Set up: Establishing Purpose

It may exist tempting for a instruction artist to provide volumes of testify. However, a focused, brief fix of one to threequotes tin be enough to connect classroom teachers to the wisdom of the field.

DEFINITION: What is Establishing Purpose in an arts integration PD experience?

Classroom teachers want to know why they are learning new arts strategies, and how they will assistance students learn. What'due south more, teachers often carry a wisdom of do, and benefit from the opportunity to organize and communicate that wisdom within a professional community. Establishing a purpose involves articulating core beliefs nigh how effective didactics leads to effective learning.  This is larger than a discrete set of learning targets (see Learning Targets ), and frames the field of arts integration so that classroom teachers coagulate understanding of the theory, enquiry, policy, or multiple perspectives that support this work. This is the genealogy of the present work: what are its roots, relationships, and possibilities?

CHECKLIST REVIEW

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✓  How will you support your piece of work with a brief connection to theory, research, and/or policy?
✓  What are the quotes or artifacts from students or teachers that support your work?
✓  How will you present your show to support the specific purpose of this particular workshop?

PURPOSE: Why is Establishing Purpose important to an arts integration PD experience?

By establishing the purpose or importance of the work, the teaching artist supports classroom teachers' motivation and engagement as they begin to value arts integration processes. Novice classroom teachers oftentimes characterize arts integration as "fun," and while bringing joy into a classroom is a powerful purpose unto itself, establishing purpose can also help classroom teachers develop perspective on the power of arts integration to support meaningful learning, positive behaviors, and cognitive skills for their students. To become skilled arts integrators, classroom teachers demand a vision for the potential power behind the pedagogy.   A framework of purpose (Run across effigy) can likewise assist classroom teachers organize and rail what they are learning during a PD feel.

For example, when teachers clarify their own science/art integrated learning experience, they might reference the framework beneath to identify what kinds of thinking they were engaging in. When were they focused on noticing? Experimenting? Communicating? How did the artwork support the Science, and how did the Science support the artwork? As teachers examine their ain practices through this framework, they begin to imagine ways to inspire their students to notice the natural globe in detail, experiment with possibilities, and communicate through multiple modalities. Importantly, teachers use this framework to strengthen learning in both disciplines. (See Creating a Framework )

For students living in a rapidly changing globe, the arts teach vitalmodes of seeing, imagining, inventing, and thinking. If our primary demand of students is that they recall established facts, the children nosotros educate today will discover themselves sick-equipped to bargain with problems like global warming, terrorism, and pandemics. Those who have learned the lessons of the arts, still—how to see new patterns, how to acquire from mistakes, and how to envision solutions—are the ones probable to come up with the novel answers needed most for the future.
 Winner & Hetland (2008)

IN Practise: How might Establishing Purpose exist applied to an arts integration PD experience?

This component does not necessarily kick-off the very beginning of a PD experience; many education artists engage classroom teachers in integrated arts experiences outset, ask them to construct the meaning from that feel, and then connect that to what others say about teaching and learning through the arts. Framing the purpose can happen before, during, and/or after other instructional components.  It may be tempting for a teaching artist to have on the office of an arts advocate and provide volumes of evidence to back up his or her work. However, a focused, brief gear up of one to three quotes tin be enough to connect classroom teachers to the wisdom of the field. By focusing on the learning targets of the professional evolution experience, the pedagogy artist may establish relevant connections in a succinct manner. For instance, a focus on literacy may necessitate one or 2 quotes about reading comprehension, or cite a study in which students made gains on a reading test after learning through an art form. There are many means to communicate support for arts integration including theory, inquiry, policy, and anecdotal prove, and sources may exist local, national, or fifty-fifty global.

Arts Subject area Examples

Click on an arts discipline to view example.

In a three-24-hour interval professional person development course to learn about supporting struggling readers through creative movement, the teaching artist leads participants through a diverseness of motility prompts connected with Wonders She asks, "How does creative motility such every bit this support struggling learners?" Following the teachers' discussion and analysis she shares 2 quotes:

Research Quote
In a study that partnered elementary teachers with professional dancers to contain movement into their existing curricula, Gross (2011) revealed:

Assuasive students time and space to express themselves, to expel energy, to explore academic concepts through movement requires a paradigm shift within the traditional educational activity system. Participants in the project accept begun learning how they, as individual educators, can contribute to changing the learning environment to include all students. In essence, they are learning how to include every student, instead of leaving the alternative learners backside (p. 152).

Teacher Quote
 Movement is very helpful for ADHD and depression level learners. The "Motion and Freeze" or actions of the stories helped them retrieve more details, sequence, and recollect with meliorate comprehension.
                                                                -1st Grade Instructor

All Trip the light fantastic toe Examples

As role of the introduction to a iii-day drama/linguistic communication arts integrated PD class, the education artist presents the post-obit quotes to demonstrate three points: a) research supports the PD strategies and arroyo; b) teachers use drama strategies to help reach struggling students; and c) students are deeply engaged when learning through drama strategies.

Research
Researchers Rose, Parks, Androes and McMahon (2000) compared educatee outcomes from a drama-based reading plan to those of a traditional reading program. Students in the drama-based reading program (the experimental group) participated in ten-weeks of theory-driven, research-based reading comprehension instruction that used drama techniques emphasizing imagery, elaboration, and story element sectionalisation. Students in the traditional reading program (the control group) received a traditional text-based reading curriculum.

Results showed significant improvement in reading comprehension skills for the drama-instruction grouping in comparison with the control grouping. These findings provide evidence for a causal link between drama-based instruction and improved reading comprehension, and suggest that drama-based reading instruction may exist more than constructive than traditional approaches in improving students' reading skills.

Teacher Quote
 I accept struggled getting students to translate, explain their understanding, message of stories. By learning to use their imagination through drama, my students were engaged and more involved in learning the story. Student participation greatly improved for these lower level young students.
                                                     -twond Form Teacher

Pupil Quote
 I love drama! It is like a science experiment! Later drama we write and draw about what we did! Nosotros clap hands, make sounds, play with our imaginations, read parts of stories, show how we feel when we say words, and answer questions! I didn't know drama was so active! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh… I'K THANKFUL FOR DRAMA!
                                                                  -anest Grade Pupil

All Drama Examples

A pedagogy artist leads a two-60 minutes PD experience on connecting arithmetic patterns and multiplication processes with music and movement. Students will learn to create choreography that demonstrates their understanding of concepts through musical and kinesthetic modalities. The PD experience gives teachers a preview of an upcoming x-day residency and allows teacher to explore tools and strategies that they tin can acquire and implement independently. The instruction creative person outlines the purpose of the PD experience and the underlying rationale for the approach.

  1. Patterns are the building blocks of mathematics.
  2. We hear patterns in music, we experience patterns in trip the light fantastic toe.
  3. We tin can make connections between music, trip the light fantastic toe, and math.
  4. Nosotros can demonstrate our understanding by edifice choreography that illuminates the patterns in math and the correlating patterns in music.

The rationale for the workshop includes the following.

  1. The approach teaches what in math is chosen generalized learning, representing mathematical thinking in multiple areas. This involves college order thinking skills
  2. The approach encourages deep appointment for children.
  3. The arroyo involves students in creativity.

These rationales and purposes are referred to throughout the workshop and reinforced in the course of learning activities and in concluding reflections. In particular, the argument for music and motion in this expanse is carefully built because information technology's non an obvious connection for classroom teachers. The success of the workshop will depend on classroom teachers grasping the importance and efficacy of the approach.

All Music Examples

As part of a multi-twelvemonth initiative to develop arts-integrated strategies, an simple school participated in a series of full-faculty PD experiences. In gild to constitute purpose at the get-go of this procedure, the museum facilitators shared the post-obit enquiry example and teacher quote about the impact of arts integration on pupil date.

Research
The inquiry of Catterall and Peppler (2007) suggests that the visual arts may help boost student engagement and focus. These findings support the idea that integrating the visual arts with other content may assistance to increase engagement in learning. Their study of tertiary graders from inner city schools in Los Angeles and St. Louis revealed:

During arts classes, the unabridged class was engaged and focused 15% to thirty% more of the time than in their abode classrooms, depending on which participating class nosotros observed. Participating students were able to maintain college levels of focus and engagement in their home classrooms for longer periods of time when compared to their non-participating peers. Nosotros could venture a minor case for the transfer of increased focus and date from the arts classroom back to the domicile classroom based on these information (p. 557).

Instructor quote
 I was mostly surprised about the student'south appointment level. The students wanted to continue to read and research the Hot Spot Theory. Others loved drawing and sketching their understanding of fast processes. Overall, they were able to re-create what they saw and not merely record observations. They were able to get together and synthesize information by using art.
                                                                      -vth Form Teacher

All Visual Arts Examples

VIDEO EXAMPLES

Theory
Many classic educational theorists hash out the benefits the arts in didactics. John Dewey ([1934] 1980) believed the arts should be key to a child'due south experiences in American schools. He is known for having written, "Fine art is the most effective mode of communication that exists." Other theorists may not mention the arts explicitly, but accept developed theories that are broadly accepted and understood past educators, and agree tenants central to our piece of work. Vygotsky (1987) believed social interaction and customs are central to the co-construction of agreement. He said, "Through others, we go ourselves." Teaching artists might reference the piece of work of those who are known for their accomplishments in their discipline, not necessarily in an art form. For case, in a STEAM professional development experience, information technology may be relevant to quote Einstein (2009): "Imagination is more important than noesis."

Research
Enquiry differs from theory because it is based on systematic inquiry of human behavior. Some enquiry tells the story of the ability of the arts through numbers; quantitative studies succinctly and efficiently communicate student gains. For example, The College Board (2011) claims: "Students who have four years of arts and music classes average 100 points amend on their Sabbatum scores than those with less than ane year." Enquiry findings are readily bachelor through ArtsEdSearch, a hub for inquiry about the touch of the arts in pedagogy. It is important to note that many quantitative studies are correlational; they bespeak out patterns without actually claiming that the arts acquired this increase in accomplishment or beliefs. It is important for a instruction artists to avert overstating the power of the arts or classroom teachers may have inflated, unrealistic expectations.  Another valuable form of evidence comes from neuroscience and explains how the human brain reacts to a variety of stimuli; the Dana Foundation compiled an excellent resource entitled Learning, Arts and the Brain (2008) with a range of bear witness from the field of brain research.

Policy
Sometimes participants in a PD experience perceive a tension between arts integration and the serious business organization of school. Citing policy may encourage an educator to see that the arts are central to national goals. In 2010, Secretary of Didactics Arne Duncan said, "The arts tin can no longer be treated as a frill… Arts education is essential to stimulating the inventiveness and innovation that will bear witness critical for young Americans competing in a global economy." Such comments may help frame the importance of a professional person development experience in terms of national and global citizenship.

Anecdotal Evidence
The voices of classroom teachers and students in our own communities are powerful. Classroom teachers often write stories in their professional portfolios or final evaluations about what happened in their classrooms, what they learned, or what their students learned. Instruction artists may also have collected samples of student work or student reflections from their own classroom exercise. Quotes from classroom teachers and students can be insightful and funny while simultaneously sending a bulletin to participants near the real learning that is happening in schools and classrooms close to home.  Anecdotal information from classroom teachers and students should ideally come from the teaching artist who is facilitating the professional development experience.

It is important to note that the torso of cognition nosotros share about learning through the arts is always evolving. Years ago, Gardner'southward (1983) Theory of Multiple Intelligences was a popular way to talk about arts integration, nevertheless the theory has become conflated with learning styles, and enquiry shows that tailoring educational activity to cater to a learner's preferred way is ineffective. Recent brain research suggests that increasing options of representation, engagement, and action reduces learning barriers within classrooms through Universal Design for Learning (Glass, Meyer & Rose, 2013). The idea that the arts provide powerful pathways for learning by increasing variety in the classroom is present in both theories. It should exist noted that current research is constantly revealing new effects of the arts, and policies may exist in flux with changes in leadership.

Other Resource
Preparing Educators and Schoolhouse Leaders for Constructive Arts Integration
National Core Arts Standards: A Conceptual Framework for Arts Learning
Why Our Schools Demand the Arts