Why Arts Education?

Richard J. Deasy

Arts Education Partnership

www.aep-arts.org

Arts Education PartnershipArts Education Partnership

Founded and financed by the U.S. Department of Education and the National Endowment of the Arts in cooperation with the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies.

Coalition of more than 100 national education, arts, business and philanthropic organizations

Demonstrates through research and best practices the role of the arts in improving schools and student achievement.

AEP Goals and Activities

Deepen the knowledge of the nature and effects of learning the arts

Influence policies and systems that control resources and access

Identify and promote promising practices in arts education

Build a national infrastructure of support for arts education through partnerships

Public perceptions of the arts

Not cognitive – not ways of acquiring or expressing knowledge; physical expressions of emotion

You are born with the talent or gift; for others a casual, leisure pursuit

Not a pathway to college nor to a decent job

Research Publications

Gaining the Arts Advantage: Lessons from School Districts that Value Arts Education (1999)

Young Children and the Arts: Making Creative Connections (1998)

Champions of Change: The Impact of the Arts on Student Learning (2000)

Critical Links: Learning in the Arts and Student Academic and Social Development (2002)

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Critical Links: Learning in the Arts and Student Academic and Social Development

Funded by the U.S. Department of Education and the National Endowment for the Arts

Reviews 62 studies of dance, music, theatre, visual arts and multi-arts

Studies selected by teams of researchers from Harvard and UCLA

Most studies are experimental, using both quantitative and qualitative methods

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Findings: The Arts Involve and Develop Fundamental Cognitive Capacities

Spatial Reasoning: Organizing and sequencing ideas, concepts,

and images Conditional Reasoning:

Developing and testing theories Symbolic Interpretation:

“Decoding” multiple modes of representation

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Fundamental Cognitive Capacities Imagination:

Visualizing new possibilities for thought and action

Persistence: Sustaining concentrated attention

Resilience: Managing challenges; overcoming failure and

frustration

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It IS about thinking

“A work of art is above all an adventure of the mind.”

Eugene Ionesco, playwright

Findings: The Arts Involve and Develop Personal and Social Skills and Behaviors

Self Identity/Self Efficacy: Realistically valuing oneself

Social Tolerance: Respecting multiple points of view

Empathy: Understanding another’s point of view

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Rates of improvement in literacy are more significant for children from economically disadvantaged circumstances and those with reading difficulties in the middle grades.

They demand and reward active engagement in complex tasks that invoke cognitive, affective and kinesthetic “meaning-making” activities.

The multiple benefits of the arts and their particular significance for lower SES students makes their robust presence in the curriculum a matter of equity.

A Crucial Finding

Why the Arts Have

These Effects

Some Implications

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Third Space: When Learning Matters

How do the arts contribute to the improvement of schools that serve economically disadvantaged communities?

Comparative analysis of 10 “high poverty” schools

The Schools

Recognized by national, state or local processes for their high performance

Attribute their success to the arts

At least 50% of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch

What arts?

Classes in the art forms – dance, music, etc.

“Integrated arts” where the learning experience includes the content and processes of an art form and the content and processes of another subject or discipline – literacy, math, science, social studies

Partnerships with artists and community arts organizations

What’s My Story?, photograph by Samantha, Sheridan Global Arts and Communications School

Third Space: When Learning Matters

Key Findings Students are the epicenter of school

transformation and develop the habits of mind and dispositions predicted by Critical Links.

Teachers success and satisfaction increases

Parents become actively involved A sense of community develops within the

school and with the community

How and Why: “Third Space”

Entering a space where new sets of relationships emerge in creating, performing, or responding to works of art

E.g., a play, a dance, musical performance, a painting

Students at Peter Howell Elementary School Perform an Opera

Students in the Third Space

New perceptions and understandings of students – by teachers and peers

Affirmation of students lives, knowledge, abilities

Students full members of a community of learners: teachers, students, artists

The Role of Artists

Model achievement in the form

Understand and respond to the meaning and personal expression displayed in student work

Energize teaching in the school and give teachers access to community arts and arts venues

A Central Falls High School teacher congratulates a student on his performance

Learning Matters

The arts link school and “lived worlds” of students

It’s about them Become “agents of their own

learning” Motivated to learn The arts are “hard fun”

Destiny, quilt by Anyeli, Central Falls High School

Adaptive expertise

Swartz, Bransford & Sears (2005)

Efficiency

Inn

ova

tio

n

Novice

Adaptive Expert

Routine Expert

Frustrated Novice?

Teacher satisfaction

50% of all new teachers quit within the first five years

Teachers in these schools felt empowered, creative, and successful

Involving parents

Essential for school and student success but difficult

Parents share the success of their students in these schools

Overcome barriers of fear, language, culture

Enter the community of teaching and learning

Building communities

Communities, not cliques, in these schools:

Inclusive Outwardly directed to “perform”- to

serve The foundation of a democratic

society

Third Space: When Learning Matters

Key Findings Students are the epicenter of school

transformation and develop the habits of mind and dispositions predicted by Critical Links.

Teachers success and satisfaction increases

Parents become actively involved A sense of community develops within the

school and with the community

Learning Should Be Alive, Living and Breathing, Like We Are

--Poem by Deanna, teacher, Central Falls High School

Learning doesn’t happen between 4 walls. It happens between people. Teachers should not only be facilitators, but also lifelong learners, letting their students have a turn at guiding them. Schools should not live within the borders of Monday through Friday 8:00 am to 2:30 pm. Schools should be responsible institutions; responsible for educating, responsible for creating a positive and supportive culture, responsible for reaching out, pulling in, taking hold, and letting go. Schools should be the great collaborators of our communities; fostering global thinking, and global understanding.

SCHOOLS SHOULD OFFER HOPE

Schools should offer hope

“Hope is different from optimism. It is a state of the mind rather than a response to the evidence. It is not the expectation that things will work out successfully but the conviction that something is worth working for, however it turns out.”

Seamus Heany quotingVaclev Havel