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Arts Integration in Education: Teachers as Agents of Change
Arts Integration in Education: Teachers as Agents of Change
Arts Integration in Education: Teachers as Agents of Change
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Arts Integration in Education: Teachers as Agents of Change

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Arts Integration in Education is an insightful, even inspiring, investigation into the enormous possibilities for change that are offered by the application of arts integration in education. Presentingresearch from a range of settings, from pre-school to university, and featuring contributions from scholars and theorists, educational psychologists, teachers, and teaching artists, the book offers a comprehensive exploration and varying perspectives on theory, impact, and practices for arts-based training and arts-integrated instruction across the curriculum.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateJan 1, 2016
ISBN9781783205271
Arts Integration in Education: Teachers as Agents of Change

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    Arts Integration in Education - Intellect Books

    Imagination Quest (IQ) has deepened our district’s understanding of the transformative power of the arts and the purpose of the arts in our lives. The integration of the arts will be instrumental in supporting and enhancing our teaching and learning curriculum.

    Earnest Cox, Ed.S. Supervisor of Fine Arts, Providence Public Schools, Providence, Rhode Island

    In today’s world of educational accountability and standardized testing, the term teacher no longer embraces the work that we do with our students. If you’re looking for a road map to guide and provoke your thinking, pedagogy, and advocacy, that will transform student thinking into meaningful learning, this book is a must read – it will change the work you do with students’ educational lives.

    Richard J. Helldobler, Ph.D., Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, Professor of Communication, Media and Theatre, Academic Affairs, Northeastern Illinois University

    Effectively providing today’s student with twenty-first-century skills, promoting the idea and mechanisms of problem solving, is at the centre of the mission of many schools. Now, to bolster the dissemination of these arts-born strategies across the curriculum, comes this thoughtful blueprint, certainly of interest to educators and administrators across the nation.

    Laurie Mufson, Director, Burgin Center for the Arts Palmer Chair in the Arts, Mercersburg Academy

    We have not done enough in this country to put the arts on equal footing with other subject areas taught in school. This book makes a compelling case for a prominent place for the arts and arts integration in education. It has at its heart research and theory to support very practical ways that meaningful arts integration can be accomplished in any school setting. Read this book and be inspired!

    Jim Reese, Ed.D. Director of Studies, Washington International School; Consultant, Project Zero, Harvard University Graduate School of Education

    As a teacher of art and of gifted students for more than 30 years, it was my pleasure to participate in an arts-integrated Imagination Quest (IQ) residency with Dr. Humphries Mardirosian – not only as a learner, but as a host. Arts integration resonates with my own style of teaching, which provides a fuller background to lessons through visual arts, music, theatre, and dance. It is a delight and tremendous benefit to integrate the arts in teaching so that all students can experience and learn from the link that exists between their subject matter and the arts. This book aptly supports this link.

    Heidi Schloss, Visual Art Teacher (Retired), Baltimore City Public Schools

    The Finger Lakes Musical Theatre Festival & Merry Go Round Playhouse operates one of the nation’s largest resident touring youth theatres. Currently, we serve over 74 school districts in NY State, reaching 125,000 students with grade-specific, curriculum-driven programming. This book will have terrific relevance to our mission and vision, with our staff, and with all arts organizations committed to the next generation.

    Brett Smock, Producing Artistic Director; Lisa Myers, Artistic Director, Youth Theatre Finger Lakes Musical Theatre Festival, Auburn, NY

    Forecasters predict that new technologies, e.g., smart phones, will soon become a part of school education. I, for one, want to believe them, for I believe that such an occurrence would in fact open up much more space for the arts and arts education in our schools. I also believe that this hopeful and inspiring book can help us achieve the same goal.

    Josef Valenta, Department of Pedagogy, Philosophical Faculty, Charles University, Prague

    First published in the UK in 2016 by

    Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK

    First published in the USA in 2016 by

    Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street,

    Chicago, IL 60637, USA

    Copyright © 2016 Intellect Ltd

    All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.

    A catalogue record for this book is available from the

    British Library.

    Cover image: IMAGINATION AND DISCOVERY at Imagination Stage, Inc., Bethesda, MD, USA.

    Artist: Heidi Lippman © IMAGINE 2003

    Photo: Robert Lautman

    Cover note: The linear pattern forms of Heidi Lippman’s cover image— a sunflower, shell, astronomical magnetic field—graces the terrazzo flooring of Imagination Stage, Inc., in Bethesda, MD, USA. It symbolizes imagination and discovery, i.e., the transforming nature of Imagination Stage. It is influenced by the Fibonacci sequence of numbers, a discovery of the thirteenth century mathematician, Leonardo Fibonacci, and represents a patterning of growth spirals found in nature that never repeat: 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, obtained by the summation of successivepairs of numbers (1+2=3, 2+3=5, 3+5=8...).

    Cover designer: Stephanie Sarlos

    Copy-editor: MPS Technologies

    Production manager: Tim Mitchell

    Typesetting: Contentra Technologies

    Print ISBN: 978-1-78320-525-7

    ePDF ISBN: 978-1-78320-526-4

    ePUB ISBN: 978-1-78320-527-1

    Printed and bound by Gwasg Gomer Cyf / Gomer Press Ltd, UK.

    Contents

    Foreword

    Acknowledgments

    Introduction: Teachers First

    Yvonne Pelletier Lewis and Gail Humphries Mardirosian, Ph.D.

    Section I: Theory: Foundations of Arts Integration and Teacher Training

    Reflection: Cognitive and Affective Frameworks for Arts-Based Teaching and Teacher Change

    Gail Humphries Mardirosian, Ph.D.

    Chapter 1: Cognition, Knowledge Construction, and Motivation to Learn: Models and Theories

    Lynn H. Fox, Ph.D.

    Chapter 2: Creativity, Collaboration, and Integration: The Ideas of Howard Gardner for Education in the Arts

    Anne Fletcher, Ph.D. and Seymour Simmons, III, Ed.D.

    Chapter 3: Emotional Aspects of the Theoretical Dimensions of Arts

    Nancy Thorndike Greenspan and Jacob C. Greenspan

    Chapter 4: School Reform with a Brain: The Neuropsychological Foundations for Arts Integration

    William R. Stixrud, Ph.D. and Bruce A. Marlowe, Ph.D.

    Section II: Impact: Training Teachers and Teaching Artists in Arts Integration

    Reflection: Transform the Teacher, Transform Teaching

    Yvonne Pelletier Lewis

    Chapter 5: The Imagination Quest (IQ) Way of Teaching and Learning

    Gail Humphries Mardirosian, Ph.D.

    Chapter 6: The Passion and Purpose of the Teaching Artist: A Connective and Transformative Power

    David Markey

    Chapter 7: Prepare the Teacher, Prepare the Student: Arts-Based Pre-Service Teacher Training

    Raina Ames

    Chapter 8: Drama and Action Techniques in University Teaching

    Sally Bailey

    Chapter 9: The Use of Drama in Teacher Training: A Czech Perspective

    Hana Kasíková, Ph.D.

    Chapter 10: Culture Clashes and Arts Integration at the University Martha Harrison, Ph.D.

    Chapter 11: Training Teachers in the Classics: Shakespeare in Action in the Classroom

    Lucretia M. Anderson

    Chapter 12: Training Teachers in Science Through Theater: How Did They Do That?

    Willa J. Taylor

    Chapter 13: Embracing the Energy of the Early Years: Training to Teach Through Theater

    Bethany Lynn Corey

    Chapter 14: Transformative Education Processes: Difficult Dialogues and Global Citizenry

    Karen Berman, Ph.D.

    Section III: Practice: Arts Integration in the Classroom, the School, the Community

    Reflection: Systemic Activation of Change: From Teacher to School to Community

    Gail Humphries Mardirosian, Ph.D.

    Chapter 15: Arts Integration for School Change

    Tanya Thomas

    Chapter 16: Reenergizing School and Community Through the Arts: The Little School that Could

    Patrick N. Pope and Carol Foster

    Chapter 17: Engagement in Learning: Inclusive Arts Integration Interventions

    Alida Anderson, Ph.D.

    Chapter 18: Engaging Students in Learning Through Theater Skills and Strategies

    Marjorie Gaines

    Chapter 19: Dancing with the Brain: Brain-Compatible Dance Education in University-Level Teaching and Community Outreach Programs

    Susan Taylor Lennon

    Chapter 20: A Story Impact on Pedagogy: Why New Orleans Matters

    Topher Kandik

    Chapter 21: Tell Me Your Story and I’ll Tell You Mine: Transformation Through Writing and Performance

    Caleen Sinette Jennings

    Chapter 22: Personal Stories as Motivators: The Playback Theatre Experience

    Tim Reagan, Ph.D.

    Chapter 23: Science Learning Through Arts-Based Instruction

    Leslie J. McRobie

    Chapter 24: The Bilingual Classroom: Teaching Through Verbal and Physical Language

    Elena Velasco

    Chapter 25: Arts Education: Systemic Change and Sustainability

    Kathi R. Levin

    Conclusion: Looking Forward: Infinite Possibilities for Teaching and Learning

    Yvonne Pelletier Lewis

    Editors

    Contributors

    Index

    Foreword

    Better Child, Better Town, Better Nation, Better World

    Robert L. Lynch, President and CEO, Americans for the Arts

    My personal passion is to create better communities. For almost 30 years, I have had the opportunity to travel to a different city almost every week to work with Americans for the Arts’ 3000 Local and State Arts Agency members because of my role as CEO. In my journeys, I’ve learned that a community is something different from a place. I get excited when I see not just good art in a small town or interesting sights in a large city, but rather a great, vibrant, inspiring community. People are interested in being in that place because it is a creative, evolving center. These people contribute to the community’s success and future, drawing upon its unique, creative, and renewing energy to make better lives. Art is always at the core in these kinds of cities and towns and neighborhoods, and in the schools that help produce the leaders and citizens who populate these communities.

    The creatively integrated community is the hope and the future of America and perhaps our world. But, nothing will happen without future leaders who internalize this concept and have the related skills and vision to make creative change happen. These leaders are being shaped today in our schools across America. That is one reason why arts integration is such a critical concept at this time.

    My belief is that the arts are central to shaping a meaningful education. That means qualified teachers teaching the full range of the arts in the curriculum, high-quality arts experiences in the community happening during and after school, and valuable arts lessons being integrated throughout the other core subject areas. This triad of arts involvement in a child’s education is a win-win all around. The child acquires knowledge of the arts that develops self-understanding and the lifelong art of learning. Through the arts, a young person connects with the outside world and gets to interact and understand the mechanics and value of community, whether it’s one like their own or one very different.

    When Americans for the Arts, along with the Conference Board, produced the Ready to Innovate report in 2008, our research showed that creativity was the most desired attribute that business leaders wanted in the twenty-first century workforce. We found that both business leaders and school superintendents put art at the top of the list for what actually helped produce that desired creativity.

    When Brigadier General Nolen Bivens, US Army (ret.), testified for Americans for the Arts before the US Congress about the need for increased federal support for the arts, he spoke about cross-cultural understanding acquired through experience with the arts as a way of creating human connections among people of differing beliefs and backgrounds. As a soldier, he saw the arts as a way to save lives and called the arts a national security priority for America.

    This book of thoughts and ideas about education, arts integration, and the critical role of teachers comes along at just the right time. We are in a period of reinvention in America. Today’s headlines scream out about the difficulties of change. Our government systems, our businesses, our communities, our schools are all struggling to find themselves in a new, competitive, fast-changing, globalized world. The arts, as always, are core to thriving in the midst of that change and that opportunity.

    DEFINING ARTS INTEGRATION

    Darrell Ayers, Vice President for Education and Jazz,

    The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts¹

    Following extensive research into various definitions available for arts integration (thanks to researchers Lynne Silverstein and Amy Duma), the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., concluded that the various approaches to the arts could be classified under three headings:

    •Arts as Curriculum – teaching music, theater, dance, visual arts

    •Arts-Enhanced Curriculum – using the arts as a hook to focus attention

    •Arts-Integrated Curriculum – where the art form and another subject area have equal importance in the learning process

    With further research and discussions about what is an arts-integrated curriculum, the following definition emerged:

    Arts integration is an approach to teaching in which students construct and demonstrate understanding through an art form. Students engage in a creative process that connects an art form and another subject area and meets evolving objectives in both.

    This definition clarifies the importance of ensuring that the process and outcomes in both an art form and the other subject areas are treated equally. (For more information related to the Kennedy Center’s work in arts integration, please visit www.kennedy-center.org/education/artsedge.) Many people are surprised to learn that the Kennedy Center is involved in arts integration. Indeed, it has been since the mid-1970s. As a federally mandated resource for arts education, the Center embraces many dimensions of the field:

    •School- and community-based arts programs that directly impact teachers, students, artists, and school and arts administrators

    •Systemic and school improvement through arts-integrated curricula, inclusive classrooms, and universal design in facilities and learning

    •Partnerships centered on the issues of arts education and arts-integrated education

    •Production and presentation of age-appropriate performances and educational events for young people and their families

    •Creation and provision of related educational materials via print and the Internet

    •Development of skills in the arts in talented young people and aspiring professionals

    •Strengthening of arts organization management

    The rallying point for many of these dimensions is arts integration in the schools.

    Much work has been – continues to be – done in the area of teaching the arts. National associations in the arts, e.g., National Association for Music Education, National Art Education Association, National Dance Education Organization, Educational Theater Association, as well as the Kennedy Center and other arts organizations, strive to ensure that, as part of their complete education, every child is provided the opportunity to take part in some form of the arts – music, theater, dance, and/or visual arts – and to be taught by a specialist in that art form. Arts integration begins with the underpinning of a quality arts program in a school; it includes participating in and learning about the rich tradition of American and world arts and culture.

    In 1976, in response to the limited amount of pre-service and ongoing professional development in the arts available for teachers, the Kennedy Center began offering professional development for teachers, assisting them in teaching an art form and/or using the arts in conjunction with other subject areas. Many teachers who wanted to use the arts to enrich learning in their classrooms lacked the skills and/or knowledge to make that happen. They had, however, seen evidence that students were more engaged when a concept or idea was delivered in an interactive, participatory manner rather than in a lecture format. This was particularly evident when a teaching artist, a visiting artist, or an arts specialist interacted with the students.

    Since those early days in the mid-1970s, arts integration has grown and changed. Proponents of arts integration have increased. Research has been conducted to show that arts integration in the process of learning improves test scores; that students engaging in arts for art’s sake and arts-integrated teaching and learning retain information better; that those students have a greater desire to remain in school; and that arts integration inspires greater creativity and innovation in a young person.

    In the chapters of this book, you will discover many theories, many references to articles and studies, and many comments about arts integration and its application. My hope is that, together, we can make a place in each child’s education where they study not only math and reading and the arts, but a place where they discover the interconnectedness of knowledge – academic, cultural, and artistic; where they experience the extraordinary breadth of the world as expressed through the arts; and where they observe and appreciate the importance of arts and culture in creating a civilized society. We must assist teachers in acquiring the best resources and skills in arts integration, so that they can act as agents of change for their schools and for society.

    AT THE HEART OF THE BIG EXPERIMENT

    Eric Booth, Teaching Artist, Arts Learning Consultant

    Arts integration is the largest experiment in the history of US arts instruction. And, it is risky. The gamble is that by bringing arts learning together with other curricular learning, both will be enhanced by the blending. The risk is that if the arts get used as a handmaiden to merely pep up boring curriculum, or if we link the importance of the arts to higher test scores (and then scores drop for any of a hundred other reasons), we have damaged the already tenuous place the arts hold in US education. If the gamble pays off, the arts gain a new value in the view of the US public and artistry becomes more widely defined than the current narrow public view of arts organizations and products. We had better get it right. I am pleased this book arrives to provide help.

    There is an embedded theory underneath the arts integration experiment (and the chapters in this book). The theory is that the artistic experience (as experienced in creation and perception) and the learning experience are intimately related. The successes of arts integration result from some dynamic spark that happens between those human essential acts. I think that intimate relationship is simply that they are the same thing – what we call an artistic experience and what we call a learning experience are different ways of describing almost identical internal human actions; they look different because they tend to happen with our hands on different external media. One deals with clay, physical movement, human interactions, sound and other artistic media, whereas the other deals with history, science, math, and English. However, when both endeavors are at their best, the individual (be she artist or scholar, younger or older) is making things she cares about. (That is my informal definition of art.) Teachers are the guides of that process, and teaching artists are inspiring exemplars of its validity and value; they are catalysts to release its power. The core question under the many rich chapters in this book is: What do we know about how our institutions and practices can help learners make things they care about in all media, artistic, and curricular? And, how can the arts serve in distinctively powerful ways to catalyze the dual agenda?

    Many years ago, in a live interview on a morning talk show on television, a peppy young interviewer asked me to close with a quick, clear distinction between art and entertainment. I babbled meaningless verbiage for the endless minute because I didn’t know. Afterward, I came to this conclusion. What distinguishes entertainment (which is not the enemy of art; please let it not be opposed to art!) is that it happens within what we already know. Whatever our response – laughing or crying or getting scared – entertainment says, Yes, the world is the way you think it is. And, it feels great to have interesting, exciting, beautiful things tell me I am right in my worldview. Art, on the other hand, happens outside of what we already know. Inherent in the artistic experience is the capacity to make those outside connections, to expand our sense of the way the world is or might be. As Maxine Greene says, to expand our sense of the possible.

    You will note that that definition of art – making personal connections outside of what you already know – is a good definition of the learning experience. A true arts experience (not just working with arts media) and a true learning experience (not just performing such acts as information regurgitation that pass for learning) are the same thing. In both cases, we make something we care about – a personally relevant new connection. We expand our world and ourselves just a little in that act.

    And, that act has power. It has the power to activate others. It has the internal power of what I call the bounce. The bounce is the amazing and predictable reaction we have when we make something we care about, even if the creation is merely a new grasp of an idea. The next moment we want more. It manifests as curiosity, or as another idea to try, or a new question. The bounce of intrinsic curiosity makes arts integration work. It makes for motivated learners, whose hunger to make stuff they care about becomes a habit of mind, and which self-guides the learning processes it creates in music, math, and in the five paragraph essay.

    The expertise of teaching artists activates and accelerates this process. I use the term teaching artists to describe that employment category of artists trained in the skills, curiosities, and sensibilities of educators, who work in partnership with school educators. (Thank heavens for them; they are irreplaceable catalysts in ideal arts integration.) I also include in that term all educators who activate artistic experience as a part of their teaching. Creative teachers in any subject area at their best are using teaching artistry to boost learning. We all seek to awaken the intrinsic motivation of the learner to make stuff he cares about in every subject area. And, when we bring those media together well in arts integration, we reform learning processes through teaching artistry.

    Let me close with a reminder about the single most powerful teaching tool we have, which is especially potent in arts integration. To dignify it, I call it The Law of 80% – using the word law to make it sound serious, and using the made up statistic of 80% because it captures a genuine truth. The Law of 80% declares that 80% of what we teach is who we are. Yes, our lessons and curriculum and handouts are important, an important 20%. In arts integration, your real influence is the arts-integrated awareness you bring to the encounter with learners – how you listen, see, discover, make connections, and bounce with curiosity with the learners. And, if you doubt the Law of 80%, think of the great teachers in your own life. It wasn’t the quality of their handouts that made you decide to redirect the trajectory of your life.

    We ourselves must live in the excitement of making stuff we care about with our students. And if we do this, and guide good arts-integrated processes such as those filling this book, we are all teaching artists who can make the crucial difference for every child in the room, in every classroom, in every school, and reform our schools to make things we as a culture care about, and to realize an expanded sense of the possible

    NOTES

    1The Center’s building itself is called the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.

    Acknowledgments

    Gail Humphries Mardirosian and Yvonne Pelletier Lewis

    We thank each and every contributor to this book for sounding an encouraging note for the individuals who are the central characters in the theater of educational change: our teachers, and their beneficiaries, our students.

    Our deep appreciation for the guidance and tenacity of our stunning project manager at Intellect Books, Tim Mitchell.

    Gail Humphries Mardirosian

    To my daughter, Maria Angelique Breeskin, a superior kinestethic learner who inspired me at every stage of her development to expand opportunities for learners in multiple ways.

    To my husband, Dr. Haig Mardirosian, a mentor who continually amazes me with his intellectual and artistic acumen.

    To three outstanding educators in my life… Margaret Emelson, who took me under her wing as a high school drama student in a small, rural town in Pennsylvania, and influenced me for life; Dr. Christine Fulwylie, who challenged me early on in my career to reach out to all students through the arts; and the indefatigable Evelyn Ordman, whose tenacity and courage propelled me to teach to reach all of my life.

    To Drs. Lynn Fox, Charlie Tesconi, and Fredrick Jacobs, professors who guided me throughout my doctoral studies and constantly challenged me to consider mechanisms by which to capture data to demonstrate the potency of the impact of arts education.

    To my parents, William Carroll Humphries and Mary Louise Humphries Rosenthal, consummate teachers who filled the lives of their four daughters with the wonderment of the arts.

    Yvonne Pelletier Lewis

    Thank you to Gail, and thank you to Bonnie Fogel, for introducing me to arts integration and encouraging my own integration into this brave world. This world has made me richer in spirit.

    Thank you to my family and friends, whose how’s the book going? buoyed me when the going got a bit rough.

    Thank you, especially, to my husband, Donald, for his love and patience, and for giving me the time, space, and support to work on this book.

    I dedicate my contribution to this book to my father, Edward Nazaire Pelletier, who, though he died in 1965, remains a sustaining force in my life.

    Introduction: Teachers First

    Yvonne Pelletier Lewis and Gail Humphries Mardirosian, Ph.D.

    When all is said and done what matters most for students’ learning are the commitments and capacities of their teachers.

    Darling-Hammond 1996

    At her commencement speech for American University’s College of Arts and Sciences on Sunday, May 9, 2010, then US Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano,¹ urged the graduates to embrace a practical imagination as they embarked on their various careers. Practical imagination and innovative thinking, she stressed, can be considered essential attributes for those who will thrive in our complex twenty-first-century world.

    While it is not our intention in this book to dwell on the shortcomings of the educational system in this country, we do acknowledge that the future of our children’s education must be faced with an eye toward keeping pace with the changed and changing world in which they are being taught – an eye toward developing imaginative and innovative human beings. Education is taking place in a globalized world that demands greater cross-cultural understanding. There is an increased dependence on technology as an educational tool producing learning that lacks imagination, creativity, or decision-making skills. Some teaching remains in the hands of teachers with one foot in a traditional, empty vessel mode of teaching. Current statistics on student achievement send a challenging message: our students are underachieving, if not failing. To cite an example, the National Center on Education Statistics reported in January 2013 that, nationally, based on the 2006–2007 9th grade enrollment of 4,284,842, the number of high school graduates in the 2009–2010 school year was 3,128,022. These statistics represent a graduation rate of seventy-three percent – a distressingly low number. What can be done – what must be done – to redress these results for the future? We, the writers of this book have all pondered this question in our life’s work. We believe there are multiple mechanisms that offer a solution, and we proffer the practice and implementation of arts integration across the curriculum as one of those mechanisms.

    This book has been written for and about teachers. We affirm that teachers need to be better aligned with the times and condition of the world as it is today. When Dennis Van Roekel, past President, National Education Association, stated, there is an indisputable need for change in public education, he also issued a national call to action. This call is not a quest for higher test scores, but rather for innovative and creative forms of instruction that lead to the reengagement of students in their learning and, concomitantly, to their greater academic achievement. We believe that while the call places the responsibility for education reform on many shoulders within the educational system, nowhere is it placed more heavily than on the shoulders of the classroom teacher. Teachers can be the major players in bringing about educational reform. Research emphasizes that they are the single most important factor and the key conduit through which students become engaged in learning. Yet, how can they play their roles effectively when many of them lack the autonomy to impose changes on the educational systems within which they work? How does the teacher embrace a practical imagination in his or her teaching such that it is not only directed at the realization of definitive learning standards and specific outcomes, but also exceeds those standards to generate a way of thinking and problem-solving that extends beyond rote knowledge to facilitate a greater depth of understanding? We, the writers, are convinced that arts-based professional development can imbue teachers with the mindset and the skillset that will permit them to not only address students’ given core learning standards, but also extend them well beyond the realization of content knowledge.

    We are not alone in this conviction. Myriad examples, stemming from national and international perspectives, can be cited to demonstrate the realization of practical imagination for teachers and students alike. The Lincoln Center Institute (LCI), for example, which is the educational cornerstone of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, advocates for the centrality of imagination and the arts in American education. LCI has done so since 1975 through a variety of initiatives – interestingly entitled practicing imagination – including a consultancy with the Seoul (South Korea) Foundation for Arts and Culture. LCI’s workshops support the premise that any effective reform of the educational system must begin and end with developing the habits of imagination of students. Sandra Ruppert, Director of Arts Education Partnership, aptly echoes this perspective, stating, Improving our education system to ignite students’ imagination, foster their creative drive, stimulate innovative thinking, and generate implementable new ideas is vital to the long-term economic interests of our nation.

    It is an essential challenge for educators, from kindergarten to higher education, to cultivate practical imagination to maximize each student’s unique mindset and skillset, thus optimizing creative capital. As the teacher’s creative quotient is expanded, so can the student’s be expanded. The result, ultimately, is a process of education that fosters the kind of student learning that uniquely qualifies individuals to address the issues of the times in which they live as critical thinkers and creative problem solvers.

    Daniel Pink, author of A Whole New Mind: Why Right Brainers Will Rule the Future (2005), posits that the future job market will change significantly. He believes that robots or computer programs will increasingly perform work, or the work will be outsourced. The jobs that will be available – and on which employers will place high demand – are those that cannot be done by robots, computers, or workers in other countries; in other words, those that require right brain-driven skills: empathy, knowledge of design, ability to think outside the box, independent/creative thinking. Pink asserts, We used to think of arts education as ornamental. Now we’ve got to think of it as fundamental. The arts are essential to building the cognitive skills our kids will need to flourish in the 21st century.

    If Pink is correct, and many educators believe he is, we need to prepare students now for tomorrow’s market place – to say nothing of tomorrow’s living – which will value right brain-driven skills. Ergo, globally, teachers need to be provided with the skills to incorporate empathy, design, and independent/creative thinking in their curricula.

    From our earliest days in education, particularly in the Pre-K through K years, we encourage our children to create, show, and tell. Our children are primed to learn in a way that develops their creative capital. Bethany Lynn Corey, in Chapter 13, for example, discusses ways in which we can embrace this capital, affording children early entrances into the creative process. Yet, unfortunately, as teacher accountability pushes teachers to deliver test-driven results, the emphasis on cultivating creative problem-solving skills and critical thinking decreases and loses its driving force. In an article in Newsweek (July 19, 2010), Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman discuss the work of Kyung Hee Kim (the College of William and Mary) on creativity and recent trends. Kim found that creativity is declining, stating, "It is the scores² of younger children in America, from kindergarten through 6th grade, for whom the decline is most serious. This assessment matters. As the article goes on to note, a recent IBM poll of 1,500 CEOs identified creativity as the No. 1 leadership competency."

    Howard Gardner, Professor of Education and Cognition, Harvard University Graduate School, aptly notes in Five Minds for the Future (2008) that preparing minds for the future is an extraordinarily complex and meaningful challenge requiring the nurturing of five minds:

    •Disciplining

    •Synthesizing

    •Creating

    •Respectful

    •Ethical

    Cultivating the five minds entails, for teachers from Pre-K through Higher Education, both the generation of an imaginative environment and concrete learning experiences. Gardner considers that the potential result of this nurturing is a citizenry made up of empathic innovators who can think globally and act specifically, and, as noted in Anne Fletcher and Seymour Simmons’ Chapter 2, which focuses on Howard Gardner’s theory of the multiple intelligences, a citizenry capable of creating a product of value to society and solving a problem.

    The views of the individuals we have cited were strongly supported in May 2011 with the release of the US President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities (PCAH) landmark report on arts education entitled Reinvesting in Arts Education: Winning America’s Future Through Creative Schools. The report puts forth five recommendations:

    •Build robust collaborations among different approaches to arts education

    •Develop the field of arts integration

    •Expand in-school opportunities for teaching artists

    •Utilize federal and state policies to reinforce the place of the arts in K through 12 education

    •Widen the focus of evidence gathering about arts education

    How will these concepts and these visions be accomplished? How does an educational system validate the integrity and applicability of practicing imagination in the classroom? And, how does the teacher generate creative problem-solving and critical and visionary thinking in his or her students under the imprimatur of the educational process? How, in fact, can teachers become agents of change? One answer – our answer – is through an education based on arts integration. Arts integration is defined as involving a comprehensive view of the arts unified and deeply immersed in other content areas (see also Darrell Ayers’ definition in this book’s Foreword). It crosses the boundaries of core subject and arts concepts … affective and cognitive modes of expression (Burnaford, Aprill, & Weiss 2001, p. xxxiii). In an arts-integrated education, arts instruction and inherent goals are given equal weight with content area goals, embracing the purview of Gardner’s five minds for the future (see this concept expanded upon in Anne Fletcher and Seymour Simmons’ Chapter 2). To prepare students for a new world, teachers need the tools, techniques, and strategies of arts integration to stimulate the body, the voice, the mind, and the imagination across all students and across all curricula. Arts integration presents information in multiple ways to give every child in the classroom potential access to knowledge. And, equally important, it gives every student greater enjoyment of time spent in the classroom – as evidenced by his or her greater active engagement in the learning process. An arts-integrated curriculum amplifies individual and unique learning capacities for both the teachers and the students.

    Again we ask, how can this be accomplished? Research shows that in order to expand knowledge, skills, and practice, the attitudes, beliefs, and values of teachers must be linked to their professional development from a perspective of "how do I and why do I" as active learners (Darling-Hammond 1996, 1998, 2006; Joyce & Showers 1996, 2003; Fullan 1991, 1993, 2009).

    Arts-based teaching is an instructional approach strongly aligned with brain research. This research posits that learning can be enhanced for teachers and instructional practices can be expanded when the professional development environment gives teachers opportunities to experience lesson plans, exchange ideas with their peers, and produce collaborative work. Hana Kasíková superbly illustrates this concept in Chapter 9. She states that in her work at Charles University (Prague, Czech Republic), dramatic exercises are used to provide teachers with not only a repertoire of teaching methods for the classroom, but also the educational tools that help them examine their profession, the conditions in which their work will be carried out, and relations they will have with other teaching staff.

    The research and experience of the editors and authors of this book – from educational theorists and psychologists to deliverers of pre-service training to in-service professional development to classroom instructors to performing and teaching artists – provide results that demonstrate why and how an integrated arts curriculum can contribute to teacher effectiveness and can result in higher achieving and more engaged students, regardless of social and cultural background.

    We cannot emphasize enough that the vision that is offered in this book is designed to work within rather than outside the educational system; it is designed to empower the teacher to integrate creative pedagogy that links to the standards of learning to which he or she must adhere. We further emphasize that empowerment is, first and foremost, derived from an understanding of cognitive learning theories and an affective view of intelligence (all encompassed in Section I of this book), prior to/accompanied by the active application of the theories (encompassed in Sections II and III). In other words, functional understanding precedes the form; arts-based teaching personifies functional understanding. This is demonstrated by the work of many of this book’s contributors. For example, Raina Ames, in Chapter 7, discusses how the theoretical readings assigned to her pre-service training classes are augmented by active teaching methods, e.g., students are assigned to represent their understanding of the theories using their bodies, singing a song, or creating drawings, rendering the theories into teaching tools. In Chapter 16, Patrick N. Pope and Carol Foster describe how an entire school is immersed in and transformed by linking their experience with and knowledge of arts theory to the academic and social life of the entire student body.

    The chapters touch, to greater or lesser extent, on all of the arts: drama, dance, music, and the visual arts, but they are not intended to delve into each medium separately. Theater appears frequently as the writers’ focus, because theater exemplifies a comprehensive integration of disciplines, whether they be musical, kinesthetic, linguistic, naturalistic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, or existentialist. Theater is inherently collaborative and, more often than not, encompasses all the arts. As such, theater has the power to reach a spectrum of learner characteristics. Examples of this can be found, for example, in this author’s (Gail Humphries Mardirosian’s) Chapter 5, whose work with theater makes use of visualization, music, and dance, and, appropriately, incorporates activities that guide teachers from an understanding of learning theories to their practical application in the classroom – eliciting many an aha moment in the process. The melding of artistic media is evident in in many chapters, e.g., Chapter 23, in which Leslie J. McRobie guides students to a greater depth of understanding of earth science via a student-developed Rock Opera, including a nod to Devil’s Tower via a song entitled You’re a Devil, Mr. Tower. In Chapter 15, Tanya Thomas taps into artistic talents of both teachers and students to design and construct a collage representing 100 dresses as the basis for a school project against the issue of bullying. In Chapter 19, Susan Taylor Lennon describes the connection between dance and the brain. And, in Chapter 21, Caleen Sinette Jennings discusses the impact of writing on engagement in learning.

    In the final chapter in this book, Chapter 25, which focuses on systemic change and sustainability, Kathi R. Levin asks provocative and significant questions of arts leaders throughout the United States to provide their learned perspectives on the challenges and opportunities for systemic change. She addresses not only advocacy as a necessary component, but also emphasizes the importance of meaningful connection and promoting a broad understanding and awareness of the value of what has been learned from community-based models of high quality arts education in schools. Three major thoughts emerge from the arts leaders: (1) the importance of keeping clear policy changes and outcomes at the forefront; (2) a focus on the big picture; and (3) students at the center of our efforts.

    The practiced, practicing, and visionary contributors to each section of this book provide viewpoints and perspectives designed to enlighten a broad spectrum of the educational arena, with the classroom teacher as the central character in the theater of educational change. The contributors’ collective voice sounds an encouraging note for systemic educational change; for the teacher as a critical agent of that change; and for Teachers First.

    REFERENCES

    Bronson, P & Merryman, A 2010, Newsweek, 19 July, 2010.

    Burnaford, G, Aprill, A & Weiss C 2001, Renaissance in the classroom: Arts integration and meaningful learning, p. xxxiii, Chicago Arts Partnership in Education, CAPE, Chicago, IL.

    Darling-Hammond, L 1996, ‘What matters most: A competent teacher for every child’, in Delta Kappan, vol. 78, no. 3, pp. 193–200.

    Darling-Hammond, L 1998, ‘Teachers and teaching: Testing policy hypotheses from a national commission report’, in Educational Researcher, vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 5–15.

    Darling-Hammond, L 2006, Powerful teacher education: Lessons from exemplary programs, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA.

    Gardner, H 1983, Frames of mind, Basic Books, New York, NY.

    Gardner, H 2008, Five minds for the future, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA.

    Joyce, B & Showers, B 1996, ‘The evolution of peer coaching’, in Educational Leadership, vol. 53, no. 6, pp. 12–16.

    Joyce, B & Showers, B 2003, ‘Student achievement through professional development’, National College for School Leadership, in Joyce, B & Showers, B 2002, Designing training and peer coaching: Our needs for learning, ASCD, VA, USA.

    Fullan, M 1991, ‘Professional development of educators’, in Fullan, MG, The new meaning of educational change, pp. 315–344, Teachers College Press, New York, NY.

    Fullan, M 1993, Change forces: Probing the depths of educational reform, Falmer Press, London, UK.

    Fullan, M 2009, The challenge of change: Start school improvement now!, Corwin, a SAGE Company, Thousand Oaks, CA.

    Pink, D 2005, A whole new mind: Why right brainers will rule the future, Penguin Publishing Group, New York, NY.

    NOTES

    1In August 2013, Napolitano became the first woman President of the University of California system.

    2Based on the Torrance creativity assessment, which measures creative attributes and creative strengths.

    Section I

    Theory: Foundations of Arts Integration and Teacher Training

    Reflection, Section I

    Gail Humphries Mardirosian, Ph.D.

    Cognitive and Affective Frameworks for Arts-Based Teaching and Teacher Change

    There are both massive and subtle implications derived from educational practices that apply current cognitive learning theories combined with Stanley Greenspan’s affective view of intelligence and recent brain research. The sum and substance of these theories and related research has deep significance for the practice of arts integration, offering perspectives that are operationalized in practices for students and teachers alike. There is strong consensus in this section that testifies to the expanded possibilities for learning provided by instruction that utilizes the performing and visual arts as mechanisms for influencing pedagogy and delivering content. The strategies and tactics of arts-based instruction clearly deliver the potential for developing individual capacity to acquire knowledge that is profound and multifaceted, and complexly rooted in neuropsychological factors.

    In Chapter 1, Lynn H. Fox speaks from the outlook of an educational psychologist as she investigates creativity and problem-solving, beginning with the roots of Piaget’s developmental model. She examines social constructivism, social-cognitive constructivism and behaviorialism, and information processing connected to arts integration. She challenges us to consider the perspective provided by current cognitive learning theories and theories of intelligence that gives credence to the connection between the theory and the practice of arts integration.

    In Chapter 2, Anne Fletcher and Seymour Simmons address experiences in higher education when Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences (MI) is applied to visual arts and theater coursework, catalyzing a profound influence on pedagogy and course content. Exploring the results of over 20 years of the application of the MI in cross-disciplinary coursework, the authors evaluate MI as a framework for meaningful and mindful exploration in the college classroom.

    In Chapter 3, Nancy Thorndike Greenspan and Jacob C. Greenspan discuss the impact of emotions on learning, discussing the theoretical foundation of the exceptional work of child psychiatrist, Dr. Stanley Greenspan. The Greenspans consider the further application of Dr. Greenspan’s prodigious findings and embrace the inherent power of emotion. Dr. Greenspan’s DIR model is presented in connection with the power of arts-integrated experiences to generate affective connections that stimulate thinking and optimize individual abilities for learning.

    In Chapter 4, neuropsychologists William Stixrud and Bruce Marlowe carefully examine the multiple ramifications of arts integration for capacity building and evaluate the neuropsychological ramifications of arts integration as they closely analyze areas of attention, self-regulation, and motivation. Their years of research and practice provide insight into the far-reaching potential of arts integration to generate school reform, if practiced with diligence and insight.

    Collectively, these chapters present a substantive and meaningful examination of the potential impact of incorporating arts integration in the process of learning for students of all ages – a process that is multifaceted and can result in a learner who is optimally activated, both cognitively and affectively. The findings and assertions in these chapters challenge us to consider the possibilities of offering an arts-integrated education on an ongoing, regularized basis. They compel us to consider the deep implications of the cumulative results for the next generation of learners – a resounding what if – what if this instruction were delivered on a regularized and sequential basis?

    The views expressed in Section I have profound implications for education and provide a cogent rationale for the inclusion of arts integration in the process of instruction for all students, a process that begins with the individual teacher or teaching artist who embraces the arts-integrated pedagogy to facilitate the variety of learners that exists in every classroom. Teaching artists and classroom teachers – from the preschool instructor to the professor in higher education – can truly function as agents of change and can provide exponential transformation to deliver a nation of intellectually and emotionally realized individuals. Each of the authors calls for learning environments that activate the greatest possibility for all students to learn, i.e., the possibility that their teachers are invigorated; that their learning is exciting; and that their perception is heightened with acute self-awareness and an acknowledgment of social responsibility that is both local and global.

    Chapter 1

    Cognition, Knowledge Construction, and Motivation to Learn: Models and Theories

    Lynn H. Fox, Ph.D.

    INTRODUCTION

    Learning is a complex task and the process of learning may vary based on characteristics of the learner, prior experiences of the learner, characteristics of the material to be mastered, the learning environment or context, and the instructional strategies that are employed. Theories or models of learning focus on or emphasize these dimensions in varying degrees. Most of the models begin with some assumptions about the nature of cognition and the interaction of learner characteristics with instructional strategies.

    Jennifer Book Haselswerdt teaches a Drama & Music class with students at Imagination Stage, Inc. (ISI). Photo by Eleni Grove, courtesy of ISI.

    This chapter reviews some of the theories, notably those that can be argued to support the value of arts-based teaching and learning or arts-infused curriculum. The first section of this chapter summarizes some of the major theories of learning that have developed over the past 100 years, including the work of Piaget (1952), Vygotsky (1978), Skinner (1953), Bruner (1966), Bandura (1986), and the Information Processing Model of Thinking. The second section considers briefly the ancillary topics of intelligence, creativity, and motivation, as they are closely linked to theories of learning and are relevant for developing models for instruction. The challenge for educators is to translate theory and research into effective classroom practice, a challenge that has been met by some of the contributors to this book. The third section of this chapter describes some models for instructional practice that have been developed based on theory and research. The chapter concludes with a summary of the implications of theory and research for the development of instructional programs and teacher preparation, particularly as they support the approaches to the integration of the arts into teaching and learning across the curriculum.

    A Note Regarding This Chapter

    In this chapter, the terms arts-based/arts-integrated teaching  and arts-based/arts-integrated learning refer to an emerging paradigm for pedagogy that embraces the notion of multiple intelligences and, concomitantly, multiple paths to learning. The paradigm assumes that divergent approaches to instructional practice are necessary in order to reach all students – either by incorporating some type of arts-based experience in the presentation of knowledge and skills and/or inviting students to actively experience and respond to learning. Specifically, it is teaching (or learning) that occurs when some form of visual or performing arts – story, dance, poetry, painting, drawing, sculpting, music, dialogue, and dramatization – is used in conjunction with content or skills in other curricular domains – reading, mathematics, science, and social studies. This type of teaching and learning, which can involve multiple media and modalities, enables learning by making it more accessible to students, by motivating them, and by helping them construct their own unique knowledge. For example:

    •Students read a story and then rewrite the story as a dialogue between the characters in the story. To do this, they must identify the key components of the plot and the role of each character in developing the plot. This dramatization activity can be done quickly as an improv game or built into a major scriptwriting project or extended to set construction and costume design.

    •A teacher’s lesson on fractions might use musical rhythmic patterns and have students clap those patterns, recognizing the difference in values of whole notes, half notes, and quarter notes. This can be done as a whole class activity or in groups to permit comparing and sharing the rhythm patterns that are created.

    •A mathematics lesson on ration and proportion might develop scale drawings of floor plans for a house or for a stage set or a playground.

    •Students studying the culture of Japan might be asked to draw pictures to represent what they have learned about life in Japan in terms of housing, natural environments, climate, and work.

    •Writing scripts and performing skits about important moments in history, such as the Rosa Parks Story, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, or the Women’s Suffrage Movement, may help students not only understand the historic moment, but also

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