Students periodically add to an Art Thinking wall at Havens Elementary in Piedmont, CA
Lois Hetland, Ed.D. (Harvard, 2000) is Professor of Art Education at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and a Senior Research Affiliate at Harvard Project Zero. With undergraduate degrees in music and visual arts, she taught elementary and middle school for 17 years. Her research focuses on learning, teaching, and assessment in arts and other subjects. Prior research includes teaching for understanding, meta-analytic reviews of art’s effects on non-arts learning, three US DOE-funded grants in Alameda County, CA; Qualities of Quality: Understanding Excellence in Arts Education; and an evaluation of Art21 Educators. She is co-author of five books (Studio Thinking, Studio Thinking 2, Educating for Understanding, and The Project Zero Classroom, volumes 1 and 2) and over 100 articles; she co-led the Studio Thinking Network, a monthly online conversation of Studio Thinking users, and was founding Education Chair of Project Zero’s annual summer institutes (1996 – 2005).
Jillian Hogan is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Siena College. In her research, she uses mixed methods to investigate what we learn through arts education and how those findings align with public perceptions. Her primary research interest is the teaching and learning of habits of mind in visual art and music education. She taught for six years in schools that specialize in gifted, inclusion, and autism spectrum disorder populations. When she's not reading or writing, she can be found knitting, spoiling her cats, or playing the piano poorly. www.jillhoganinboston.com
Diane Jaquith is co-founder of Teaching for Artistic Behavior, Inc. and a retired art teacher following 25 years in K-8 public education. She directs the TAB Summer Teacher Institute and is an instructor in MassArt's Department of Art Education for the Saturday Studios youth programs. She is co-author of Engaging Learners through Artmaking, The Learner-Directed Classroom, and Studio Thinking from the Start: The K-8 Art Educator’s Handbook. Her blog is titled Self-Directed Art: Choice Based-Art Education.
Kimberly Sheridan is an associate professor with a joint appointment in Educational Psychology and Art Education at George Mason University, where she is a founding co-director of the Mason Arts Research Center (Mason ARC) and directs the Learning in the Making Lab. Her research focuses on how people learn through making things. She takes a sociocultural perspective, studying how learning is situated in diverse and changing contexts with the advent of new technologies. She focuses in particular on creative production with technology and how technology can create innovative contexts of possibility for youth from traditionally underserved groups. Her work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and the National Endowment of the Arts. She completed her doctorate in Human Development and Psychology at Harvard University Graduate School of Education.
Shirley Veenema brings the perspective of an art teacher (elementary and high school), a researcher at Project Zero from 1987-2007, and a visual artist. Research projects include thinking in the arts, portfolio assessment, technology, and schools using multiple intelligences theory. While an instructor in art at Phillips Academy, Andover, MA, (1980–2015), she served Art Department Chair (2006-2012). Her current work as an artist is in media, mixed media drawing, and artist books. Collaborative media work includes five videos for the show Dangerous Curves: Art of the Guitar at The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and a series of interactive web-based documentaries funded by the Cultural Landscape Foundation. For several years she has followed the work of makers using archives to create work, in particular their use of online digital resources. Her artist book Witches, Magic & Early New England (2016) was produced as part of the Digital Public Library of America Community Representative program to showcase what makers can do with the DPLA online collections. The 5-part book, which tells a story that culminates in the Salem Massachusetts witch trials, has also interested educators looking for alternative ways of assessing student understanding.
Ellen Winner is a Professor of Psychology and Director of the Arts and Mind Lab at Boston College, and Senior Research Associate at Harvard Project Zero. She received her Ph.D. in Psychology from Harvard University in 1978. Her research focuses on learning and cognition in the arts in typical and gifted children. She is the author ofInvented Worlds: The Psychology of the Arts(Harvard University Press, 1982); The Point of Words: Children's Understanding of Metaphor and Irony(Harvard University Press,1988); Gifted Children: Myths and Realities(Basic Books, 1997; and How Art Works: A Psychological Exploration (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2018); and co-author of Studio Thinking: The Real Benefits of Visual Arts Education(Teachers College Press, 2007); and Studio Thinking 2 (Teachers College Press, 2013). She received the Rudolf Arnheim Award for Outstanding Research by a Senior Scholar in Psychology and the Arts from the American Psychological Association in 2000.www.ellenwinner.com