, Bahr et al., 2001). Following a qualitative research design, data were collected through observation and post-observation interviews. Data analysis showed limited productive pedagogies in most lessons. The majority of lessons were predominantly characterised by lower intellectual quality, a focus on instrumental knowledge, integration at a superficial level, dominance of communalising and gendered practices rather than ‘engagement with difference’, prevalence of localising discourses ‘rather than connectedness to the world’ and a pedagogy aimed at national examinations. It appears that dominant pedagogic practices in the Expressive Arts classroom serve to position learners in parochial orientations and issues. There was an obvious disjuncture between the intended curriculum and enacted curriculum. The overall findings is that the enacted curriculum gave students limited opportunities for the acquisition of knowledge and development of skills, values and attitudes required for them to actively participate in the changing Malawian context and to be able to compete successfully in other contexts.

Effects of a Clinical art Classroom on Children with Developmental Disorders and Their Families

Effects of a Clinical art Classroom on Children with Developmental Disorders and Their Families