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.     

In the World of Contemporary Design

Assessment is essential to all forms of work in the arts. Successful arts assessment concepts, patterns, and methods have evolved over many centuries. They are inherent in all arts teaching and central to art-making at all levels of proficiency and sophistication. And they work: achievements in the arts are among the highest in civilization. At present, these arts-based systems of assessment are increasingly pursued in a problematic context. Regnant assessment values and systems are often so highly technocratic, so narrowly focused on what can be counted easily, and so prosaically engineered for application on a massive scale that they are incompatible with the nature of arts assessment and regularly discount its value and its results. Means for responding and acting are needed that preserve the fundamental nature of arts teaching and learning. There are ways for those professionally concerned about the arts and arts teaching to reaffirm and rearticulate essential principles of artistic evaluation and, in the present environment, pursue applications of those principles in various forms of evaluation. Reaffirmation, rearticulation, and pursuit must be deeply rooted in an understanding of why these principles are essential for the progress of the arts disciplines and for arts-centered student learning. Such reaffirmation, rethinking, and rearticulation can establish the basis for explaining arts principles, achievements, and methods to others; debating when necessary; and ensuring the preservation of conditions that encourage the effective incorporation of new findings or capabilities in assessment into the ever-evolving assessment and evaluation systems developed by and suitable for the arts in ways that are compatible with their nature and the integrity of their practice.     

For what purpose the arts? An analysis of the mission statements of urban arts high schools in Canada and the United States

While general arts programs have declined in many schools across the United States and Canada, the number of specialized art programs in public secondary schools has swelled since the 1980s. While this increase is often celebrated by arts educators, questions about the justification of specialized arts programs are rarely raised, and their value is often taken for granted. In this article, we examine the mission statements of eighty-four specialized arts programs across two countries to examine the ideas, values, and commitments that are expressed in these public statements. In addition to a close thematic analysis, we describe how these mission statements reflect different conceptions of the role of the arts in education and consider the ways in which arguments that seek to broaden access to the arts are combined with the goal of serving a narrow subset of the student population. We argue that analyzing mission statements provides a clearer picture of the ideas that shape these programs, and that in order to foster an informed public conversation about the purpose and value of an education in the arts, educators committed to the arts must engage in this serious discussion.     

An Ode to Joy … or the Sounds of Silence? An Exploration of Arts Education Policy in Australian Primary Schools

The arts are an integral and important component of our everyday lives. As such, they need to be a vital part of our children's education. However, this has rarely been the case in Australian state primary schools over the past two hundred years. This article explores the history of the arts in Australian state primary schools since the colonization of Australia to the present day. I examine how arts education has been subject to policy changes and inquiries that have not seemed to significantly benefit the arts in our schools and that have at times seemed to marginalize the arts in primary schools. The article concludes with a challenge to arts educators and other stakeholders to develop and implement a long-term approach to policy and practice to ensure that the arts serve as an “Ode to Joy” rather than dissolving into “Sounds of Silence.”     

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.     

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.     

Examining arts education policy development through policy frameworks

ABSTRACT

While policy formation frameworks are commonly used to understand public policy developments, scholars rarely have used them to reflect on arts education policies. Such analysis is important because it can assist both in identifying the genesis of past policies, including who the important actors are, how issues are framed and problematized, and how specific solutions are designed, as well as how to interpret unfolding policies. In this article, I review three prominent policy frameworks: Kingdon's “multiple streams framework,” Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith's “advocacy coalition framework,” and Baumgartner and Jones' “punctuated equilibrium framework.” After reviewing the frameworks, I address the following questions: (a) How would these conceptual frameworks predict arts education policy development to proceed? (b) How would these conceptual frameworks explain constituents and coalitions that affect the arts education policy sphere? (c) How would these conceptual frameworks illuminate precipitating events that drive the policy development process? I apply the frameworks to several instances of arts education policy development, including the formal designation of the arts as a core subjects under the Goals 2000: Educate America Act of 1994 (P.L. 103-227), the development of the 2014 National Core Arts Standards, and music's enumeration in the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015. Because these three policy issues differ in important ways, they can help to illuminate the breadth of arts education policy.     

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.     

Political economy and global arts for social change: A comparative analysis of youth orchestras in Venezuela and Chile

An expansive movement comprised of UN Millennium Development Goals, international banks, and hundreds of programs worldwide promotes access to the arts as a creative means of social change. Often grounded in cognitive science and inspired by the model of youth orchestras in Venezuela known as El Sistema, this movement contends that arts training—which can foster empathy, collaboration, academic achievement, and self-esteem—helps alleviate poverty and combat inequality. In contrast to the majority of the literature on public arts programs—impact studies that often assume arts engagement creates social change through universal mechanisms—this study examines the influence of political economy on the implementation of public arts programs. Through a comparative study of youth orchestras with social inclusion goals in Venezuela (1974–2015) and Chile (1964–2015), the scope and intensity of government control, social welfare policy, and competition for public funds are found to shape public arts programs' social goals, daily operations, definitions of success, and impact study procedures. Therefore, scholars, practitioners, and policy makers must reexamine their understanding of arts programs as a development model. Future global efforts to combat inequality should avoid over-standardization. This article offers a new Arts for Social Change Context Framework that places input variables at the center of analysis, with policy implications.     

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.     

Cognition and Student Learning through the Arts

In recent years, an increasing number of studies have suggested connections among cognition, social and emotional development, and the arts. Some of this research indicates that students in schools where the arts are an integral part of the academic program tend to have an academic advantage over students for whom that is not the case. This study examines factors in schools and at home that contribute most to the variance in student learning and achievement, particularly as they relate to the arts, using a sample of more than 8,000 students in grade 5. The findings suggest that in-school arts programs alone may have less of an impact on student achievement than previous research has proposed. Parental influences likely have more of an effect than school on most children, and efforts to involve parents in the arts with their children may be more productive than simply providing arts programs in schools.     

Looking Toward the Future

Changes in education policy—particularly at the federal and state levels—during the current era of ideologically and profit-driven “education reform” threaten balanced education in general and music/arts education in particular. Emerging answers to a number of pivotal questions will determine the future of the arts, arts education, and public education in general. Music educators and other advocates of quality arts education must not only adapt their curricula and instructional practices to reach students in a twenty-first century context, but also develop effective communications systems and organize coalitions powerful enough to influence policymakers and thereby shape policies supportive of quality music/arts education. Recent advocacy efforts by the National Association for Music Education (NAfME) provide examples of how supporters of arts education might accomplish these goals.     

Two Randomized Trials Provide No Consistent Evidence for Nonmusical Cognitive Benefits of Brief Preschool Music Enrichment

Young children regularly engage in musical activities, but the effects of early music education on children''s cognitive development are unknown. While some studies have found associations between musical training in childhood and later nonmusical cognitive outcomes, few randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have been employed to assess causal effects of music lessons on child cognition and no clear pattern of results has emerged. We conducted two RCTs with preschool children investigating the cognitive effects of a brief series of music classes, as compared to a similar but non-musical form of arts instruction (visual arts classes, Experiment 1) or to a no-treatment control (Experiment 2). Consistent with typical preschool arts enrichment programs, parents attended classes with their children, participating in a variety of developmentally appropriate arts activities. After six weeks of class, we assessed children''s skills in four distinct cognitive areas in which older arts-trained students have been reported to excel: spatial-navigational reasoning, visual form analysis, numerical discrimination, and receptive vocabulary. We initially found that children from the music class showed greater spatial-navigational ability than did children from the visual arts class, while children from the visual arts class showed greater visual form analysis ability than children from the music class (Experiment 1). However, a partial replication attempt comparing music training to a no-treatment control failed to confirm these findings (Experiment 2), and the combined results of the two experiments were negative: overall, children provided with music classes performed no better than those with visual arts or no classes on any assessment. Our findings underscore the need for replication in RCTs, and suggest caution in interpreting the positive findings from past studies of cognitive effects of music instruction.     

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.     

Biographies for Artistic and Social Intervention: A Youth-Driven Project

This article discusses how biographical materials may be used in youth arts education projects to develop new methodologies and approaches that can stimulate artistic and social intervention in contemporary urban communities, thus changing the field of arts education policy at the community level. Through their creation of Artistic Society Projects, a group of young people from the arts education project Bando à Parte: Youth Cultures, Arts and Social Inclusion (O Teatrão, Coimbra, Portugal) have created a voice that may be used to transform their own communities. The starting points for this transformation are the young peoples’ biographical paths. The influence of youth on education policy may be strategically understood in the context of formal and nonformal school curricula. How can youth use their biographies to develop specific contributions both to change in individual behaviors and to social change in urban communities, influencing arts education policies to instigate action? The exploration of these processes through the work of artistic creation, inspired by collected biographical materials, represents a contribution to ongoing reflection on the issues of memory, identity, youth resistance, and community change in urban settings, influencing the ways in which arts education policy is understood and implemented.     

Murals for Schools and Colleges

This study examined high-stakes test scores for 37,222 eighth grade students enrolled in music and/or visual arts classes and those students not enrolled in arts courses. Students enrolled in music had significantly higher mean scores than those not enrolled in music (p < .001). Results for visual arts and dual arts were not as conclusive. Further research is required to determine the effectiveness of academic remediation held during the instructional day that thereby denies arts instruction to students. The practice of recommending that students devote more time to English and math in lieu of music should be evaluated.     

A Wall Hanging a Batik Worker

This article reviews the political and empirical record within music education surrounding the Goals 2000: Educate America Act and reports a new study evaluating the effects of the law on music and arts education policies in U.S. high schools. School-level data (N = 670 schools) from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 and the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 were independently pooled to estimate the effects of Goals 2000 on the number of unique music courses high schools offered, the probability that schools would enforce a local arts graduation requirement, and the number of arts courses required for graduation. Results showed no effect on the number of unique music courses offered. However, for schools in states that prior to Goals 2000 had no arts education mandate or had a flexible arts education mandate, Goals 2000 significantly increased the probability of schools requiring the arts, as well as the number of arts credits required for graduation. The article concludes with implications for the arts in the current Common Core Standards movement.     

Don’t Throw it Away!

This historical narrative tracks the evolution and devolution of visual arts education from Dewey's progressive era pedagogy and the theory of the arts as experience through the modern accountability movement. Archival material, state curricular documents, and conversations with policymakers show an increasing focus on core subject areas of reading, writing, and mathematics at the expense of arts education. Texas House Bill 3, the third generation of accountability legislation in the Lone Star State, provides a case study of the status of arts education after more than fifteen years of high-stakes testing and accountability. Policy considerations are offered for arts education and its future standing within the public educational 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.     

Textile Decorating as a Handicraft

The rhetoric of the creative economy agenda has influenced the revised Ontario curriculum in the arts for grades 9–12. Yet, increasing rhetorical and substantive support for a creative economy agenda in Ontario at large is not sufficiently reflected in the revised Ontario arts curriculum. The expanded agenda is not matched by expanded substantive attention to the arts in the curriculum. Two new elective arts courses have been introduced in the revised curriculum; however, students are still only required to pass one art course to graduate from high school. This article argues that one compulsory art course is not sufficient to respond to the demands of the creative economy and thus recommends that further consideration of the curriculum be undertaken.