Lit.+Review+Conclusion+Notes


 * __ Literature Review Conclusion Notes __**
 * May 2010 – Kathy and Zane**


 * General Ideas about Arts Integration: **
 * 1) There are many dimensions to arts integration learning. It’s complicated! It is very difficult to see evidence of specific transfers of learning.
 * 2) Arts integration projects generally have difficulty showing evidence about specific content student achievement. Projects do show evidence about self esteem, independent learning skills, motivation, attendance, and graduation rates.
 * 3) Project results seem to focus on student engagement, commitment, and thinking skills.
 * 4) Projects are most effective when they are “problem based” and “focused on student thinking” (how to represent and solve real world problems using arts skills).
 * 5) Students better understand themselves and their place in the world.
 * 6) Teachers have more positive attitudes about students and the learning process.
 * 7) Upitis: There is evidence that persistence skills learned by students involved in the arts leads to persistence in learning while engaged in other content areas.
 * 8) We need to be careful in the development of goals for student achievement so as not to set teachers up for failure (ex. a focus on MCA scores).

1. What will be our definition of “arts integration”? (Some possibilities lurk on page 4 and 5 of the lit. review. There are also possibilities articulated on the web site “Arts in Education Definitions”.) 2. Studies show the importance of teacher efficacy and how that relates to the structure of the school day in terms of planning time and ongoing collaboration. 3. Successful projects focus on true collaboration, positive classroom climate, and positive teacher/student relationships. 4. Sloan lists “key points” for project design: problem solving as they work toward clearly articulated learning goals
 * Project Design Ideas: **
 * The true key to successful arts integration is collaboration among teachers
 * Teachers map curriculum and decide where gaps and conceptual connections occur
 * Teachers develop thematic units that integrate subjects
 * Small school districts engage teaching artists who have been trained
 * Teachers are trained in the process of making connections between content standards in the arts and in other disciplines
 * The (Out ) Law program uses a theater focus to engage kids – teachers are trained to guide students to do the thinking, talking, decision making and

5. Co-equal arts integration success indicators: · Co-equal is likely to succeed in wealthy schools with well developed arts programs
 * Co-equal is likely to succeed when long term professional development is present
 * Co-equal if more likely to succeed in elementary and middle schools – less likely in high schools
 * A focus on high stakes tests makes co-equal tough
 * High poverty schools are more likely to use a subservient model

6.Third Space “When Learning Matters”. This chapter may be useful as a guide to our project design. Especially about these points
 * Adequate time
 * Personal participation in art
 * Arts integration connection points
 * Constructivist learning

7. Simlan and Miraglia: This article defines the various roles of arts integration team members. 8. What are possible connecting points for these projects? Essential questions, learning goals, benchmarks……? 9. How will Stiggins’ alignment process work in this project? 10. Do other content areas have benchmarks that identify knowledge, reasoning, skills, and performance/product? 11. Youm: Six steps used in a first grade arts integration project. Can these steps be useful as models? 12. How do you measure and gather data about motivation/engagement? 13. What is the most useful balance between qualitative and quantitative for this project? 14. How will we collect, document and publish project data? What data? 15.

1. Definitions and vocabulary seem important – Bresler may be useful for this: 2. How will we grow arts comfort for teachers from other content areas and other content comfort for arts teachers? 3. How will we in-service teaching artists in the learning process? 4. How will we learn to truly co-teach? 5. To what extent will we use what has been learned through **//Critical Links//**? 6. How much education theory will we present to our teacher participants? How will we do that? Perhaps quotes as conversation starters?
 * Professional Development Ideas: **
 * //Subservient, co-equal, cognitive, affective, and social//
 * //infusion – integrating a particular subject across the curriculum//
 * //topics-within-disciplines – integrating multiple strands of the same discipline within the instructional setting//
 * //interdisciplinary – maintaining traditional subject boundaries while aligning content and concepts from one discipline with those of another//
 * //thematic – subordinating subject matter to a them, allowing the boundaries between disciplines to blur//
 * //holistic – addressing the needs of the whole child, including cognitive, physical, moral, affective, and spiritual dimensions//
 * //multidisciplinary – looking at a situation as it was portrayed in different disciplines//
 * //interdisciplinary – considering a problem in terms of different disciplines and then synthesizing these perspectives in coming up with a more general account//
 * //metadisciplinary – comparing the practices within a particular discipline//
 * //transdisciplinary – examining a concept as it appears in political and in physical discourse//

Questions that occurred to us as we read these articles: **
 * 1) If learning with and through the arts is correlated with higher achievement and other evidence of learning, what special qualities or processes of arts education might be support students’ growth?
 * 2) Would students adept at meeting schools’ standardized achievement demands differ in their arts learning experiences from those who find traditional achievement measures a challenge?
 * 3) Would individual students value (and gain from) their arts-integrated learning differently from how they value (and gain from) their non-arts-integrated learning?
 * 4) How would students describe the differences that arts integrated education made in their learning?
 * 5) Aprill (2001) acknowledged that if arts programs are adopted simply for the gains of academic success, they would be disposed of just as quickly if the signs of increased test scores are not visible. What will be the focus of evaluation of the project? What role does qualitative and/or quantitative data serve?
 * 6) · Proper budgeting, professional development, and planning provide the best opportunities for the arts to be incorporated into the school schedule. What is the right balance of these three for success?
 * 7) How do we measure imagination and the ability to “willingly suspend disbelief”
 * 8) Why do we teach the arts?
 * 9) Why do we think it is useful and important to integrate the arts with other subject matters?
 * 10) What might learning in and through the arts have to contribute to our ideas about how we learn those things we think are worth learning?
 * 11) What are the components of effective professional development for teachers who are wishing to design an arts integration experience for their students?
 * 12) In what ways might the arts enhance the ways learners acquire understandings and skills in their content areas and how might content area topics and materials assist in the learning of arts concepts and skills?
 * 13) How can we find ways of collaborating across disciplines and professional ideologies that lead to: “Transformative practice zones that provide spaces to share and listen to others’ ideas, visions and commitments and to build relationships in collaboration?”
 * 14) How can we soften the tension caused by a focus on “back-to-basics” with students, teachers, administrators, and parents?
 * 15) How can we help all players to understand and distinguish between evidence and perception, between fact and belief? What kind of data will help with this?
 * 16) There is a strong component in this research about trust in teachers! “Whether and when it is educationally enlightening to work with other subjects, whether arts or non-arts, will depend, as all education ought to depend, primarily upon the informed professional judgment of teachers who are experts in their particular fields. I will depend upon our having confidence in well-educated teachers. They are in the best position to make sound decisions about the value of working collectively with other disciplines.” David Best (1995)
 * 17) This book (International Handbook of Research in Arts Education by Bresler) also includes reviews of arts integration in other countries including South Africa, Greece, Japan and Switzerland. These perspectives may also be helpful.
 * 18) How can we provide a framework for sustainable collaboration skills for adults and students?
 * 19) How can we structure ways for teachers/students to notice changes in classroom climate?
 * 20) How can we make it obvious that integration will take time and that repeated efforts will become more natural?
 * 21) What tools can we present to have conversations about depth of learning vs “skimming”?
 * 22) The terminology used in this publication seems like good foundational understanding for us and for our participants. What vocabulary should we select and present and in what ways would this understanding be most useful?
 * 23) The four arts integration styles discussed may help us and our participants to clarify goals, values, and pedagogical issues. Is it important for our participants to understand these styles and their historical origins? To what extent do we want to guide our participants in the process of clarify their values and goals regarding teaching and learning? Is this an important component in developing arts integration? How do we know if this is something that we should do? How will we do it?
 * 24) Implementing each of these different arts integration styles requires drastically different structures and pedagogical skills. We may value one style but due to resources and schedule restraints be confined to another. How will we work with that tension?
 * 25) We know about the high value regarding teacher collaboration. How will we structure helping teachers to:
 * define common (or not) learning values?
 * truly understand each other’s benchmarks?
 * develop a system to communicate instruction progress?
 * develop a system to document and communicate formative and summative assessment data?
 * 1) Will there be a site specific arts integration “mission statement”?
 * 2) If curriculum maps are an effective entry point for arts integration, will we help teachers map at least a part of their curriculum first?
 * 3) How will we engage teaching artists? Make contacts? What will training include? How will pay be set up?
 * 4) Theater seems to have many natural connection points for arts integration. Is there one art content area that may serve better to illustrate the integration process? Kind of an exemplar model?
 * 5) Is there the possibility of arts integration that occurs between schools? Perhaps via technology? What would that look like?
 * 6) How can we use what we have learned from Critical Links in this project?
 * 7) Are there specific results from this study that would benefit our teacher participants?
 * 8) Do these “areas of benefit” provide possible arts integration connecting points for learning goals?
 * 9) Where do we see these concepts in the arts benchmarks? In other content area benchmarks?
 * 10) This is about the personal engagement in the arts that motivates kids and teachers. Is this obvious to our participants, or should we consider exploring the concepts of “heightened state of consciousness, becoming lost in an activity, and a sense of rising to the challenge”?
 * 11) Are there benefits for our participants to be reminded of the ideas of Gardner, Vygotsky, Piaget, and Dewey?
 * 12) How much of this “educational thinking” will we purposefully present? How will we decide?
 * 13) Each of the points outlined in this chapter seem important to our project! How and when will we address each of these?
 * 14) If we believe these points to be true, is it important that our participants know them as well? Will we articulate and share project documents such as mission statement, beliefs, learning goals, instruction strategies, assessment activities, and evaluation criteria?
 * 15) How will the Stiggins alignment process work in conversations across content areas? Do other content area benchmarks clearly identify knowledge, reasoning, skill, and performance product?
 * 16) What would a quality checklist look like for an arts integration project?
 * 17) In what ways will we “measure” student (and perhaps teacher) engagement/motivation? What will evidence look like?
 * 18) How much will an arts teacher need to know about the other content area? How will they engage in that learning? How much will a non-arts person need to know about the art? How will they engage in that learning?
 * 19) The findings surveys are dated (1992) but tie together common ideas that may be useful.
 * 20) Will we consider “inter-arts” teams for this project?
 * 21) The model lessons may be useful in terms of arts concepts and instructional pedagogy.
 * 22) Study framed questions used in interview to gather data that might be useful and contained case studies of attitudes (and misconceptions of teaching staff) about the value of arts integration.
 * 23) If the arts remain independent of other tested areas of the curriculum, the arts could find themselves to be isolated, and “to be left out is to be disregarded is no asset when it comes for competing for time and other resources to support one’s program” (Eisner, 2000)
 * 24) Under what conditions might integration flourish or never take a hold in a school?
 * 25) Schools with a high poverty tend to use a subservient approach to the arts. How might high poverty in student population affect professional development and the attitude of teachers and leadership in a district?
 * 26) What will be the most useful documentation of the Lakes Country arts integration project? What elements should become part of the data collection? Evaluation?
 * 27) The article used the definition of engagement put forth by Csikszantmihalyi (1997) and Noddings (1992) “the involvement of the sensorimotor or physical, emotional, cognitive and social dimensions” or as Csikszantmihalyi (1997) described as “the very real feeling we have after an aesthetic encounter that some kind of growth has taken place, that our being and the cosmos have been realigned in a more harmonious way”
 * 28) The authors expected that any contributions made by the arts to achievement in other subjects were likely to be based on a variety of complex reasons, such as those offered by the notion of engagement.