In this commentary, Alice Wexler notes that as the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) become reality, teachers have reason for concern. She contends that this reform to public education has consequently marginalized the arts and exacerbated the inequities of people in poverty and those with disabilities. Teachers, principals and, ultimately,…

In December of 2010, blogger Michael Fischer created Common CoreZilla as a referent to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and as a forum to talk about teachers' fears regarding curricular change and new regulatory requirements. "Common CoreZilla" has served as both an icon of terror and a promise of manageability, yet, despite…

In a recent commentary in "Studies in Art Education," Helene Illeris (2013) discussed the idea of "performative experimental communities" via a critique of visual culture pedagogy and the romanticism of community-oriented art education in Nordic countries. Illeris underpinned her arguments with Jean-Luc Nancy's (1997)…

Recent scholarship in art education has introduced complex discourses of mothering, m/othering curriculum, (m)others), m(other)work, family structures that confront myths of the nuclear family, non-Western motherhoods, and disability. Feminist artists and activists have long confronted cultural constructions of motherhood and the pregnant,…

Despite the good intentions of art educators to have students seek and represent knowledge and consciously use language to describe what they see, the things educators think they should see and the signifiers that come out of their mouths (and through their bodies) always reveal that there is something else going on--between them, the teachers,…

The disability rights movement slogan, "nothing about us without us," has been trumpeted with such fervor that it is nearly a cliché. However, readers have never seen this phrase in "Studies in Art Education." Almost "nothing about us" has appeared in the pages of "Studies" or other major journals in the…

In this commentary, Laura Hetrick focuses on what is inherently missing from the art education literature about teaching future teachers of art--of addressing nascent teachers' personal, pedagogical, and professional desires. Specifically, she considers teachers' desires for power and recognition, their desires to love and be loved, and…

What are the capacities of visual arts curricula to engage learning within narrow frameworks of overly "scientistic" standards (Lather, 2007)? With growing emphasis in schools under STEM initiatives and evidence-based standards, the possible cross-pollination of effects that art education may have on a science-centric education may be a…

This commentary addresses the holistic-spiritualistic movement in art and its education. In many respects it may be for naught, but questions should be raised in a time of ecological terrorism and climate breakdown of a dying Earth. Belief as opposed to knowledge is always a question of ideology--that is, the "imaginary relationship" of…

Historically, art education has focused mainly on individual learning processes. Today, poststructuralist theories of subjectivity and subjectivation are challenging these modernist discourses by proposing more dynamic models of multiple and instable learning selves, always in the making. In this commentary, the author turns her attention away…

In "Postphysical Vision: Art Education's Challenge in an Age of Globalized Aesthetics (AMondofesto)" (2008) and "Beyond Aesthetics: Returning Force and Truth to Art and Its Education" (2009), jan jagodzinski argued for politics that go "beyond" representation--a project that radically questions visual culture…

In this response to Juuso Tervo's ("The Problem of Representation" in this issue of "Studies in Art Education: A Journal of Issues and Research in Art Education"), jan jagodzinski replies that the commentary has provided a brilliant review that precisely fingers the concerns he has with a visual studies approach and the…

Quality arts learning can be a vehicle for personal transformation. For more than 40 years, an unwavering belief in the possibility of such transformation has sustained the nationally recognized after-school Apprenticeship Training Program (ATP) at Manchester Craftsmen's Guild (MCG). Within school walls, academic standards position the arts as a…

Intrigued by Pillay's (2009) call for writing motherhood into one's scholarship and creating "liberatory intellectualism," the authors write this commentary to encourage exploration of and inquiry into viable metaphors of hands in poo and goo; performing paranoia, suspicion, and constant worry into one's scholarship; and moments that embody…

The "sink-or-swim" ideology is pervasive in the United States society. At research universities, for example, promotion and tenure are institutional waters in which faculty are forced to sink or swim with respect to publishing. Either they publish ("swim") or they perish ("sink"). In throwing faculty overboard, institutions assume that those who…