Teaching the arts as a second language: A school-wide policy approach to arts integration

The arts can be used to teach, not just as activities that enhance learning, but also as the primary medium through which students process, acquire, and represent knowledge. This means the arts can function as a language. If we accept this metaphor, and we truly want students to be fluent in the artistic languages, then the arts can be taught in the same constructive, sequential way language is taught, where the rules of the system are explicitly learned and fluency is acquired through regular application within a meaningful context. This article provides a framework for the implementation of effective arts integration in line with second language learning: Arts as a Second Language. In doing so, it addresses two common problems in arts education: when arts integration is disconnected from artistic development, and when discipline-based arts education is disconnected from other learning. Nine principles for teaching with an Arts as a Second Language policy are proposed. Ultimately, it is a call for pedagogical reform that enables equitable access for all students to learn in, about, and through the arts with school-wide policy that scaffolds artistic learning across the grades, embedded in meaningful contexts.     

Three Primary Color Wheel

This longitudinal study (2001–09) of two Hong Kong secondary schools highlights six issues with an integrated arts curriculum: first, integration of knowledge and skills negatively precedes the integration of learners’ construction of meaning; second, integration is perceived as challenging the profession's status; third, teachers are unaccustomed to co-teaching; fourth, teachers have little prior experience conceptualizing cross-discipline teaching and learning; fifth, Hong Kong's current systemwide education reform places arts integration as a relatively low priority; and sixth, because integrated arts curriculum implementation is not mandatory, the vagaries of individual school management create a plethora of integration approaches that confound the task of forging a common definition. Remedial recommendations include cascading “seed projects” to broaden teachers’ views of integrated arts and teaching, facilitating supportive school timetabling, and sharing integrated learning outcomes in the individual schools.     

Painting masterpieces on Walls

Arts organizations that partner with schools to design, implement, and evaluate arts education programs are rethinking traditional practices of evaluation to more directly engage school partners, artists, and administrators. External arts partners are also being held accountable for learning outcomes that result from their programs. In this article, the authors describe an urban arts organization that is moving toward an institutional culture that engages teachers, artists, students, parents, and administrators in a process of documentation and action research that enhances the ability to evaluate teaching and learning. This layered research approach within an arts organization enables participants to link teaching standards to student work and contributes to the larger dialogue about arts education programs in schools.     

Catalogue

The author presents reviews that identify success factors in music and arts education partnerships between cultural institutions and K-12 schools. She incorporates the evaluation of one Massachusetts partnership, Arts Can Teach (ACT), to examine the connection between partnerships and K-12 arts-program policy decisions. ACT is a collaborative effort among Boston's Wang Center for the Performing Arts, the Lynn Public Schools, and LynnArts, which matched music specialists and teachers in other disciplines with practicing artists for oneyear partnerships. Success factors of the ACT partnership are considered in terms of their similarity to success factors from the literature on music education partnerships. The author discusses implications for increasing and sustaining music and arts education programming and local arts education policy development.     

Arts Education Partnerships: Informing Policy through the Development of Culture and Creativity within a Collaborative Project Approach

Arts education partnerships have become an important means for developing and sustaining school arts programs that engage students, teachers, and communities. Tapping into additional perspectives, resources, and support from arts agencies and postsecondary institutions, arts education partnerships strengthen arts education infrastructure within schools and develop a web of sustainable relationships whereby stakeholders mutually benefit. This article provides a snapshot of an arts education partnership in action that develops creative and cultural competencies in middle school students through a theme-based collaborative project approach. This article informs policy by recommending support for arts education partnerships that develop social and creative capital among schools and postsecondary institutions and within the communities surrounding these institutions.     

Assessing the professional development needs of arts instructors working in multi-age classrooms

This article presents the results of a national survey conducted with 223 arts teachers working in public schools that feature mixed-age classrooms rather than traditional grade levels. The purpose of the survey was to identify the professional development needs of arts teachers working in these unique environments and to offer suggestions for policymakers who might provide appropriate training or foster the development of multi-age school sites. The results showed that most respondents (73.1%) were in favor of developing new multi-age training for arts teachers and revealed their preferences for workshop content related to organizational strategies, collaboration with colleagues, assessment, integrated curriculum, collaborative student work, research, and thematic instruction. The results also revealed respondents' preferences for venues, formats, and the scheduling of such professional development experiences. The implications of these findings provide a number of options for policymakers to weigh in planning optimum training opportunities for multi-age arts instructors.     

SongMakers: An industry-led approach to arts partnerships in education

Reported benefits of arts partnerships with schools range from improvements in students' motivation and engagement in learning to teachers' increased confidence in teaching the arts, and strengthened school and community relationships. Yet, in the scholarship on arts partnerships to date, limited critical attention has been given to the impact of programs primarily driven by government supported industry-based imperatives. There may be legitimate concerns that, in primarily servicing economic or employment needs, industry–school partnerships overlook social and interpersonal aspects of learning in favor of goal-orientated skills training to meet “the market.” This article informs arts education policy and industry directions by acknowledging this concern and reporting on the outcomes of an industry–schools partnership where industry “training” appears to be leveraging a number of more holistic student learning outcomes. Jointly funded by industry and government, SongMakers is an Australian artist in residence program that aims to improve the export potential of Australia's contemporary music industry and contribute to the implementation of a contemporary music curriculum. It involves professional songwriters and producers with international recording experience working as mentors to students who create and produce new music in intensive two-day workshops. This article outlines how the program is demonstrating emergent positive impact not only on students' music knowledge and skill development, and understanding of the contemporary music industry, but on engagement, confidence in learning, and self-efficacy. It does not argue that all industry programs can or will achieve such impacts, but that diverse kinds of arts partnerships in schools can contribute to a viable ecology of quality educational practice in the arts.     

Bioinformatics Projects Supporting Life-Sciences Learning in High Schools

The interdisciplinary nature of bioinformatics makes it an ideal framework to develop activities enabling enquiry-based learning. We describe here the development and implementation of a pilot project to use bioinformatics-based research activities in high schools, called “Bioinformatics@school.” It includes web-based research projects that students can pursue alone or under teacher supervision and a teacher training program. The project is organized so as to enable discussion of key results between students and teachers. After successful trials in two high schools, as measured by questionnaires, interviews, and assessment of knowledge acquisition, the project is expanding by the action of the teachers involved, who are helping us develop more content and are recruiting more teachers and schools.     

Learner involvement in art and design education assessment: The missing matrix in Botswana's primary schools

Art in Botswana primary schools is taught under the umbrella term Creative and Performing Arts (CAPA), a subject that encompasses various arts disciplines. The arts disciplines are Physical Education, Music, Design and Technology, Home Economics, and Drama and Dance. The subject introduces learners to various disciplinary knowledge, media, and techniques in the arts. This study focused on the visual arts as a component of CAPA. It investigated the extent to which primary school teachers involved learners in the assessment processes. The qualitative study involved 12 randomly selected primary school teachers from four purposively selected schools and four administrators purposively selected by virtue of their senior positions in practical subjects. The methodology was premised on Parlett and Hamilton's (1972) concept of illuminative evaluation, Black, Harrison, Lee, Marshall, and William's (2004) and Lindstrom's (2007) learner participation models, as well as Feldman's (1994) art criticism model. Data revealed that pupils did not meaningfully participate in the assessment of their own work due to teachers' limited knowledge of appropriate assessment procedures. Teachers did not share the assessment criteria, which were limited to numerical grades and comments such as good, fair, and excellent. Pupils were not involved in critical analysis and evaluation of their art and craft works while in progress. Teachers emphasized the end product and marking was done without any prior negotiation of grading criteria with learners. The study recommends a shared approach to assessment, which values both the process and product of artistic engagement by the learner. Teacher education programs are encouraged to seriously consider assessment of the arts, particularly self assessment as it is this critical dimension that measures children's artistic growth and development.     

Seeking a higher level of arts integration across the curriculum

To seek a higher level of arts integration across the education curriculum, I investigated designs of teaching through arts activities that would motivate educators to adopt the spirit of “aesthetic teaching.” Two different designs were tested, with the second as a continuation of the first. Each ascribes a different educational role to arts activities—in the first design the role of art is that of a teaching medium, while in the second its role is as a teaching approach to the taught subject. The study followed the steps of a “teaching design experiment.” The preschool teachers who constituted the sample used these activities with groups of kindergarteners. The analysis of the data was based on the reports of the teachers, which were examined for indicators of “aesthetic teaching.” The findings of this study suggest that there is a correlation between the educational role of the arts and the level of aesthetic orientation of educators in applying arts integration. Generally, the sample experienced the second design (in which the role of art is that of a teaching approach to the taught subject) as more of an aesthetic teaching situation than the first design (in which the role of art is that of a teaching medium).     

Dancing to the top: How collective action revitalized arts education in Boston

In 2009, a group of local foundations, the school district, arts organizations, and the Mayor's Office launched the Boston Public Schools Arts Education Initiative (BPS-AE)—a multiyear, citywide, public–private initiative aimed at increasing BPS students' access to in-school arts education. Managed by a strong local intermediary with deep experience in education, this initiative used several complementary, overlaid strategies: direct service, system building, and community engagement—all of which were supported by a philanthropic collaborative of local and national funders. Today, 17,000 more BPS students receive arts education; nearly 130 additional full-time certified arts teachers have been hired; and district spending on arts has risen to $26 million annually, compared to $15 million in 2009. There is also growing demand from the larger community for more and better arts education. In 2015, BPS-AE produced a case study that provides a more detailed explication of the multitiered strategy it used to achieve these results. The study offers recommendations as to how other cities can involve diverse key constituencies to advance this kind of initiative, create leadership structures that support effective citywide collaboration, engage community stakeholders in participatory planning processes, leverage private philanthropy to boost public funding, and develop a centralized support system for school principals and arts teachers.     

Arts curriculum implementation: “Adopt and adapt” as policy translation

This article examines macro, meso, and micro understandings of policy enactment within Western Australian primary school arts education where a new national arts curriculum is being revised and implemented through a process colloquially known as “adopt and adapt.” This article focuses on how a government-led implementation policy has influenced arts teaching and learning in unintended ways. It Includes a theoretical reflection and a consideration of the effects of such policies. Using policy enactment theory as the enquiry lens, four contextual variables are highlighted for their impact on teachers and schools. The variables include situated contexts, material contexts, professional cultures, and external factors. Effects are discussed through the perspectives of 11 arts curriculum leaders drawn from in-depth semi-structured interviews. Marginalization of the arts, the disconnection of schools and teachers to the arts and professional learning impacts are discussed as results of this policy translation.     

The development of STEAM educational policy to promote student creativity and social empowerment

ABSTRACT

The Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM) movement argues that broad-based education that promotes creativity recognizes student learning diversity, increases student engagement and can potentially enhance Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) learning by embracing cross-cutting translational skills common to STEM and arts and design disciplines. This article describes and discusses the advocacy strategy designed at Rhode Island School of Design to promote STEAM education policy. Recommendations presented include (a) recognition of the arts (and design) as core subjects alongside STEM; (b) addressing issues of equity/resources to deliver arts education; (c) calling for research into potential outcomes of STEAM educational models; and (d) funding for professional development and latitude for teachers to explore interdisciplinary learning.     

Building a BRIDGE for the integration of heterogeneous data from functional genomics into a platform for systems biology

The flood of data acquired from the increasing number of publicly available genomes has led to new demands for bioinformatics software. With the growing amount of information resulting from high throughput experiments new questions arise that often focus on the comparison of genes, genomes, and their expression profiles. Inferring new knowledge by combining different kinds of "post-genomics" data obviously necessitates the development of new approaches that allow the integration of variable data sources into a flexible framework. In this paper, we describe our concept for the integration of heterogeneous data into a platform for systems biology. We have implemented a Bioinformatics Resource for the Integration of heterogeneous Data from Genomic Explorations (BRIDGE) and illustrate the usability of our approach as a platform for systems biology for two sample applications.     

Education Through Art

In this article, the author revisits a case study presented in Arts Education Policy Review 105(1) in September/October 2003. The author discusses Arts Collaborator's Incorporated's (ACI) efforts to educate the community about art and about arts opportunities in River City. Themes visited in the discussion are community development through the arts, and connecting economic development to education. Implications for the arts education community that the author draws from this discussion are (a) ACI has assets and connections that the arts education community may not have, (b) ACI uses its influence to teach and promote certain kinds of art, and (c) the arts education community needs to be aware of advocacy groups to maintain education standards and to fully use available opportunities.     

Collage in Aluminum

An immediate critical task of the arts education field is to resolve the polarities of low-quality integrative and overly marginalized discipline-specific approaches to teaching in schools. In pursuing this challenge, the author defines three teaching approaches—arts as craftsmanship, arts as play, and arts as inquiry—and calls for re-weighted proportional use of all three through thoughtful policy and restructuring within the field. The article frames what a coequal process of collaborative curriculum planning between different types of teachers looks like, and challenges schools of education and schools of arts to rethink their approaches to educating the next generation of teachers.     

Bridging the gap: How the National Core Arts Standards forge the divide between the arts and assessment-based learning

ABSTRACT

This article is a review and thematic analysis of the 2014 National Core Arts Standards (NCAS). Historically, there exists a gap between the arts and assessment-based educational practices. Thematic analysis of the NCAS reveals a policy striving to bridge the gap between the way arts educators envision arts in schools, and the current reality of assessment-based schooling in the United States. This policy could become the foundation for the recognition of the arts as academically rigorous subject matter, capable of existing and thriving in an assessment-oriented world; it remains to be seen as to how and if arts educators will use and adapt NCAS. Is the NCAS merely a symbolic policy or does it have the support behind it to be a material policy that truly creates change in the educational system?     

Evidence for unexpected higher benefits of clonal integration in nutrient-rich conditions

Physiologically integrated clonal plants cope better with spatial heterogeneity due to their ability to share resources among ramets. According to theoretical predictions and experimental evidence, such benefits of resource sharing should increase with higher patch quality of an exporting ramet and lower patch quality of an importing ramet. This study investigated the effect of spatial heterogeneity in nutrient availability on benefits of clonal integration under plausible scenarios of clonal spread, in which more developed ramets give rise to new ones. Pairs of mother and daughter ramets of a stoloniferous grass, Agrostis stolonifera, were grown in various nutrient conditions. Disconnected pairs of ramets were used as controls. Results showed considerable benefits of integration for developmentally younger daughters and no costs for older mothers in all treatments. Surprisingly, benefits of integration were more pronounced in nutrient-rich daughters, and allocation to integrated daughters decreased with increasing nutrient level of mothers. In addition, integration in general increased root-to-shoot ratio of daughters. One possible explanation of the observed patterns may be prevailing translocation of photosynthates rather than nutrients. Daughters also responded to nutrients by changes in clonal architecture. Number of stolons increased, and maximum stolon length decreased in high nutrient levels. Integration increased maximum stolon length in small daughters. The architectural responses are generally in accord with the foraging behaviour concept. Overall, our results suggest that resource translocation within a clonal fragment need not be easily predictable from a gradient of resource availability.     

Arts teacher evaluation: How did we get here?

Arts educators recently have found themselves in unfamiliar and sometimes-frustrating situations regarding their performance evaluations. The push for value-added models, effectiveness ratings based on schoolwide test score averages, portfolios, student learning objectives, and other measures of teacher effectiveness has dramatically changed arts teachers' evaluation procedures. Without sufficient knowledge of relevant educational history, these changes may seem to have emerged out of thin air. This article offers brief histories of teacher evaluation practices and teacher effectiveness/quality research, and discusses how the two histories recently collided to shape policy. Lingering questions for arts teachers are examined. Finally, recommendations are offered for how arts teachers can proactively deal with current and evolving teacher evaluation policies.