Comparing the effects of art education and science education on creative thinking in high school students

What is the link between art and creativity? The purpose of this study was to determine the role of art education in creative thinking. A causal-comparative research design was used. Arts and science high school students (N = 162) participated. Results showed that creative thinking in visual arts students in Grade 10 with high scores differed significantly from that in music and science students; however, this difference was not found among students in Grade 11. A main reason for this result in Grade 10 students might be the non-routine problem-solving process in visual arts education, in which artwork production is an important component in creative thinking development. Considering this result, it was concluded that the effect of different education disciplines—called education department effect—on creative thinking can be significant.     

Visual immersion for cultural understanding and multimodal literacy

ABSTRACT

When considering inclusive art curriculum that accommodates all learners, including English language learners, two distinct yet inseparable issues come to mind. The first is that English language learner students can use visual language and visual literacy skills inherent in visual arts curriculum to scaffold learning in and through the arts. Second, in facilitating a sense of belonging for students whose home language and cultural aesthetic may be different from those of the dominant school culture, an authentically developed multicultural art curriculum can guide self-efficacy and inclusiveness. Both aspects of teaching art for English language learners can have the added benefits of facilitating collaborative learning opportunities and increasing worldviews for all students.     

Drama as a valuable learning medium in early childhood

ABSTRACT

Theater arts encompass unique art forms comprising highly developed pedagogical applications apart from theater as performance. Specifically, the use of drama as a learning medium, referred to in the field as process drama, is most emphatically applicable to the education of young children. Young children actively gain skills in dialogue, collaboration, and creative problem solving, by collectively pretending, with teacher guidance, to be in an imaginative elsewhere—something most are well adept at from their own natural dramatic play. This article argues that ages 3–8 represent a critical time for children to benefit from process drama integrated into the curriculum and highlights the unique impact process drama can make when it is used to explore a particular problem, situation, or theme, referencing related national core arts. Documentation from well-established programs is presented, and recommendations for training drama teachers on how to work in early childhood and for early childhood teachers on how to integrate process drama into their curriculum are presented.     

South–South Comparisons: A Syntegrated Approach to the Teaching of the Arts for Primary School Teacher Preparation in South Africa and Australia

In light of the tendency to present the arts in an integrated fashion in many education systems worldwide, this article examines the consequences of integration for discrete art forms. In particular, we investigate the advantages of adopting a syntegrated approach to the facilitation of arts in teacher preparation. A specific comparison between the implementation of arts curricula in South Africa and Australia is made. The disjuncture between policy and practice in arts education that has been reported internationally needs constant monitoring. We conclude that the heart of curriculum transfer and transformation lies in the classroom.     

The arts in Brazilian public schools: Analysis of an art education experience in Mato Grosso State,Brazil

This article examines the relation between official policy on art education in Brazilian basic education and what is actually taught and done in public school teaching in Mato Grosso, Brazil. Making use of interpretative analysis, I directly observed art classes in schools selected in the state of Mato Grosso. I also analyzed the laws, guidelines, parameters, and other official documents related to art education in Brazilian primary and secondary schools and compared them to the observed practices in the selected schools. Specifically in Mato Grosso, there is a gap between the theoretical guidelines of these documents and what is taught and done in public schools. Conceptions of the discipline of art education in official documents are not in line with the practices of this discipline in the researched elementary schools, a discord that may contribute to art being misunderstood as a lesser discipline. Using the results of this research, I intend to seek effective ways to discuss the arts in the curriculum of primary and secondary schools and highlight their importance in school curricula. My objective is not only that these results benefit public schools by encouraging the expansion of concrete and effective public policies for the quality and improvement of primary and secondary school education and the training of arts teachers, but also that these results will assist researchers studying arts education by showing how to extend that study beyond the academic walls.     

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).     

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 rise of creative youth development

ABSTRACT

Creative youth development (CYD) is a dynamic area of community arts education that successfully bridges youth development and arts education. CYD is an intentional, holistic practice that combines hands-on artmaking and skill building in the arts with development of life skills to support young people in successfully participating in adolescence and navigating into adulthood. Young people in CYD programs exhibit high levels of artistic skill and accomplishment along with increased self-esteem and sense of belonging. CYD participants are immersed in a broad array of rigorous artistic endeavors, including creating documentary films, researching and reporting on community issues through radio broadcasts, writing and staging new theatrical works, and engaging in thoughtful critique of one another's visual art work. The impact for youth of program participation extends beyond pride in artistic accomplishment. Throughout the United States, teen participants in CYD programs assert that the programs saved their lives, putting them on positive trajectories and away from gangs, drug use, crime, and ennui. This article provides a definition for the term creative youth development, describes core characteristics of CYD programs, and briefly describes four CYD programs. It provides background on the origins and history of creative youth development, including current advances in the field and signs the field is coalescing. The article describes creative youth development in the larger contexts of arts education and of education reform. Lastly, the article discusses policy, funding, and research needs and opportunities and provides questions for consideration.     

Theorizing the nexus of STEAM practice

ABSTRACT

Recent advances in arts education policy, as outlined in the latest National Core Arts Standards, advocate for bringing digital media into the arts education classroom. The promise of such Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM)–based approaches is that, by coupling Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) and the arts, new understandings and artifacts emerge that transcend either discipline. Evidence of this can be seen through fundamental shifts in both fields; in the arts, artists are expanding the creative potential for design through computational flexibility, which affords artists the ability to exceed the limitations of their tools. The infusion of the arts into STEM has shown to be equally transformative, with the emergence of tools and communities that not only engender new content understandings but also invite participation from populations historically underrepresented in STEM fields. Drawing on over a decade of research at the intersection of the arts, creativity, and new technologies from the Creativity Labs at Indiana University, this article theorizes the learning that takes place at effective couplings of STEAM to assist today's educators in realizing the potential for transformative experiences for learners of all levels. This article provides a synthesis of this past work across two compelling cases of STEAM-based tools, materials, and activities (i.e., the media-rich programming environment Scratch as well as the work the LilyPad Arduino used to create electronic textiles), incorporating findings from more than 50 peer-reviewed papers and books, and conceptually outlines an approach to “gathering STEAM” in arts education classrooms today. Implications are explored for policy makers in teacher education to think about preservice curriculum and field experiences; policy makers in arts education to think about tools needed in classrooms today; as well as how art education can play a critical role in STEM disciplines and offer solutions to address STEM pipeline challenges. Such efforts extend current and prior discussions in the arts education landscape about the use of new technologies, and draw our attention to how new technologies can be leveraged for artistic expression.     

Merging movements: Diverse dance practices in postsecondary education

This article examines students' choices in a postsecondary dance major curriculum where students selected to study one or more of five dance practices (African and Diaspora Movement Practices, Contemporary Ballet, Movement Language Sources, Postmodern Contemporary Dance, and Urban Movement Practices) each semester along with required coursework centered on inquiry, the ability to pose and pursue informed questions, and creativity, the process of making something new. Using a qualitative research approach, the study investigated three main questions: What factors drive students' course selections?; How do students fuse information from diverse dance practices?; and What do students learn through taking courses with peers who study diverse dance practices? The study's findings suggest that the selection and study of diverse dance practices in combination with a curricular emphasis on creativity and inquiry led students to feel empowered in their dance education, develop and articulate individualized movement approaches, and increased awareness of dance and creative problem-solving ability. Postsecondary dance programs prepare future citizens, artists, educators, and administrators who may find themselves in leadership or other positions that require a re-thinking and implementation of arts policies in public schools and other settings. As such, the study's findings also speak to the potential for arts policies and their implementation to evolve in a way that situates dance as a critical component of a comprehensive education.     

Perceptions…

Strong school-university partnerships yield effective music teachers. However, music teacher preparation curriculum has undergone little reform over the years, resulting in a homogeneous P–12 curriculum. Encouraging preservice music teachers to consider cultural and pedagogical differences holds promise for changing music teacher preparation and preservice music teachers’ views regarding content and contextually relevant practice. In this article, an international collaborative course is presented as one model to help preservice teachers confront previously held attitudes regarding music education, develop flexible cultural competency, and become more open to curricular innovation. Recommendations for policy that would enact an international partnership agenda for music teacher preparation to meet these aims are provided.     

Predicting student performance via NAEP secondary art analysis using partial least squares SEM

This article describes a secondary analysis of the National Assessment of Educational Progress 2008 eighth-grade visual arts data (N = 3,912). These assessments occur under government mandate on a periodic schedule and data on the arts were collected in 1997 and again in 2008. The purpose of this study was to predict students' visual art response performance using students' home environment, personal characteristics, in-school curriculum, and art-related not-for-school (extracurricular) activities. Formative measurement models and structural paths were modeled in structural equation modeling (SEM) using Smart PLS. The initial SEM model included four latent constructs and one endogenous variable measuring students' performance. Both direct and indirect effects between latent constructs were modeled and assessed. Altogether, the four latent constructs explained 21.3% of the variance students' responding performance, out of which home environment construct had the strongest impact. School-related artistic activities in school do predict students' performance significantly but in lesser strength. Students' personal attributes and their art-related not-for-school activities predict students' performance to a substantially lesser degree. Implications of these findings will be discussed in terms of the data findings and larger issues of what these data represent as a means of following curriculum articulation with standards and the impact of art specialists in schools.     

STEAM by another name: Transdisciplinary practice in art and design education

ABSTRACT

The recent movement to include art and design in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education has made Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM) an increasingly common acronym in the education lexicon. The STEAM movement builds on existing models of interdisciplinary curriculum, but what makes the union of art and design with the STEM disciplines so persuasive? In this article, I draw from research on interdisciplinary curricular projects that fit into the category of STEAM, but may also be considered inquiries into the role of art and design in the creative inquiry process, in order to sketch a transdisciplinary curriculum model that may be applied across disciplines.     

Abstract Nature Forms

Abstract

This article is the introduction to the special issue about Evaluation, Educational Policy Reforms, and Their Implications for Arts Education. A summary of all the articles comprised in the special issue is reported, mainly featured, on the one hand, by a discussion about how the education policy reforms shape a particular approach to evaluation that ends up conforming education and arts education and, on the other hand, it shows some magnet examples of arts curriculum evaluation combining both standardized assessment with qualitative strategies pertinent to the nature of arts content and experiences. The article also discusses how it could be possible to move from the current scope of school arts education most of the authors depict to the development of another way of evaluation and curriculum development where the experiential process is taken into account. While these signals might be still scarce, for some other authors could be the opportunity to overcome at least partially the current demise of school arts curriculum.     

On Art Education and Testing in a Period of Educational Reform

This interview deals with arts education in Iran. After the Islamic Revolution of 1979, a drastic change occurred in arts education. In terms of aim, arts education in Iran assumed a teleological orientation according to which art should be a process aimed at appreciating the manifestation of God's beauty in the world. As for curricular subjects, some branches of art such as dance are prohibited or used in modified and restricted forms. Arts education has a marginalized position in Iran for two reasons: one, which is more or less global, is that science and mathematics are widely granted a superior position in education, and the other is based on a religious understanding of some arts being inherently associated with sinful activities prohibited in Islam. However, a development in this religious understanding has led to a critical approach according to which the alleged association with sinful activity is denied and thus the prohibited forms of art can be allowed under some conditions. This new approach may have different educational consequences in the realm of arts education.     

The EvoS Consortium: Catalyzing Evolutionary Training in Higher Education

EvoS is a consortium of evolutionary studies programs that can catalyze evolutionary training across the curriculum in higher education. This special issue of Evolution: Education and Outreach shows how the dictum “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution” can be achieved within the biological sciences and expanded to include all human-related subjects, both for undergraduate education and faculty interactions, fulfilling the ideal of a liberal arts education and turning the university into a single intellectual community.     

Are online student evaluations of faculty influenced by the timing of evaluations?

Student evaluations of faculty are important components of the medical curriculum and faculty development. To improve the effectiveness and timeliness of student evaluations of faculty in the physiology course, we investigated whether evaluations submitted during the course differed from those submitted after completion of the course. A secure web-based system was developed to collect student evaluations that included numerical rankings (1-5) of faculty performance and a section for comments. The grades that students received in the course were added to the data, which were sorted according to the time of submission of the evaluations and analyzed by Pearson's correlation and Student's t-test. Only 26% of students elected to submit evaluations before completion of the course, and the average faculty ratings of these evaluations were highly correlated [r(14) = 0.91] with the evaluations submitted after completion of the course. Faculty evaluations were also significantly correlated with the previous year [r(14) = 0.88]. Concurrent evaluators provided more comments that were statistically longer and subjectively scored as more "substantive." Students who submitted their evaluations during the course and who included comments had significantly higher final grades in the course. In conclusion, the numeric ratings that faculty received were not influenced by the timing of student evaluations. However, students who submitted early evaluations tended to be more engaged as evidenced by their more substantive comments and their better performance on exams. The consistency of faculty evaluations from year to year and concurrent versus at the end of the course suggest that faculty tend not to make significant adjustments to student evaluations.     

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.     

Stormy Winds and Southern Comfort(s): On Categories,Strategies, and Cartographies

How do we see Southeast Asian and diasporic visual culture today? This is the central question we ask in the Introduction to this special issue of Visual Anthropology. To answer the question, we trouble the geographic designation of “Southeast Asia” and how the region’s arts and culture have traveled and are received at the present moment. We posit that we need to see Southeast Asia and its diasporas differently. Most notably, we argue that through the lens of gender and sexuality we can better visualize and analyze the critical and creative strategies of artists and writers situated in many parts of the world. We foreground the collected essays, art pieces and poetry that query what it means to labor for the state, the art world or the academy. And as we emphasize, the collection brings together—in color, in varying compositions, in long and short form—the dynamism of art and media texts in all of their complex circulations.     

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.