Literature Review
Within this literature review, I will investigate the historical applications of
the arts in education. Additionally, in a formative progression I will put forward
works of literature that support the topics of teacher preparedness, ways students
learn and the benefits of an art curriculum to student learning. Lastly I will discuss
and support the notion of an integrated arts based curriculum as it relates to high
school students.
Overview of the History of Arts in Education
A historical overview is necessary in order to have a clear understanding of
the ever-changing relevance and import of the arts in education. Moreover,
knowing where the arts place in education’s hierarchy of knowledge permits a
stronger grasp of the dire circumstances overall of the arts in education. Maxine
Greene, a teacher and educational philosopher gave numerous lectures for Summer
Session at Lincoln Center Institute for Arts in Education, a lecture series for
educators. These talks have been compiled in the book, Variations on a Blue Guitar
(2001) and in it she writes:
We are all aware that, for generations, the arts have been treated either as
didactic forms or as decorative devices in education, intended either to improve or
to motivate. They have been relegated to figurative back alleys in places where
cognitive activity, practical concerns, and moral behaviors have been considered
central. (p.19) is this paraphrased?
In her writing, Greene presumes a communal knowledge of educational
curriculum but this is simply due to the fact that these writings were directed
towards educators, however, her ideas are shared by numerous others. In Does Art
History Go to School? (1986), Lynn Galbraith and Marvin J. Spomer investigate how
art teachers incorporate art history into their classrooms. The authors, in looking to
the past, find that “research has shown that art history and art appreciation have
not been accorded an appropriate intellectual status in schools and are at times
neglected” (p. 10). In an effort to update these findings, Galbraith and Spomer sent
out 148 questionnaires to art teachers in junior and senior high schools in rural,
suburban and urban areas in the Midwest. What they discovered is that the
majority of teachers use art history in supportive roles to art practice with no real
meaningful study of the art objects themselves (p. 11). Galbraith and Spomer
present three possibilities for why teachers may not teach art history more
prominently in their classrooms. First, the teacher’s curriculums may limit time
allowed for art history; second, they may not feel comfortable teaching the subjects;
last, teachers may not have a specific interest in art history. The authors make
mention of the Getty-funded Discipline-Based Art Education (DBAE) and the
emphasis it places on the four disciplines of art: art production, art criticism, art
history, and aesthetics, but what this article mostly provides is statistical data as to
how art history is incorporated in the classroom by teachers. Their general
conclusions reiterate the apparent neglect of art history teaching in the classroom
and the apparent need of assistance by art teacher to incorporate it into the
classroom in a more prominent way .
Another article that investigates how art history is introduced in the
classroom is Stuart Richmond’s article, Art, Imagination, and Teaching: Researching
the High School Classroom (1993). Richmond gathered a team of researchers and
gave them the task of creating individual case study reports based on classroom
observations, field notes, and informal interviews. What Richmond’s research
discovered was that in younger grades there is a very prescribed curriculum, and as
students get higher in grade level, they are allowed more freedoms. In these higher
grades, art history, art criticism and aesthetics are “integrated with practical work
as needed to provide background knowledge, rather than being treated
systematically as distinct areas” (p. 374). Richmond and his team argue that
effective art education as administered by an imaginative teacher should find a
balance between the academic elements of art and the student’s creative and
interpretive freedoms that are exhibited in their studio work.
Like Richmond, Tom Anderson in Attaining Critical Appreciation Through Art
(1990) writes of a full art curriculum and the teachers role within that curriculum.
He investigates what he deems effective teaching that fosters “critical appreciation”.
In looking into Discipline Based Art Education (DBAE) and creativity-based
curriculum, Anderson finds that “the pursuit of self-determined goals, the ability to
integrate external criteria in the resolution of problems encountered in reaching
those goals and the ability to judge… whether goals have been met and performance
is appropriate and adequate” (p. 139), are skills most heavily supported by the
visual arts. This in a nutshell is “critical appreciation”. Anderson’s Ideal program in
art education would include art studio, art history, art criticism, and aesthetics. In
building off of “critical appreciation” skills and melding them with DBAE ideas,
Anderson advocates for a curriculum he terms Competency-Based Critical
Appreciation, which measures competency not only in content, but also in a
student’s ability to make decisions. This is a key point to keep in mind when
thinking of student learning and understanding. What they learn in the classroom
needs to translate and transfer to their world outside the classroom.
Teacher’s Preparedness
In order for all effective arts learning to occur in the classroom, there is need
for a knowledgeable guiding force to lead the way. As an art teacher with an everchanging body of students, as well as constantly expanding and progressing subject
matter, continued professional training is imperative. According to Maxine Greene
(2001), we, as educators “are hardly…in a position to develop heightened sensitivity
in others if we ourselves do not know what it is like to live inside, to move around
within the range of art forms” (2001, p.8). If a teacher is to teach, then it is necessary
for him or her to be familiar with the content of their field of study. Essentially they
need to speak the language of their subject. Opportunities for continued teacher
training and education are indispensible to the ideal of an integrated arts
curriculum.
Numerous organizations and institutions offer occasions for continued
professional training. Art 21, presented through PBS, serves educators and their
students by providing free materials and programs devoted to the exploration of
contemporary art and artists. Similarly, many museums including the Museum of
Modern Art, the Whitney the Guggeghnheim etc, offer professional development
workshops which focus on helping teachers to learn how to integrate modern and
contemporary art in their classrooms. In Contemporary Art and the Role of
Interpretation (2002), Helen Charman and Michaela Ross write about another
program. Offered at Tate Modern’s Summer Institute for Teachers, this experience
is held for four weeks in the summer and brings together a group of educators and
administrators from a varying array of institutions and experiences. Each week has
a “way of looking” model established by the institution. In this sense, all
participants were focused on the same task in the same way, an equalizer of sorts.
The aim of the program was to instill confidence to educators in using modern and
contemporary art in their classroom teaching. Using what they call “actionresearch”, each participant became a researcher, actively engaging in the process as
well as the making. Ultimately what they hope to make clear is the expansive
quantity of material found in contemporary art in addition to the fact that there is a
definitive connection between interpreting art and making art. Although numerous
benefits to teachers is exhibited through these programs and others like it, such as
instilling confidence and motivating educators to include formerly unfamiliar
content, teacher training should be as inclusive as the content presented to students
and should provide opportunities in all areas of art.
In Relationships among Art Teachers’, Art Critics’ and Historians, and Non-ArtTrained Individuals’ Statements about “Guernica” (1970), Brent Wilson seeks to
determine whether teachers possess the necessary language skills to facilitate
discussions as art historians or art critics. In his research, Wilson collected written
responses to Guernica from thirty-one art teachers, twenty-one junior and senior
education majors as well as the writings of twenty-one historians and critics. In
comparing these writings systematically, Wilson discovered significant differences
in three categories: inferred meaning, context, and style. In the end, Wilson
discerned that, “if it is thought desirable for art teachers to function as historians
and critics, then…additional training in methods of inquiry in these disciplines
seems necessary” (p.39). Certainly ideas of art education and teacher training have
changed since the time this article was written but the questions raised by Wilson
are still relevant in today’s educational systems. The expectations placed on art
educators have rightly expanded and as such educational guidelines need to follow
suit. Besides the efforts of museums in addressing the need for teachers’ training
and professional development, you may want to briefly mention how the DOE has
also made attempts with the advent of the new curriculum for the arts in 2004 to
train teachers in the use of the Blueprint integrated curriculum.
How Students Learn
Education consists of multiple layers of people and ideas. Within a school
institution these layers may be prescribed simply as administrators, educators and
students, with numerous under layers among and between. One of the under-layers
imbedded amid teacher and student is student learning. There is no one definitive
line that is capable of capturing the parameters by which a student does, will, or can
learn. Simply put, as individuals, we learn individually. And with the history of art
education, the study of student learning is very diverse and ever changing. Dennis
Atkinson observes in Art in Education: Identity and Practice (2002), that “the
development of children’s and student’s learning in art practice has been theorized
from a range of perspectives” (p.6). He notes that current trends are concerned
with contexts and experiences connected to the real world. “In education this
means trying to attend to the ways in which teachers and learners experience
classroom practices that are culturally derived” (p.7). These varying perspectives
facilitate a broader understanding of students, educators and the classroom.
In Learning Theories and Education: Toward a Decade of Synergy (2005), John
Bransford investigates aspects of human learning, most importantly those aspects
that are central to educators (p.2). He makes the distinction between implicit
learning, that which we learn without intense study, and explicit learning, that
which requires a stronger more focused examination. Bransford suggests that in
recent studies it is presented that “it may not be the material per se that
distinguishes implicit from explicit learning, but how the material is presented to
learners” (p. 7). Similarly, A Learning Cycle Approach to Art History in the Classroom,
by Joanne E. Sowell, discusses the varying ideas regarding the many disciplines of
art. She writes, “it is not the discipline of art history which violates learning theory,
but the methods which often have been used to teach it” (p. 19). She suggests a
“learning cycle approach” to teaching that would allow children to explore concepts
actively, specifically from exploration, to invention, to application. (p. 20)
Another article that touches on the subject of how students learn is an article
by Carole K. Henry, Retention and Recall of Images: Evaluating Museum Experiences
of Schoolchildren (1992 ). In examining a specific group of students from a rural
community outside of Atlanta who visited a museum on a school field trip, Henry
investigates the benefits of a student’s interactions with original works of art, in
doing so she is able to garner information on whether or not a student is able to
retain and recall information regarding the art work they have seen. In her
research, Henry looks into the psychology of learning and particular studies
pertaining to an individual’s ability to retain information. Henry is focused on the
benefits of museum education and the promotion of school field trips, but her main
directive is highlighting whether or not a student is able to retain and recall
information having been directly exposed to the object from which the information
comes. Additionally, through her study of the psychology of learning, Henry finds
much support for the benefits of a comprehensive art education. One in particular
found that “verbalization and visual association combined was more successful than
either…alone” (p. 84). Ultimately what Henry argues is that a student’s experience
with a work of art needs to be supported in order for that child to carry that
learning beyond the moment. For Henry it is the visit to museums that enables this
extended learning, however it is compulsory that these external environments are
not the sole contributor to such learning; an in-school curriculum infused with art
educational experiences could certainly foster these same sorts of learning
experiences.
Benefits of the arts to student learning
Once we become familiar with how students learn and a teacher’s
preparedness, there arises the question of the benefits of the arts to student
learning. How are these benefits exhibited? Champions of Change: The Impact of the
Arts on Learning (1999) is one document that investigates these benefits. This
document was funded and supported by numerous educational and governmental
agencies. It advocates for the incorporation of an arts curriculum, as it is capable of
enhancing overall learning. Numerous researchers, over a number of years,
analyzed and investigated many school systems and documents in order to establish
a marker for student learning as it pertains to the inclusion of arts education. The
researchers feel that in the current environment, as it is necessary to have
measurements and data driven analysis, there is a need to examine a way of
registering the benefits of arts in education. They ascertain that an educational
curriculum that perceptively includes the arts presents an increase in student
achievement. “It appears that a narrowly conceived curriculum, in which the arts
are either not offered or are offered in limited and sporadic amounts, exerts a
negative effect on the development of critical cognitive competencies and personal
dispositions” (p. 58). The researchers not only looked at traditional institutions, but
also stepped outside to investigate other programs and their benefits to student
learning. “Creative youth-based nonschool organizations and enterprises that have
sprung up in response to this ‘institutional gap’ engage young people in productive
activities during nonschool hours” (p. 35). This extensive document and its
research corroborates the notion of increased learning benefits on students who
have access to strong art programming.
Project Zero is an educational research group at Harvard University with the
mission to understand and enhance learning, thinking, and creativity in the arts, as
well as humanistic and scientific disciplines, at the individual and institutional level.
Their Studio Thinking Project’s research discovered eight categories of learning that
they refer to as “habits of mind”. These habits of mind consist of, develop craft,
engage & persist, envision, express, observe, reflect, stretch & explore, and
understand art world. In each of these categories it is clear to see their link to the
arts, but when looked at more closely, extensive learning can be seen. For example,
Stretch and Explore is described as, “Learning to reach beyond one’s capacities, to
explore playfully without a preconceived plan, and to embrace the opportunity to
learn from mistakes and accidents” (Studio Thinking, 2010). This sort of learning
can certainly extend beyond the art classroom into other areas of study or perhaps
even further into their personal lives.
A push for integrated arts curriculum
The Blueprint for the Arts is a document researched and presented by a
number of agencies and individuals involved in various aspects of the arts and
education in New York City. It was promulgated and implemented as the official art
curriculum for the arts in nyc. Envisioned as a guideline, the Blueprint establishes
five standards by which an arts curriculum should be presented: Art Making,
Literacy in the Visual Arts, Making Connections, Community and Cultural Resources,
and Careers and Lifelong Learning. When taken as a whole, these standards provide
opportunities for students to “become literate in art, make social, cultural, and
historical connections, engage in learning beyond the classroom, share in the rich
diversity of their communities, and become lifelong learners and advocates for art”
all the while being engaged in meaningful art making (p.5). Additionally these
elements bring into a single curriculum the various ways by which students see, feel
and interpret both their immediate environment and the external world.
Jessica Hoffman Davis in Why Our Schools Need The Arts (2008) argues for
integrated arts curriculums.
“Because of the tangibility of the arts, students see the impact of their
thinking (process) on the art object (product), and experience as no other subject
will allow the range and importance of their own inquiry and their own ability to
assess and direct that process. These are invaluable skills for working in any subject
or setting – the ability to ask real questions that lead to further study (inquiry) and
the ability to continuously assess, revise, and advance the work (reflection). These
essential skills have implications for performance in any arena, but are uniquely
acquired through the arts in education. (p.74)
Dorinne Dorfman in Arts Integration as a Catalyst for High School Renewal
(2008) writes about Woodland High School, a small high school in rural Vermont. A
small number of administrators and teachers from this school launched an arts
academy that aimed to create “an experiential yet academically vigorous pathway
for a small ‘community of artists’” (p. 51). As this school is in infancy, there was a
severe learning curve, but ultimately a positive overview of student learning and
achievement was attained. Towards the end of the initial year, the school district
brought in a researcher to evaluate the program. What was discovered was that
those students who had been “bored, frustrated and angry with traditional
schooling had now become deeply engaged, active learners” (p. 55). What was also
observed was that these students did not maintain a balance of importance across
the board and began to hold the arts at a higher level than their academic courses.