The work of teachers and literacy specialists has a lot of potential overlap with that of teaching artists of visual and literary arts within early childhood education. When young people in preschools and kindergartens practice early art and literacy, these two areas build in a sort of symphony as youngsters tell stories, make drawings of their…

The classroom offers a unique and effective venue for community engagement and an opportunity for teaching artists to dive into a topic on both practical and theoretical levels, resulting in well-informed input. That well-informed input is then translated into thoughtful action. It is exciting to engage students early on in shaping their community…

A librarian and scholar discusses the burgeoning makerspace movement as a new context for teaching artist work.

A visual artist and teaching artist considers teaching as performative, conceptual arts practice.

Two mural projects in Brunei offer insight into the specific and universal aspects of public art education and community art making. This article describes how the author used his initiative and experience as a muralist to plan and implement two community art research projects in Bandar Seri Begwan, the capital of Brunei Darussalam. A premise of…

This section is full of stories from teaching artists working to clarify what needs to change within their practices and moving toward solutions--whether it's supporting a classroom of learners in new and unexpected ways, reassessing one's approach in the classroom, shepherding an individual child toward success, or professionalizing an…

Despite the significant role of pottery in preserving cultural identity and providing a source of livelihood to the people of Nanumba, their artistic development of pottery production has been stagnant. This has resulted in low patronage of their products, which is further accentuated by the influx of the plastics industry on the market. This in…

Writing about the teaching artist practice should mean writing about art making. As both teacher and artist, the authors are required to be cognizant of their own art-making processes, both how it works and why it is important to them, in order to make this process visible to their students. They also need the same skills to write about how and…

As seen in the previous section (EJ1039315) writing about teaching practice is more than simply reporting about what was done and in what order. When teachers zoom in closely to highlight the feel and tone of one particular classroom moment, lesson, or project, they create a microcosm in which many aspects of the individual teaching values,…

One of the hottest terms among public librarians today is "content creation," which involves stuff that library patrons make instead of simply use in a library context. Videos, music, fiction, paintings, 3D printed materials, websites--all these are made in public libraries, and will increase in popularity as more libraries shift from purveyors of…

In this article, the author talks about innovative high school curricula that engage students through the study of visual art in conjunction with critical study of history and social movements. Just as historians place a premium on locating and interpreting events in time, the visual arts are centered on getting an idea across in a visual form,…

In this review, the author focuses on the pragmatic consideration: How do artists do artistic research? Artistic research in the context of this review is about the connections and relationships among three primary domains: (1) the arts; (2) higher education; and (3) arts education. Broadly stated, all artists do research when they do art--whether…

This article describes a project in poetry and visual art that leads students to explore metaphor in generative and novel ways. The author shares what she and her teaching partner Ronna Pritikin have learned about fostering brave and joyful student artist and poets. "Be an Artist With Your Words" is a twelve-session residency, in which the author…

In this article, the author looks deeply into the thinking that takes place in the context of bookmaking projects. She argues that there is an additional and perhaps more compelling justification for the inclusion of book arts in the K-12 curriculum. This justification is centered on the learner. Bookmaking is a powerful and holistic means of…

A podcast refers to an interactive audio-visual presentation. In this article, the author focuses on four instructional design strategies he used in the podcast that had the greatest impact on his students' aesthetic experience with the work of art. The first strategy was developing questions that encourage personal connections that lead to an…