Art Education Commons^™

Polygon Quadrature And Dodecagonal Tessellation With Pattern Blocks, Gunhan Caglayan, Ben Kamau

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

The age-old challenge of polygon quadrature involves converting a polygon into a square of equal area. In this educational resource, we utilize pattern blocks, commonly employed instructional aids in K-12 education across the United States, to visually demonstrate the transformation of different equilateral and regular pattern block polygons into squares. This is achieved through the application of the area conservation principle and geometric congruence/similarity reasoning.

Citizen Scientists And Artists: Integrating Arts And Technology To Teach The Effects Of Climate Change On Bird Migration, Laura Fattal Dr., Heejung An Dr.

The STEAM Journal

Ways to incorporate climate change into K-12 curricula are of growing interest to many science educators. The International Cooperation for Animal Research Using Space (ICARUS) examines animal and bird migrations as a lens to understand climate change aiding educators with its emphasis on technological imagining in science and visual arts teaching and learning. This article presents an interdisciplinary unit pertaining to bird migration and climate change that integrates the arts and technology by placing upper-elementary students in the position of being citizen scientists and artists, leading to a culminating art installation project. The unit shows how a variety of digital …

Cultivating Ingenuity In Art Through Steam Picture Books, Julia L. Hovanec

The STEAM Journal

In what creative ways can educators cultivate ingenuity? This article features ten STEAM picture books and their possibilities in the art room and beyond. It equips educators to take on STEAM armed with engaging and inspiring picture books that foster creativity, inventiveness, and more while inspiring students to create, experiment, problem-solve, and construct. There is a focus on one substantive, integrated Art and Science lesson built on the provocative book Summer Birds: The Butterflies of Maria Merian written by Margarita Engle and illustrated by Julie Paschkis. Readers will leave with one complete STEAM challenge-based lesson plan informed by this book …

Challenge-Based Learning & Steam Curriculum, Diana Lockwood

The STEAM Journal

STEAM education is being integrated into elementary schools as a way to engage more students in creativity, hands-on learning, and problem-based learning also referred to as Challenge-Based-Learning (CBL). This article focuses on elementary educators’ curriculum design for STEAM and presenting students with open-ended questions phrased as a challenge as a way to raise student interest and achievement (DeJarnette, 2018; Hunter-Doniger, 2018). When students received challenges to solve, they felt more open to sharing their ideas since there was more than one potential right answer (DeJarnette, 2018; Drake, 2012). When implementing CBL, teachers act as facilitators using a constructivist approach as …

Creative Learning With Music And Mathematics: Reflections On Interdisciplinary Collaborations, Graham Johnson, Alesia M. Moldavan

The STEAM Journal

Culturally responsive content, accessible and inclusive tools, and meaningful interdisciplinary tasks can aid in developing equitable and creative learning environments. Music and mathematics are ideal disciplines for interdisciplinary creative learning. In this article, we reflect on our experiences engaging in interdisciplinary music and mathematics tasks with preservice teachers. In particular, we highlight specific efforts taken to design and implement a creative music and mathematics workshop for use in a mathematics methods course. Guided by these experiences, we offer examples of tools and practices that have helped preservice teachers collaborate, engage in inquiry, improvise, develop empathy, and take intellectual and social …

Book Review: Reckonings: Numerals, Cognition, And History By Stephen Chrisomalis, Milton Rosa, Daniel Clark Orey

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

This review of Reckonings shares our thoughts on the diverse insights presented by Stephen Chrisomalis’s version of the history of numerical notation. Chrisomalis suggests that members of distinct cultural groups write numbers as an active choice in accordance with their own sociocultural contexts, which reflect the influences of historical, cognitive, social, economic, political, environmental, and cultural factors. This book integrates comparative, cognitive, and evolutionary understandings on numerical cognition with historical and linguistic evidence on the use and transformation of numeral systems through the historical advancement of numeracy. Chrisomalis offers an interesting historical perspective on numbers that builds upon three main …

Drawing Parallels In Art Science For Collaborative Learning: A Case Study, Karen Westland

The STEAM Journal

This research paper explores drawing as a tool to facilitate interdisciplinary practice. Outlined is the personal experience of PhD researcher [name removed] in their physics/craft research project, combined with thoughts and opinions from collaborators gathered through group discursive interviews. Interdisciplinary projects face interpersonal and conceptually ambiguous challenges which can be addressed through adopting drawing techniques for educational purposes. Findings highlight that drawing can assist across a breadth of applications as a learning tool for everyone, regardless of drawing ability, to improve the functionality of collaborative projects. Specifically, drawing combined with other communication techniques develops a performative communicative approach that enriches …

Possible Adventures In Impossible Figures, Knarik Tunyan

The STEAM Journal

This interdisciplinary article aims to engage student into stepping outside traditional disciplinary boundaries by combining the arts, math, and programming. First, we explore a geometric pattern in the Penrose triangle. Then using the fundamental concepts of geometry, we find geometric relationship, calculate the vertices coordinates, and digitally reconstruct the Penrose triangle using coding. Students are encouraged to further explore this topic by finding another pattern, creating modifications of the Penrose triangle by changing measurements, or considering other impossible figures.

Steam Education Afterschool And Summer Learning, Tracey Hunter-Doniger

The STEAM Journal

This article discusses the potential of STEAM education in afterschool and summer learning programs. The author suggests artistic methods and pedagogies that can be implemented in the programs, such as TAB (teaching artistic abilities), art infusion, and Studio Thinking. Challenges are brought forward and essential factors are suggested for STEAM programs. This article outlines STEAM afterschool and summer programs as spaces that invite, encourage and provide a safe learning environment where the students have more freedom to explore and get a deeper understanding of the arts and other disciplines.

Indominable, Kathleen A. Fox

CGU MFA Theses

INDOMINABLE, Kathleen A Fox

The reformation of the feminine portrait from that of idealistic sexual beauty into a portrait of strength, community, longevity, transformation, and inane human foundational essence of societal value. This collection of portraits illustrates the uniqueness that is often overlooked for the fast, idealistic and instantly read images of women hailed as beautiful. These women contain a space they have earned with their strength of character, spirit, and unwillingness to be moved from their places of significance. Created with an expressive abstractive edge to traditional portraiture, these female portraits refuse to be easily glossed over, for their …

Visual Teaching Of Geometry And The Origins Of 20th Century Abstract Art, Stephen Luecking

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

As a group, the artists educated near the turn of the 19^th and 20^th centuries possessed greater mathematical knowledge than expected of artists today, especially regarding constructive skills in Euclidean geometry. Educational theory of the time stressed such skills for students in general, who needed these to enter the workplace of the time. Mathematics teaching then stressed the use of manipulatives, i.e., visual and interactive aids thought to better fix the student’s acquisition of mathematical skills. This visual training, especially in geometry, significantly affected the early development of abstraction in art. This paper presents examples of this visual …

Steam Lessons From The Forest: Ingenuity, Instruments And Autonomy, Tracey Hunter-Doniger

The STEAM Journal

This article discusses a case study of an environmental art camp that was modeled after choice-based pedagogies. At this camp the children were able to choose their activities, and taught how to think and work like an artist/scientist using a sketch/field book as a guiding instrument for their inquiry and empowerment. What was found was that three pillars of empowerment formed a foundational structure consisting of three interrelated factors that inspired the campers: 1) ingenuity, 2) a useful instrument, and 3) autonomy. Cultivating the artist/scientist habits gave the students the ingenuity or practical knowledge and understanding of how the roles …

Stumbling Into The Spiral: A Serendipitous Steam Exploration, David Rufo

The STEAM Journal

An artist-educator discovers how a STEAM-based approach to making art brings together a variety of subject areas in surprising ways.

Using Steam To Increase Engagement And Literacy Across Disciplines, Robert L. Long Ii, Stephen S. Davis

The STEAM Journal

This paper explores STEAM as a solution to improving student engagement and helping students improve functional literacy across the curriculum. While STEM is a fairly established approach to curriculum, researchers and practitioners are continuing to develop and understand STEAM and its place in school curriculum. It is important that educators foster this holistic approach to education and strive to participate in active research associated with STEAM. It is also most advantageous for stakeholders to understand the importance of arts integration and its use to support collaboration, innovation, and creativity within students. Key strategies can be used to support arts integration …

A Brief History Of Stem And Steam From An Inadvertent Insider, Lisa G. Catterall

The STEAM Journal

This article traces a history of STEM and STEAM from the perspective of someone involved in arts integration research for the last 35 years, and proposes a vision for the next steps. It also provides an assessment of the risks inherent in current trends of STEAM roll-out in schools, from the lack of resources for professional development to the burgeoning market in STEAM kits and activity books that do not lead to the original learning goals of STEAM.

16, Dan Mcquillan

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

This 15 word poem suggests that the reader count the words of the poem. Since every line has half as many words as the previous line, and since the poem urges the reader to keep counting forever, one imagines a total of 16 words.

Does Increased Access To The Arts In High Schools In The Los Angeles Unified School District Affect Graduation Rates?, Elizabeth K. Gile

Scripps Senior Theses

Determining whether the arts are beneficial to a student’s education is a widely, and hotly debated topic every year in the United States, with many studies published each year demonstrating the impact that the arts have on various educational outcomes, from increased test scores to higher graduation rates. This paper examines previous research on the efficacy of incentives and how students’ participation in extracurricular activities, from sports to the arts, could impact graduation rates. It also develops a model for analyzing the present value of a high school education to a student using a discounted present value analysis and conducts …

Young Chicanx On The Move: Folklórico Dance Education As A Mechanism Of Self-Assertion And Social Empowerment, Maya Salas

Scripps Senior Theses

In the context of Chicanx experiences in the United States, where varying generations of Chicanxs experience bicultural realities, this study shows how embodied knowledge performed through the body’s movements in folklórico dance by Chicanx youth from multiple generations, acts as a mechanism for reconnecting youth to cultural ties, reevaluating educational practices, and emplacing within youth, the ability to foster the confidence to express and create imagined futures. Data collection incorporated a series of interviews with eight Chicanx youth and adults who have either taught or danced folklórico in the Phoenix, Los Angeles, or Coachella Valley areas. Interview participants revealed a …

Engaging The Community: Reflections On A Steam Institute, Dennis Doyle, Yat-Long Sam Poon

The STEAM Journal

Staff at an elementary school working with artists from a non-profit arts integration professional development organization developed a highly engaging full day STEAM Institute to engage the community in experiential STEAM learning practices and to leverage the experience for systemic impact. This reflection considers the outcomes that went well beyond the original goals.

Music Performance Anxiety And Interventions In Conservatory And Liberal Arts Institution Music Students, Francesca M. Jimenez

Scripps Senior Theses

Music performance anxiety (MPA) is reported in musicians of all experience, levels, and genre. However, solo classical musicians report MPA more often and at higher levels than performers in other genres because of its formal culture and traditional structure. Within solo classical musicians, collegiate training greatly differs between conservatories that award a Bachelor of Music (B.M.) and liberal arts institutions that award a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.). In 2 studies, the proposed research examines the differences in general anxiety, MPA, and private lesson content between these two groups. Participants will be from the two groups of types of collegiate music …

Art, Math, And Physics; All About For, Chris Brownell, Steve Pauls

The STEAM Journal

Anish Kapoor’s public sculpture “Cloud Gate” and Frame of Reference.

Macromolecules And Monologues: How Science And Arts Classes Motivate Students For College, Alejandra Acosta

The STEAM Journal

This study investigates how science and performing arts classes motivate high school students, particularly students of color, to pursue higher education. The changes in funding and perceived importance of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) vs. Visual Performing Arts (VPA) classes and programs, as well as the underrepresentation of students of color in these areas, make this topic important. Existing literature independently examines the positive effects of science and arts classes on student success but fails to compare the benefits of these programs and to include the student voice. Through the use of participant observation, questionnaires, and interviews, this study …

Engaging Many Minds: Nurturing Collaboration In A Steam Context, Mark Dzula

The STEAM Journal

This field note describes a recent interdisciplinary project facilitated by Jeremy Gercke, an art teacher at the Bishop's School in La Jolla, California. The project creates ceramic tile markers for flora around the Bishop's School campus. The markers feature QR codes linking to websites populated with student content, including: drawings, information, and oral histories. In this project, Mr. Gercke synthesizes his interests as an artist; maximizes his social connections to mentors, peers and students; and bridges disciplines to create opportunities for interdisciplinary (STEAM) inquiry.

Ecoscience + Art Initiative: Designing A New Paradigm For College Education, Scholarship, And Service, Changwoo Ahn

The STEAM Journal

The paper presents a new initiative, EcoScience + Art, which blooms at George Mason University. The creator explains the background, history, and recent activities of the initiative, and also introduces an on-going special project called “The Rain Project”, a student participatory project to design, construct, and monitor a green infrastructure (i.e., floating wetland) for sustainable stormwater management on campus. The special project is geared to design and present a new paradigm to integrate college education, scholarship, and service. The relevance of the initiative and the special project to STEAM education is discussed.

Putting The Team In Steam: The Art Of Robot Making, Teresa Walker, David Thompson

The STEAM Journal

What began as a life partnership has evolved into an early learning STEAM team. Artist, David Thompson, uses science, technology, engineering and math, on a daily basis, to create robots and much more. Teresa Day Walker is an assistant professor of early childhood education. Through necessity they discovered their combined talents could be used to promote STEAM in early childhood. David and Teri teamed up to provide a nearly impromptu robot making demonstration for 100 kindergarten students. After reading their co-authored book, Robot Hide and Seek, both, clay based and 3-D modeled images were used to generate interest and …

Designing For Immersive Technology: Integrating Art And Stem Learning, Jane Crayton, Vanessa Svihla

The STEAM Journal

Students struggle to learn science, technology, engineering and mathematics concepts. The arts have been proposed as a means to engage students in STEM education, resulting in the idea of STEAM. This study investigates how two students in a six-week summer program solved technological and design production problems to create public service announcements for the immersive fulldome on the topic of water conservation. Qualitative data were collected, including interviews, observations, artifacts of student work and reflections. Qualitative analysis focused on integration of STEM content and practices with the arts. The study contributes to what is known about how people learn when …

Pigs Feet, Jesse W. Standlea

The STEAM Journal

My sculpture “Pigs Feet” has literal foundations upon casts of live pig’s feet. I locally sourced the pig’s feet before casting them. My sculpture makes use of a once cutting edge casting technology, alginate. Alginate molds were once the standard in dentistry. Alginate is an appealing casting material as it is refined from brown seaweeds, is both food and skin safe, it is suitable for educators, for artists and engineers alike.

Theatre As Education: Creating And Performing A Play With Elementary School Students, Sarah C. Lopez

Scripps Senior Theses

This paper is an exploration of the concept of theatre as education and what I learned about teaching, transformation, and failure through my thesis project. In order to explore these ideas, I reflect on my experience creating and performing a short play with a group of eight 2^nd and 3^rd grade students over the span of nine weeks. I pinpoint the parts of the process that worked well and discuss how these techniques and activities could be used to enhance curriculum and learning in the classroom. I also discuss which parts of the process failed and what I …

Labor, Vera Bauluz

CGU MFA Theses

I make sacred objects from scratch, from ready mades, from industrial materials, and sometimes from trash or recycling. I treat those objects with love and reverence to embed them with essence and soul. I propose conversations with objects exquisitely executed, that question our social order and the machine, easily understood by everybody, although still challenging our understanding of contemporary art.

The placement of the work and the lighting, as fundamental part of the installation, attempts to generate strokes of conscience that enhance human understanding and capabilities beyond a specific discourse.

Humor and sacred coexist in my installation and in my …

K-12 Students See Steam Everyday, Meghan Reilly Michaud

The STEAM Journal

Today’s students exist in a visual world. A new semiotic language has emerged in the digital age. It consists of an ever-evolving vocabulary of signs and symbols that one can rapidly decipher. Icons represent applications and functions on a plethora of modern devices. Sounds indicate changes and the start and end of activity. The exposure of new audio and visual media are part of everyday communication, now more than ever. The Arts teach our students to better perceive these cues and the information that they deliver.