Students as choice makers : integrating the visual arts with student issues

This study examined how seventh-grade and eight-grade Art I students could make integrated connections between the visual arts and a topic of personal significance to them. Additionally, the study focused on how integrating art and a personally selected topic affects students' understandings and attitudes toward the topic and the visual arts. Students first wrote about and researched a personally relevant topic, then made connections between their topics and the visual arts, and finally created an artwork based on their interdisciplinary investigations. The findings of this study support the ideas presented by prominent researchers and art educators who claim that students become more engaged in their learning when they actively construct knowledge derived from real-world problems.