-The writing is beautiful, the ideas persuasive, and the picture it paints of the process of careful observation is one that every writer should read. . . . A rich and wonderful book.-
--American Journal of Education

A landmark contribution to the field of research methodology, this remarkable book illuminates the origins, purposes, and features of portraiture--placing it within the larger discourse on social science inquiry and mapping it onto the broader terrain of qualitative research.

-The writing is beautiful, the ideas persuasive, and the picture it paints of the process of careful observation is one that every writer should read. . . . A rich and wonderful book.-
--American Journal of Education

A landmark contribution to the field of research methodology, this remarkable book illuminates the origins, purposes, and features of portraiture--placing it within the larger discourse on social science inquiry and mapping it onto the broader terrain of qualitative research.

This book champions the arts as essential to the K-12 educative process. Exploring apparently oppositional approaches to the arts and their role in education, it provides both an overview of arts learning in and out of school as well as a set of "artful" lenses through which to regard non-arts teaching and learning. With strong implications for practice, the work celebrates inquiry and multiple perspectives as it explores a range of reflections on art, artistry, artists, art education, and the methods and results of arts-related educational research.

This inspiring book leads the way to a new kind of advocacy - one that stops justifying the arts as useful to learning other subjects, and argues instead for the powerful lessons that the arts, like no other subject, teach our kids. Jessica Hoffmann Davis, a leading voice in the field of arts education, offers a set of principles and tools that will be invaluable to advocates already working hard to make the case and secure a strong place for the arts in education. She also reaches out to those who care deeply about education but have yet to consider what the arts uniquely provide. This book...

This is the remarkable story of the Hoffmann School for Individual Attention, where the principal believed in a diverse, challenging, and challenged group of studentswith extraordinary results. With a definition of gifted that included all children, Ann Hoffmann embraced students that other schools had failed, and she helped them not just to learn, but to learn to love learning. Written with candor and humor by renowned arts educator (and Ann Hoffmanns daughter) Jessica Hoffmann Davis, this portrait will resonate with anyone who has known or been a champion of children. Ann Hoffmanns example...

In this follow-up to her bestselling book, Why Our Schools Need the Arts, Jessica Hoffmann Davis addresses the alarming drop-out rate in our high schools and presents a thoughtful, evidence-based argument that increasing arts education in the high school curriculum will keep kids in school. Davis shares compelling voices of teachers and their adolescent learners to demonstrate how courses in the arts are relevant and valuable to students who have otherwise become disenfranchised from school. This important book points the way toward rescuing the American high school from inside out by...