Professional Development Articles

Magazines and Textbooks

As an art educator, two of your greatest resources for staff development are professional magazines and art textbooks. They both contain articles on artists, lessons, product information, and other valuable offerings for art teachers.

Professional Magazines

There are several professional art magazines, including some that are geared toward the philosophical side of education. There are even art product magazines that inform the reader of new products and offer tips on how to use those that have been around awhile.
Members of art education associations often have the option of receiving the association’s magazines with their membership.

Other magazines focus specifically on lessons for the art room. These magazines include color images of student work and step-by-step instructions for art lessons. The magazines also offer art teachers:

• ideas on how to use materials
• lesson plan ideas
• motivational prompts for lessons
• information about new products
• biographies of new artists
• articles about student artists

If your art budget does not include funds for art publications, you might find such magazines in your school library or local library.

Textbooks

Textbooks offer multiple opportunities for professional development. Textbook programs provide a vast array of information and materials that any art educator would benefit from. Some of the offerings in art textbook programs are:

• background on artists
• works of art
• a variety of media and processes
• formatted lessons
• latest information on careers in art
• ancillaries, including prints and transparencies
• assessment information
• cross-curricular activities
• Web sites for teachers and students
• videos

Textbooks are rich in both text and images, and are interesting to students and educators alike.

Both magazines and textbooks offer teachers a wide variety of resources for the art classroom and their own professional development.