In this article the Viking motif in children's literature is explored--from its roots in (adult) nationalist and antiquarian discourse, over pedagogical and historical texts for children, to the eventual diversification (or dissolution) of the motif into different genres and forms. The focus is on Swedish Viking narratives, but points of…

During a classroom-based study that explored the teaching and learning of visual elements of art and design, Grade 7 students had the opportunity to read four graphic novels. Theoretically, the research was informed by social semiotics, visual literacy, sociocultural theory, and Rosenblatt's transactional theory of reading. The instructional…

Modern art curricula derive from the assumption that visual arts education can be of a high quality only if productive and receptive artistic activities are implemented. In art education practice, we are able to follow incentives for artistic expression but pay less attention to developing art appreciation that is based on developing as subtle…

In this article, the author explains how African dances are created in many social venues as a form of communicating within specific societies. However, from her travels, she has discovered that there are many misconceptions outside of the continent, and many people who view African dances as exotic or as only entertainment. The article discusses…

Dada, an art movement that became well known in the late 1910s and early 1920s, challenged traditional notions of art and aesthetics. Dada artists, for example, tossed colored scraps of paper into the air to compose chance-based collages, performed sound poems devoid of semantic value, and modeled a headpiece fashioned of sardine cans. To most art…

Creativity is an important component of human intelligence, and imbuing artificially intelligent systems with creativity is an interesting challenge. In particular, it is difficult to quantify (or even qualify) creativity. Recently, it has been suggested that conditions for attributing creativity to a system include: appreciation, imagination, and…

In this paper, I argue that Dewey's pragmatist aesthetics, and in particular, his concept of "consummatory experience", should be engaged anew to rethink the merits of the Philosophy for Children (PFC) programme, which arose in the 1970s in the US as an innovative educational programme that aims to use philosophy to help school children (aged…

"Academically Adrift," the recent study of undergraduate performance, has revealed that college students are learning little, if anything, over the course of their four years at university. This article suggests that students are academically adrift, in part, because Americans are culturally marooned between two ways to pursue happiness,…

This paper attempts to give an account of some innovative work in paintings and modern poetry and to show how modern poets, such as Jane Flanders and Anne Sexton, the two American poets in particular, express and develop radically new conventions for their respective arts. Also elaborated are how such changes in artistic techniques are related to…

"Aesthetics" is often taken to be the study of art, but it has come to mean a variety of rather different things in contemporary educational theory and practice, such as: (i) sensory education; (ii) appreciation of beauty; (iii) education in appreciation of the arts. The danger of running these different senses together is explored and…

The author describes his job as pretty mundane. He is a low-level government bureaucrat who sends a lot of emails and works with spreadsheets. Occasionally, when he gets to do something creative, like put together a sign, pamphlet, or slideshow, he feels a sense of peace and wishes he could do it more. This past spring, the author finally decided…

An activity involving analysis of art in biology courses was designed with the goals of piquing undergraduates' curiosity, broadening the ways in which college students meaningfully engage with course content and concepts, and developing aspects of students' higher-level thinking skills, such as analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. To…

Five classes of Art Appreciation first semester undergraduate Hispanic students assigned to one professor were selected to experience cooperative learning over a full semester. Pre-semester surveys and post-semester surveys were completed by 104 Hispanic freshmen college students. Strategies used in the classes included Think-Pair-Share, Ticket…

This paper examines the progressive understanding of art advanced by Albert Barnes, and asks how the educational vision for his large collection of art might be preserved as it has now moves from its location in the idyllic suburban setting in Merion, PA to the hustle and bustle of central Philadelphia. I submit that the vision will be endangered…

Art making has been documented as an effective stress reduction technique. In this between-subjects experimental study, possible mechanisms of stress reduction were examined in a sample of 52 university students randomly assigned to one of four conditions generated by factorially crossing Activity Type (artistic or nonartistic) with Coping…