Multi-age classrooms feature the purposeful grouping of students from two or more grade levels in order to form communities of learners. During the past 40 years, multi-age education has been examined in literature and research in many different ways and contexts. In the subject area of visual art, however, little literature can be found that…

This descriptive study investigates the bases used to support judgments of artworks by preservice art teachers at two large universities. Bases art teachers might use to judge artwork range from personal preferences, to cultural expectations, to criteria drawn from values of various artworlds. The 26 preservice teachers in this study used a…

Advanced Placement (AP) Studio Art is an influential force in secondary art education as is evident in the 31,800 portfolios submitted for review in 2008. From the perspectives of a high school educator and AP Reader, this author has observed how the constraints of the AP program can be used to generate support for high school art programs and…

The decline of artistic expression in late childhood is an ongoing and well identified problem in the field of art education, yet it has been generally accepted as a natural occurrence and irreversible attribute of normative development. However, this foreclosure of artistic learning has serious implications to the concerns of emotional…

In defining popular culture as inherently pleasurable, including the pleasures of transgression, the author argues that while art teachers now critique popular visual culture for its often-dubious ideologies, they are yet to come to terms with its transgressive pleasures. Teachers fail to engage with its carnivalesque, subversive qualities because…

This study investigates the widely accepted notion that spending more time looking at works of art results in better art appreciations. To this end, we examined the verbal responses of 34 non-expert viewers to works of public contemporary art. We structured and conducted the study in such a way as to compare, for each informant, examples of free,…

The explanations of 101 adolescents and young adults, who are fans of popular culture narratives and make art inspired by these phenomena, provide insight into why these youth were drawn to create fan-based artworks, how they learned to make these art forms, and what the creative activities mean to them. Emergent themes highlight (a) the…

This descriptive research focuses on the teaching experiences of two preservice art education interns and the meanings they attributed to their student teaching field experience. Of interest is how these preservice teacher interns have experientially formulated ideas on what it means to be an art teacher and how their traits of altruism, artistic…

This article addresses the need to rebalance 21st-century art education for inclusion and integration leading to fuller art engagement in an increasingly visual world. I expand upon the form versus content canon in art and offset the typically predominant use of sensory, formal, or technical qualities in comprehending meaning from, as well as in…

W. Reid Hastie, the fifth president (1957-1959) of the National Art Education Association, promoted the need for a scholarly venue devoted entirely to issues and research in art education and a place where related research results could be presented on a regular basis to the field of art education, as well as the larger field of education. His…

Volume 1, No. 2, of "Studies in Art Education," appearing in spring 1960, included an article by Viktor Lowenfeld titled "Creative Intelligence." Here, he highlighted his belief in the importance of creative intelligence to human functioning, linking it to creative practice as represented most purely in the artworks of children and untutored…

This essay argues for a fundamental change in the direction of art, its education and research that draws on Alain Badiou's notion of "inaesthetics" and negative affirmation as well as Deleuze's reorientation of "aesthetics." I draw on the inspiration of Vincent Lanier's critical spirit and Irwin Kaufmann's ideas on art, creativity, and research…

Arts-based researchers distinguish themselves from other qualitative researchers on the grounds that they use artistic processes and practices in their inquiries and in the communication of their research outcomes. Like artists, they operate out of a particular community of practice, with its own distinctive history of emergence, set of…

"Eternal return" is a condition that characterizes the world of art education and its scholarship, though it seems that the phenomenon goes largely unnoticed by many writing in the field today. The failure to name our work as part of an existing family of ideas, with themes that may date back to the years 1950-1970 or earlier, has implications not…

Reconceptualizing contemporary notions about creativity in visual arts education should be an important issue in art education today. Currently, creativity may not be a primary focus at National Art Education Association conferences or in its publications. There are recent indications that art education is a site where creativity can be developed…