Effects of Visual Journaling on Adolescents

High school students need Social Emotional learning integrated into classrooms, but what that looks like is not well defined for art educators. When one tries to look, most research points to art therapy strategies which leave art educators feeling ill-equipped to implement in their classrooms. This study explored the implementation of visual journaling, an art therapy technique, in a high school classroom to see what the role the educator took on, the stress effect on students as a group and individually, and if it simultaneously had any academic benefits. The researcher gauged the effectiveness of the visual journaling therapeutically by measuring student stress before and after the activity, showing that it did in fact reduce stress in most students. This varied for students based on their individualized approach where some students appreciated prompts as starters while others wanted more open-ended choices. The researcher also weighed the academic benefits of the activity, showing that students felt more creative in other classroom art projects from their use of their visual journals. The visual-journaling technique shows to be effective as a social emotional strategy in the art classroom.