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The article discusses the concept of socially engaged art education which examines how creative responses to social injustice can address issues of inequality. It describes art education workshops informed by the pedagogical potential of reforming art education spaces

The article offers information on the role of art education in social engagement. Topics discussed include initiatives to promote civic responsibility and positive change as forms of scholarship and community collaboration; different histories of social engagement and art practice in relation to art education; and discussion on social engagement, art-based practices, and community-based possibilities for art education.

The article offers information on the relationship between art educators and art therapists. Particular focus is given to how art can offer students alternative ways of communicating thoughts and ideas, understanding experiences, and developing resilience and defining a stronger sense of self. Additional topics discussed include the Carson Valley Children's Aid (CVCA) non-profit child welfare agency, the importance of being present and showing students that you care by being sensitive to their needs, how art can be used for self-care and mindfulness training.

In this article, the author reflects upon his work creating and teaching an art education lesson plan that focused upon socially engaged design, assistive technologies and digital fabrications. Particular focus is given to how the lesson plan developed asked students to partake in digital fabrication and the creation of prosthetics. Additional topics discussed include socially engaged art practice, three-dimensional printing and various organizations focused upon digital fabrication including Thinking Robot Studios and Limbitless Solutions.

This article draws on a study with preservice art educators to offer theoretical perspectives on sociocultural narrative pedagogy. Informed by the work of Chicana feminist scholar Gloria Anzaldúa, the authors identify three major phenomena that manifest within sociocultural narrative pedagogy: (1) disruptions, ruptures, and breakdowns, (2) silences, refusals, and resistances, and (3) paradoxes. The authors conclude that while narrative can be a powerful pedagogical tool for addressing sociocultural difference, it is also a troubling, often paradoxical, avenue for developing critical consciousness in preservice art educators. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article, the author reflects upon the value of art. Particular focus is given to the cultural value of art and to how this value makes cost irrelevant. Additional topics discussed include arts education in England, STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics) education and arts curriculum development.

The article examines the challenges faced by refugee children living in the U.S. Particular focus is given to how these challenges can be addressed by arts-based programs and curricula. Additional topics discussed include how between 50,000 and 80,000 refugees arrive in the U.S. every year and how more than half of those refugees end up in public schools, how to integrate the needs of refugee populations into art teacher-training programs and how art classrooms can be used to cultivate sensitive global citizens.

In this article, the author explores the aesthetic value of sub-Saharan African ritual masks. Particular focus is given to how these masks are viewed within the context of modern African art and as a part of the global fine art world. Additional topics discussed include how to examine the aesthetic merit of ritual objects that are outside of the Western cultural framework, how art educators who are outside of African culture can examine these items and designing an art lesson plan using African ritual masks as a source of inspiration.

The article examines how democratic art classrooms can be cultivated through an examination of socially conscious art. Particular focus is given to a visit to Jefferson High School in Tampa, Florida, that was made by the Equatorial Guinea-born, Paraguay-based artist Ramón Esono Ebalé. During the visit Ebalé discussed various issues facing those living in Equatorial Guinea, including income disparity, poor health and sanitation, and human rights abuses. Additional topics discussed include collaborative high school social studies and arts instruction and the dynamic between art museums and schools.

Inspired by critical race and feminist perspectives, this paper complicates the conversation on preparing arts educators for diversity and equity. The authors ground their research on the premise that arts educators committed to challenging social inequalities must understand sociocultural influences on art, curriculum, teaching, and learning. The paper reports a qualitative study that investigated how pre-service arts educators make sense of sociocultural differences (i.e., the dynamics of race, class, gender and sexuality). Findings articulate key curriculum flashpoints that emerged when art teacher candidates engaged with sociocultural knowledge. These flashpoints include identity formation, questioning knowledge, and discourses of offense. The authors argue that these flashpoints present curricular provocations that can assist in developing the critical capacities of art educators. The conclusion explores the implications of these findings for organizing and teaching sociocultural content as foundational knowledge for arts educator preparation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many studies have highlighted the capacity of community arts programs to re-engage those young people considered at-risk of disconnection from future education and/or employment. Evolution is an artist-guided visual arts program established for young people challenged by mental health and social issues that aims to foster re-engagement in education and training. It was founded by a community-based youth arts studio, Signal, and in a partnership with a youth support service, has developed into an effective, strength-based model of practice that focuses on the young people's existing capacities and positive qualities rather than setting out to improve perceived deficits. Central to the success of this program has been the commitment to relationship-building, mediated through art practice, and the opportunities afforded to connect positively with others. This paper reports on research during the formative years of this initiative and outlines the conditions that framed and impacted upon participant engagement in the Evolution Program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bowers (2001) described how our ecological crisis is marked by metaphors of difference and separation. By adopting an ecological paradigm, students have the opportunity to move past harmful distinctions that have characterized relations with the earth. Instead, students can move to a deep recognition of the interconnectedness of living things. Empathy, particularly with the environment, is deeply tied to such a paradigm. To help students develop this paradigm, a critical place-based art curriculum designed and implemented in a middle school classroom. The curriculum was informed by the ecological imagination, a call for education that embraces the arts as a way to conceive of new ecological perspectives and dialogues. Drawing exercises, interviews, surveys, journals reviews, observations, and focus groups were used to investigate student experiences. Data revealed that students' ecological paradigms increased as a result of their participation. Throughout the program, students exhibited empathy with the environment as they cared for nature, developed awareness, and accepted responsibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current research indicates that within the United States, many preservice teachers are not prepared to work with a rapidly changing student population that includes an increasing number of immigrant students with limited proficiency in English (Giambo & Szecsi, 2005/2006; Janzen, 2008; Latta & Chan, 2011). This article presents findings from a longitudinal qualitative study that examined the semester-long experiences of preservice art education students who participated in The University of Georgia Studies Abroad in Cortona, Italy program from 2003 to 2006, providing sequential art instruction to Italian children who were not English speakers. In 2010, we conducted follow-up interviews to better understand the potential long-term effects of this experience. Our findings indicated this experience gave the art education students increased cultural understanding and greater confidence in their teaching, and provided a foundational experience that they believed would help them be more successful in working with English Language Learners (ELLs) in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the author examines socially engaged design practices and their potential for informing design curriculum and pedagogy in K-12 art education programs. Particular focus is given to the exhibition "Century of the Child: Growing by Design 1900-2000," at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City, from July 29th through November 5, 2012. Additional topics discussed include how socially engaged design addresses environmental and social issues, engages in participative forms of labor that are sustainable and elaborates on pedagogical possibilities.

The arts have a long and rich history of connecting and transforming communities through creative collaboration. This article highlights the community-based art education curriculum and practices of a holistic pre-service/in-service art education programme as a possible best practices model for developing creative leaders for careers in and beyond the P-12 classroom. Community-based art education, service learning and transformative learning theory are discussed as effective frameworks for planning and implementing creative, transformative community collaborations and opportunities for leadership development with participants across the lifespan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the time in which the large Robert E. Lee monument was planned and built in Richmond, Virginia. Drawing on archives, the story of this monument relates to remembering this man in ways that build and perpetuate the stories of the Lost Cause movement. This article also explores how competing interests in the local community tried to sway the movement to commemorate him in ways that favoured their various interests. The issue of who owns the past and how it is represented in the present in artistic forms continues to be an issue in Richmond and throughout the world. Because people in communities learn from their environment, it is important for art educators to consider the history of their geographic locations and to think about how this history is a form of education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay Ruben A. Gaztambide-Fernández uses a discursive approach to argue that mainstream arts in education scholarship and advocacy construes "the arts" as a definable naturalistic phenomenon that exists in the world and is available to be observed and measured. In the course of his analysis, he examines how this construction is employed through what he calls the rhetoric of effects as part of the mainstream discourses used in arts in education research today. He describes how this positivistic rhetoric masks the complexity of those practices and processes associated with the arts, limiting the possibilities for productively employing such practices in education. In addition, he explores how discourses of the arts both arise out of and continually reify hierarchical conceptions of artistic practices in education and broader society. He concludes by proposing an alternative rhetoric of cultural production, arguing that moving toward this new way of understanding practices and processes of symbolic creativity is critical for expanding our vision for the arts in education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, Jennifer Groff explores the role of the arts in education through the lens of current research in cognitive neuroscience and the impact of technology in today's digital world. She explains that although arts education has largely used multiple intelligences theory to substantiate its presence in classrooms and schools, this relationship has ultimately hindered the field of arts education's understanding of the relationship between the arts, human development, and learning. Emerging research on the brain's cognitive processing systems has led Groff to put forth a new theory of mind, whole-mindedness. Here she presents the evidence and construct for this frame of mind, how it sits in relation to multiple intelligences theory, and how it might redefine the justification for arts education in schools, particularly in our digitally and visually rich world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Room 13 is a global uprising of creative and entrepreneurial children who are responsible for a growing international network of student-organised art studios. Each Room 13 studio facilitates the work of young artists alongside a professional adult artist in residence, providing an exchange of ideas, skills and experience across the ages. The result is an ongoing collaboration between adults and young people and a thriving culture of philosophical enquiry driven by a motivation to think and to learn. My own experience with Room 13 spans from that of the student, to adult artist and practitioner. Working under the direction of subsequent student-management teams, I have been fortunate to be involved in the process by which Room 13 has gone on to establish an international network of student-run art studios, serving an expanding global community of young artists. The emerging global movement surrounding these studios calls for a serious revaluation of what art is - and who is qualified to make it. Room 13 not only augments the case for the work of young artists, but presents a challenge to the current systems for art education. As the quality of formal arts education is eroded by a universal need to standardise educational experiences, the training that Room 13 provides motivates individuals and develops their creativity in a way that outstrips anything that schools, or even art colleges, can currently offer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we introduce non-dualism and begin by answering the questions posed by the editors of this journal. We address the theme of de(fence) and propose a paradigmatic shift. For many years, art teachers have advocated tirelessly in defense of the field, fighting for funding and legitimacy in an educational landscape that prioritizes other subjects. While the reaction to fight is appropriate, art reveals another way. It aids us in our task of living in the liminal, and it gives us the chance to suspend our judgments and forego meaning in favor of experience. Art can help us transition from the dual mind to a non-dualistic awareness. When we experience art as it is, we stop seeing differences and start to see connections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to the journal is presented in which the editor discusses the topics of various articles published within the issue including one on subversive expression in early childhood art education, one about digital art as communication, and one regarding literacy programs and visual art.

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A case study is presented of the collaboration at Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, between a Gender and Development professor and the Director of the Acadia University Art Gallery in creating a visual art exhibit of the Guerrilla Girls, a group of feminists protesting sexism in the world of fine art. The article describes and analyzes both the classroom and gallery components as an interdisciplinary project for the Gender and Development class, and promotes the use of visual art in classroom learning.

Recent nontraditional forms of public art have been described as interventionist, referring to art that establishes its purpose and form through the social exchanges and altered behaviors that arise as a result of its disruption of quotidian patterns of social experience in public spaces. The form of the work is revealed through the contingent communities, spontaneous social dialogues, and incidental social collaborations that occur as a result of its disruption of habitual public experience. This article provides a theoretical and artistic framework for rethinking the function of artmaking within the broader context of art educational practices and for reevaluating the potential that artmaking might have as a means of socially engaging and making meaning in the public environments inhabited by students. An interventionist art curriculum can be understood as a type of art-informed tactical research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The views and thoughts of the teachers towards the education of visual arts that cover significant places in every point of life are very important. Whatever their branches, the importance they put on the visual art education will make impact on their pupils and they will determine through their observations the necessity of this education period. In the study, we have obtained the views of teachers from different branches at the Ankara Atatürk Anatolian High School on the visual art education. "The survey for determining the views of the teachers of different branches at the Ankara Atatürk Anatolian High School on the Necessity of the Visual Arts Subject" has been used in the study. The study is a screening model. At the analysis stage of the data, we have used SPSS-Social Science Statistic Program. Following the categorization of data, we have found frequencies and percentages with the SPSS program and presented the data in graphics. The study has shown that the majority of the teachers are not interested in any branches of art and that they don't want their children to choose any branch of art as profession. Besides, majority of the children attend to visual arts events in their cities. The study has revealed that the teachers don't agree with teaching visual arts as a subject in the secondary education schools. It has been suggested that it is essential to ensure the participation of the teachers in art events and to encourage them to do so, and to have cooperation between the painting and craft teacher and the education staff at the Visual Arts Education Departments to keep the teachers of the Secondary Education informed about the art events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on art education for preadolescents, children ages 11 through 13. The author explains that children of this age are more apt to participate in art education if they can relate to the projects assigned. At this age, children want to express their opinions and voices, and art education is a way for them to display this. They can explore identity, reflect on experiences, and develop moral reasoning. A collaboration between preadolescent art classes in the U.S., Spain, and Turkey is chronicled.

Introduces a series of articles that highlight the importance of arts education in and outside of schools. Effect of arts on personal development; Implications for social change; Nature of the arts from theoretical and empirical perspectives.

Argues that instruction in the arts provides the kind of opportunities students need to express self, articulate frustration with an educational system that makes success difficult and to conceive of alternatives in a society that generally finds adolescent student needs irrelevant. Influence of the arts on the social and academic achievement of students; Development of communication and critical thinking skills.

Discusses issues related to feminism in art education. Relation between feminism and art education; Feminist consciousness and research; Reasons why feminists think they can change things.

Compares two approaches to a multicultural art curriculum. The issue-oriented approach, which supports cultural diversity; The thematic approach, which aims to experience cultural traditions; The difficulty of transferring the literary meanings of themes and issues to discussion of imagery; Value of the two approaches to curricula.

The article focuses on the changes in technology and culture that affects art education. It discusses the role of technological innovations in the changes in the culture and values of people. It also discusses the effect of the changes in technology to people's conception of art and art education. Although the article questions the moral and cultural effects of technology, it also discusses the positive results of technological innovation in making people's lives efficient and productive. Art education's responsibilities in guiding students' vision and engendering critical visual intelligence through practice and discourse in response to the changes in the society are also discussed.

The article presents arguments in favor of the importance of including the NAMES Quilt Project in art education and provides examples on its ongoing development. The NAMES Quilt is an international effort to make the public aware of the effects of the AIDS virus through visual representations of those who have died of the disease and their loved ones left behind. The article also discusses the history of the project. The article concludes that seeing the NAMES Quilt as a form of political action can be instrumental in its integration into art education. The involvement of the students not just university students but also elementary and secondary students in quilt making helps them be aware of the disease and its fatal consequences.

The article reports on the potential of art education to address the roots of the Watts riots. Violence as a means to achieve respect and self-dignity, things that have been lost due to material deprivation, is believed to be the roots of the riots in Watts, California in 1965. The problem is hoped to be addressed through innovations in art education curricula and teaching methods. The program's strategies include developing productive perceptual-cognitive patterns of behavior, acquiring an adequate self-image, instituting structured curricula, and adopting positive attitudes toward the value of education.

Interactions through dialogue on visual art are being practiced by middle school students at Clarence Darrow Middle School in New Jersey in studying English and poetry. Details on how conversations on visual art help students develop their poetry writing skills are discussed.