With the current emphases on standards and evidence-based learning, it's time to revisit the question of whether standards liberate or stifle excellence in arts education. Assessment in Arts Education examines the pressing issues that educators everywhere and at all levels face as they make determinations about progress and achievement in the arts. Assessment in Arts Education critiques the application of standards in arts education and the extent to which benchmarks and attainment levels are practically and educationally sensible. It opens up an interdisciplinary discussion on arts-education assessment and provides helpful advice for thinking about assessment and evaluation. Leaders in drama, music, dance, and the visual arts detail how they've navigated the issues around assessment and tackled tough questions such as: How do assessment models shape teaching in the arts? How much guidance should standards provide for arts educators? Who benefits from national and local assessment standards in the arts? What contributions have standards made to the teaching of the creative arts? Meet standards and assessment head on. Read Assessment in Arts Education and find evidence not only of how your students think and learn, but of how the entire community of arts educators has considered and acted on the demands of these educational times.

EDUCATION / Arts in Education

Two purposes of this compendium are: (1) to recommend to researchers and funders of research promising lines of inquiry and study suggested by recent, strong studies of the academic and social effects of learning in the arts; and (2) to provide designers of arts education curriculum and instruction with insights found in the research that suggest strategies for deepening the arts learning experiences and are required to achieve the academic and social effects. The compendium is divided into six sections: (1) "Dance" (Summaries: Teaching Cognitive Skill through Dance; The Effects of Creative Dance Instruction on Creative and Critical Thinking of Seventh Grade Female Students in Seoul, Korea; Effects of a Movement Poetry Program on Creativity of Children with Behavioral Disorders; Assessment of High School Students' Creative Thinking Skills; The Impact of Whirlwind's Basic Reading through Dance Programs on First Grade Students' Basic Reading Skills; Art and Community; Motor Imagery and Athletic Expertise; Essay: Informing and Reforming Dance Education Research (K. Bradley)); (2) "Drama" (Summaries: Informing and Reforming Dance Education Research; The Effects of Creative Drama on the Social and Oral Language Skills of Children with Learning Disabilities; The Effectiveness of Creative Drama as an Instructional Strategy To Enhance the Reading Comprehension Skills of Fifth-Grade Remedial Readers; Role of Imaginative Play in Cognitive Development; A Naturalistic Study of the Relationship between Literacy Development and Dramatic Play in Five-Year-Old Children; An Exploration in the Writing of Original Scripts by Inner-City High School Drama Students; A Poetic/Dramatic Approach To Facilitate Oral Communication; Children's Story Comprehension as a Result of Storytelling and Story Dramatization; The Impact of Whirlwind's Reading Comprehension through Drama Program on 4th Grade Students' Reading Skills and Standardized Test Scores; The Effects of Thematic-Fantasy Play Training on the Development of Children's Story Comprehension; Symbolic Functioning and Children's Early Writing; Identifying Casual Elements in the Thematic-Fantasy Play Paradigm; The Effect of Dramatic Play on Children's Generation of Cohesive Text; Strengthening Verbal Skills through the Use of Classroom Drama; 'Stand and Unfold Yourself' A Monograph on the Shakespeare and Company Research Study; Nadie Papers No. 1, Drama, Language and Learning. Reports of the Drama and Language Research Project, Speech and Drama Center, Education Department of Tasmania; The Effects of Role Playing on Written Persuasion; 'You Can't Be Grandma: You're a Boy'; The Flight of Reading; Essay: Research on Drama and Theater in Education (J. Catterall)); (3) "Multi-Arts" (Summaries: Using Art Processes To Enhance Academic Self-Regulation; Learning in and through the Arts; Involvement in the Arts and Success in Secondary School; Involvement in the Arts and Human Development; Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education (CAPE); The Role of the Fine and Performing Arts in High School Dropout Prevention; Arts Education in Secondary Schools; Living the Arts through Language and Learning; Do Extracurricular Activities Protect against Early School Dropout?; Does Studying the Arts Engender Creative Thinking?; The Arts and Education Reform; Placing A+ in a National Context; The A+ Schools Program; The Arts in the Basic Curriculum Project; Mute Those Claims; Why the Arts Matter in Education Or Just What Do Children Learn When They Create an Opera?; SAT Scores of Students Who Study the Arts; Essay: Promising Signs of Positive Effects: Lessons from the Multi-Arts Studies (R. Horowitz; J. Webb-Dempsey)); (4) "Music" (Summaries: Effects of an Integrated Reading and Music Instructional Approach on Fifth-Grade Students' Reading Achievement, Reading Attitude, Music Achievement, and Music Attitude; The Effect of Early Music Training on Child Cognitive Development; Can Music Be Used To Teach Reading?; The Effects of Three Years of Piano Instruction on Children's Cognitive Development; Enhanced Learning of Proportional Math through Music Training and Spatial-Temporal Training; The Effects of Background Music on Studying; Learning To Make Music Enhances Spatial Reasoning; Listening to Music Enhances Spatial-Temporal Reasoning; An Investigation of the Effects of Music on Two Emotionally Disturbed Students' Writing Motivations and Writing Skills; The Effects of Musical Performance, Rational Emotive Therapy and Vicarious Experience on the Self-Efficacy and Self-Esteem of Juvenile Delinquents and Disadvantaged Children; The Effect of the Incorporation of Music Learning into the Second-Language Classroom on the Mutual Reinforcement of Music and Language; Music Training Causes Long-Term Enhancement of Preschool Children's Spatial-Temporal Reasoning; Classroom Keyboard Instruction Improves Kindergarten Children's Spatial-Temporal Performance; A Meta-Analysis on the Effects of Music as Reinforcement for Education/Therapy Objectives; Music and Mathematics; Essay: An Overview of Research on Music and Learning (L. Scripp)); (5) "Visual Arts" (Summaries: Instruction in Visual Art; The Arts, Language, and Knowing; Investigating the Educational Impact and Potential of the Museum of Modern Art's Visual Thinking Curriculum; Reading Is Seeing; Essay: Reflections on Visual Arts Education Studies (T. L. Baker)); and (6) "Overview" (Essay: The Arts and the Transfer of Learning (J. S. Catterall)). (BT)

Offering a conceptual framework for teaching the visual arts (K-12 and higher education) from a cultural standpoint, the author discusses visual culture in a democracy.

Studio Thinking 3 is a new edition of a now-classic text, a research-based account of teaching and learning in high school studio arts classes. It poses a framework that identifies eight habits of mind taught in visual arts and four studio structures by which they are taught. This edition includes new material about how the framework has been used since the original study, with new perspectives from artist-teachers who currently apply the Studio Thinking Framework in their own practice. It also reviews how contemporary organizations, educators, and researchers outside the arts have utilized the framework, highlighting its flexibility to inform teaching and learning. The authors have added a new chapter on assessment to introduce the practical and thoughtful ways that teachers are using Studio Thinking to assess and evaluate students’ work, working processes, and thinking in the arts. Praise for Previous Editions of Studio Thinking― “Winner and Hetland have set out to show what it means to take education in the arts seriously, in its own right.” —The New York Times “This book is very educational and would be helpful to art teachers in promoting quality teaching in their classrooms.” —School Arts Magazine “Studio Thinking is a major contribution to the field.” —Arts & Learning Review “The research in Studio Thinking is groundbreaking and important because it is anchored in the actual practice of teaching artists …The ideas in Studio Thinking continue to provide a vehicle with which to navigate and understand the complex work in which we are all engaged.” —Teaching Artists Journal

Discover the power the arts bring to every aspect of learning. Incorporating the arts in your classroom opens up new possibilities, expands the mind, creates a thirst for knowledge, and helps students become more open to the world around them, offering another way of thinking about, being in, and constructing our world. Too often classroom teachers face the challenge of teaching the arts without the background or support they need. The Arts Go to School explores every aspect of implementing and integrating the arts into both the curriculum and everyday life. It contains a wealth of classroom activities that help kids give form to their thoughts and feelings. This easy-to-use resource features chapters on each of the major art forms and shows teachers how to help students meet related curriculum outcomes: music--from composing songs and the elements of music to novel approaches to singing songs;visual arts-- from exploring pattern, shape, color, and texture to special events that feature mobiles, collages, and paper structures;drama-- from playing, moving, and imagining to communicating, improvising, and performing;dance-- from physical ways of conceptualizing to dance as a problem-solving exercise;media-- from being intelligent media users and using interactive media to taking a media field trip. The Arts Go to School offers a glimpse into dozens of exemplary classrooms where you can see, hear, and feel the arts bring learning to life. Checklists throughout the book provide handy reminders to key outcomes and guide teachers in thoughtful encouragement and assessment.

In this student-centered book, Debrah C. Sickler-Voigt provides proven tips and innovative methods for teaching, managing, and assessing all aspects of art instruction and student learning in today’s diversified educational settings, from pre-K through high school. Up-to-date with the current National Visual Arts Standards, this text offers best practices in art education, and explains current theories and assessment models for art instruction. Using examples of students’ visually stunning artworks to illustrate what children can achieve through quality art instruction and practical lesson planning, Teaching and Learning in Art Education explores essential and emerging topics such as: managing the classroom in art education; artistic development from early childhood through adolescence; catering towards learners with a diversity of abilities; integrating technology into the art field; and understanding drawing, painting, paper arts, sculpture, and textiles in context. Alongside a companion website offering Microsoft PowerPoint presentations, assessments, and tutorials to provide ready-to-use-resources for professors and students, this engaging text will assist teachers in challenging and inspiring students to think creatively, problem-solve, and develop relevant skills as lifelong learners in the art education sector.

2014 Outstanding Academic Title, Choice "What’s going on in this picture?" With this one question and a carefully chosen work of art, teachers can start their students down a path toward deeper learning and other skills now encouraged by the Common Core State Standards. The Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) teaching method has been successfully implemented in schools, districts, and cultural institutions nationwide, including bilingual schools in California, West Orange Public Schools in New Jersey, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. It provides for open-ended yet highly structured discussions of visual art, and significantly increases students’ critical thinking, language, and literacy skills along the way. Philip Yenawine, former education director of New York’s Museum of Modern Art and cocreator of the VTS curriculum, writes engagingly about his years of experience with elementary school students in the classroom. He reveals how VTS was developed and demonstrates how teachers are using art—as well as poems, primary documents, and other visual artifacts—to increase a variety of skills, including writing, listening, and speaking, across a range of subjects. The book shows how VTS can be easily and effectively integrated into elementary classroom lessons in just ten hours of a school year to create learner-centered environments where students at all levels are involved in rich, absorbing discussions.