Studio Thinking 3: The Real Benefits of Visual Arts Education

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 expanded, full-color 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.
New chapters for Studio Thinking 3: Students as Contemporary Artists: Building Agency in the Studio highlights how studio teachers support learner autonomy, including the ability to create increasingly self-directed artworks. Artist-Teachers examines how artistic practices and teaching practices intertwine and how the Studio Thinking Framework can nurture the relationship between them. Assessment is a Conversation introduces the practical ways that teachers are using Studio Thinking to assess and evaluate students’ work, working processes, and thinking in the arts. Studio Thinking discusses how the Studio Thinking Framework has informed teaching and research in visual arts, theater, dance, music, arts integration, STEAM, and other contexts.
The first edition of this bestseller was featured in The New York Times and The Boston Globe for its groundbreaking research on the positive effects of art education on student learning across the curriculum. Studio Thinking 3 will help advocates explain arts education to policymakers, support art teachers in developing and refining their teaching and assessment practices, and assist educators in other disciplines to learn from existing practices in arts education.
Book Features: An explanation of “art as thinking” that unpacks and clarifies how teaching art is the process of teaching thinking. An account of what Studio Thinking looks like in diverse contemporary settings. Models of studio arts instruction that illuminate what educators are doing to support students’ learning in the arts and why they are doing it that way. Full-color images with examples of student art throughout the book.