The arts can be used to teach, not just as activities that enhance learning, but also as the primary medium through which students process, acquire, and represent knowledge. This means the arts can function as a language. If we accept this metaphor, and we truly want students to be fluent in the artistic languages, then the arts can be taught in…

Authors and scholars published within "Arts Education Policy Review" have been diligent to investigate various topics surrounding music educator preparation, mentoring, retention, as well as avenues for continued professional development and growth. Linda Darling-Hammond and Robert Rothman, along with various chapter authors, address…

What role can district visual art administrators play in articulating an educationally valuable conception of creativity and in establishing a culture that targets creativity as an educational goal? How can art administrators help teachers implement creativity goals? How can they communicate creativity's importance to principals, parents, and…

This article investigates the concept of change for art education in times when the waning relevancy of postmodernity has brought about a set of competing post-conditions that point to an entanglement between continuity and discontinuity and to where the Now belongs to a future that is "not," prima facie, New. This temporal…

This article discusses strategies to decolonize the classroom through changes in course structure that place postcolonial scholarship into dialogue with emerging scholarship that seeks to unsettle settler colonialism. This pedagogical approach interrogates the very structure of traditional art history to critically explore how systemic…

An education reform policy and inclusive education policy have been implemented in Hong Kong for over a decade. As more students with special educational needs have entered the mainstream education system under these policies, Hong Kong's primary music classrooms offer a site where three policies interact--the education reform policy entitled…

While there is an established body of literature on teacher stress and on the factors that may make music teaching uniquely stressful, there has been little or no research on how the recent era of accountability influences music teacher stress. In this article, I review the literature on music teacher stress and on how accountability reforms may…

This article seeks to explain the disjuncture between the decline of music education in schools and the importance music has in popular youth culture and in creativity within the new knowledge economy. The data discussed in this article have been derived from analyses of major documents on curriculum reform as well as e-mail responses from music…

This article explores the special case of integrative teaching and learning in music as a model for 21st century music education policy reform based on the principles that have evolved out of arts integration research and practices over the past century and informed by the recent rising tide of evidence of music's impact on brain capacity and…

Teacher evaluation policy is a poignant and high-stakes issue. Driven by research, stakeholders are forging ahead with the premise that quality teachers are a critical, if not the most important, resource. As a result, many states are reforming procedures in response to educational reforms. The change to evaluate teachers in a systematic way has…

This article reports on the perceptions and experiences of general elementary educators as they engage in a school reform process that requires them to learn and implement an arts infused curriculum intended to raise student achievement on standardized tests in non-arts subjects. This qualitative study reveals not only how one arts-based school…

In a national climate of high-stakes testing, there is an ever-increasing need for policy that ensures high-quality arts education for all children. At the same time that arts education in K-12 schools is being diminished or eliminated, there is an ever-increasing body of research linking participation in the arts to various aspects of cognitive…

We compare epistemologies and aesthetics in the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme and the Australian New South Wales Stage 6 Visual Arts Syllabus, focusing on curriculum content, pedagogical praxis, and assessment strategies. Both curricula feature making, reflexivity, and critique. International Baccalaureate components are…

After 10 years of teaching art in public schools, Carrie Nordlund arrived at a state of query that set in motion her search for alternative approaches to learning. As she was feeling stifled in a seemingly sterile education institution with its overdependence on and pedagogy aimed at standardized tests, she came across a reference to Waldorf…

Over the past twenty years, constructivism, as a theory of learning, has taken on an increasingly important role in music education. Efforts to shift music education toward a more constructivist practice have significant implications for policymaking at all levels of music education. In this article, I seek to recalibrate our thinking about what…