In this essay, Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández reflects on the comments made in a forum convened to reflect on his article "Why the Arts Don't 'Do' Anything: Toward a New Vision for Cultural Production in Education," published in the "Harvard Educational Review" ("HER")'s special issue entitled…

In this reflection, Louise Pascale describes the evolution, development, and outcomes of the Afghan Children's Songbook Project, which is reintroducing children's ethnic songs to the children of Afghanistan and Afghan expats as well as to American schoolchildren. Her reflection highlights the potential for music to unify and strengthen…

In this reflective essay, Eric Booth utilizes his Habits of Mind for Creative Engagement to offer two suggestions for intensifying the impact of arts learning in schools. Booth's first suggestion redefines what artistic engagement really means and where it can contribute to creative learning. His second suggestion advocates for the use of…

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…

The authors of this article describe themselves as a lucky group of older adults, ranging in age from sixty to ninety-two, who participate in an intergenerational arts program at their local senior center in Flushing, Queens, one of New York City's most culturally diverse communities. In their living history theater program, run by Elders…

In this reflective essay, Linda F. Nathan, the founding headmaster of the Boston Arts Academy and currently the executive director of Center for Arts in Education at Boston Arts Academy, shares a story about how one student, Ronald, expands his vision of self through his engagement with the arts. In presenting this reflection on Ronald's…

In this essay, author Steven Ciampaglia reflects on the creation of a guerilla art course he and a colleague designed to engage students in the process of creating contemporary art relevant to them outside the traditional classroom setting. He examines how reflecting on his teaching practices led him to rethink the key objectives and design…

In this essay Ruben A. Gaztambide-Fernandez 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…

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…

The author first decided to take art classes out of curiosity, but art gradually changed her perspective on life and became a medium through which she saw herself. This hobby became a process by which she began to create an artwork of her own life. This article describes what the author has learned about her own life through art and how it has…

During the winter of 2011-2012, Weardale, England, was the setting for an ambitious informal adult education project. In this rural area in the northeast part of the country, the local arts collective, Jack Drum Arts, established a community play project entitled "The Bonny Moorhen." This dramatic undertaking aimed to retell the story of…

In this article, Michele K. Sommer recalls the struggles she experienced during elementary school with daydreams so real that she was lost in them. She reports using her artistic skills to complete school assignments to no avail, becoming keenly aware even as a child that the adults in her life regarded her daydreaming as a defect (she was a…

The author, Victor B. Almanzar, reports on his introduction to the arts while growing up in New York as a young teenager. He felt like an outcast from society due to his language barrier and numerous ethnic groups different from his. He became involved with other students who, like himself, were harassed and suffered from bullying due to their…

This article describes the profound changes experienced by the author during the two years she spent as part of the 52nd Street Project Teen Ensemble, playing the part of "Julia" in Shakespeare's musical play "The Two Gentlemen of Verona." The author reports the difficulty of playing the role, since the character was so…

This article describes John Kelleher's experience in observing the creations of his preschool daughter. Both he and his wife are formally trained in the arts, and looked forward to guiding their daughter down an artistic path. In his mind, what makes a great artist usually involves a great deal of technical ability and commitment to a complex…