An aesthetically educated person may be understood to subscribe to values and possess dispositions that in important respects are distinctive. The respects in which such values and dispositions are unique and the methods by which they might be developed are, however, subject to interpretation. This article provides brief summaries of three…

"Back to Prosperity. A Competitive Agenda for Renewing Pennsylvania" was a shot across the bow for the state. The report's findings and the work of Richard Florida and the Social Impact of the Arts Project--taken together with the rich intellectual movement of music education during the latter half of the twentieth century and the…

This article defines media education and places it in the context of contemporary research on the arts, culture, and economic and social development. The author reviews current instructional settings where media analysis and media production activities are now occurring in K-12 education in Pennsylvania. This article then describes how other…

This article examines the "My True Voice Project," a mentorship-based program that uses principles of theater education to teach students effective oral communication skills. This project offers a unique model for how arts education can teach children vital thinking skills, strengthen traditional skills, and build community. As such, the…

The cultivation of a community environment that attracts the creative worker requires technology, talent, and tolerance. The creative knowledge worker seeks a community not only with technological resources, often including a research university at its hub, but also the presence of arts, culture, and diversity. The Social Impact of the Arts study…

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), signed into law on January 8, 2002, states that its primary purpose is "to close the achievement gap through accountability, research-based instruction, flexibility and options for parents, so that no child is left behind." The goals of NCLB, according to the U.S. Department of Education, include…

With ongoing professional development and with appropriate tools, teachers are able to internalize information-process skills. Once they understand these process skills, they are able to apply them to any media content and to transform their teaching, without the need for a "cookbook" approach, reliant only on textbooks. Instead,…

This article contains excerpts from a winter 2004 report from the National Association of State Boards of Education, "The Complete Curriculum: Ensuring a Place for the Arts and Foreign Languages in America's Schools." [C] The National Association of State Boards of Education, 2004.

In 1994, the National Association for Music Education (MENC) adopted nine content standards that have, since that time, helped to standardize curricula for elementary music education and have given curriculum writers a more well-defined goal for their product. The questions then arise: What elements in the history of music education in America led…

Secondary school theatre programs in the United States range from a single class or an annual play or musical to programs with comprehensive curriculums and production seasons headed by several certified theatre teachers. Whatever the size of the program, whenever adults are engaged in dynamic educational and artistic experiences with children…

This article represents differing perspectives on the creation and establishment of the Rhode Island Arts Learning Network (ALN). At the heart of this discussion is whether or not the Rhode Island task force in charge of this process took advantage of what noted public policy analyst John Kingdon refers to as a "policy window" where…

This paper discusses the 1997 National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) two-year study("Design as a Catalyst for Learning") of how design is being used in pre-K-12 schools. The NEA acknowledged the thirty-year contributions of professional designers who bring their content and expertise to the school classroom; however, the focus of the report was on…

This article draws on chapter 8 of "Art for Life: Authentic Instruction in Art," by Tom Anderson and Melody Milbrandt (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2005) [c] McGraw-Hill. Reprinted by permission.Why do people make art? And why should we teach students to make it? At the root of it, we make art to make sense of things, to give meaning to our existence.…

Among art education theorists and writers, university faculty, graduate and some undergraduate students, notions of visual culture are being advocated, played with, and adopted as theoretical frames for preservice and graduate art education programs. In this paper, the author addresses the gap between theory and policy, examines possible responses…

This article draws attention to three important aesthetic ideas--ideas which have become, in the early twenty-first century, so widely endorsed in Western culture that they have become the stock platform of much theorizing and teaching about our experience of art and its relation to the rest of life. All of these ideas sprang from Beat thought in…