The contemporary approach to art education focuses on content that is derived from a broad range of the visual arts with an emphasis on what can be learned from works of art. This is a significant departure from earlier aesthetic approaches which led to purely formalist criticism in the classroom. Based on the work of Arthur Danto, the author proposes that teachers develop student abilities to go beyond the visual level of artworks and enable them to gain access to the complexity of meanings that works of art possess. To exemplify this practice, an analysis of Adrian Piper's work entitled I
A unique afterschool class in making comic strips and comic books, taught by a professional comic artist, encourages both literacy development and identity development in adolescent participants.
Dance classes provide a model for afterschool and in-school education where multiple, “embodied” modes of teaching and learning enhance development and where risk-taking is rewarded rather than punished.