[Ebook PDF] Creating Meaning Through Literature and the Arts: Arts Integration for Classroom Teachers, 5th Edition

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Creating Meaning Through Literature and the Arts: Arts Integration for Classroom Teachers, 5th Edition

ISBN-13: 9780133746105

ISBN-10: 0133746100

Authors: by Claudia E. Cornett (Author)

The most comprehensive text on arts integration in the market, this bestseller redefines literacy in light of the 21st century need for multiple literacies. It provides an overview of academically linked research in five arts areas: literary arts, visual art, drama, dance, and music, and is intended as a complete introduction to how to meaningfully use the arts as teaching tools on a daily basis in every curricular area. Organized around WHAT, WHY and HOW questions, Creating Meaning through Literature and the Arts, 5/e tells the story of how arts integration (AI) has grown so much in a few decades using the story of hundreds of arts-based schools–old and new, public, magnet, and charter, today’s. Each AI school story draws upon cutting edge research, evolving state standards, and constructivist beliefs to transform teaching and learning.

PREFACE
Since the first edition of this book, arts integration (AI) has gathered steam across America. Thousands of classroom teachers have been moved to re-imagine themselves—to collaborate with art specialists to plan math lessons, consult with music teachers about social studies links, bring the English language arts to life through drama, and turn science content into informative and artistic dances. Instead of joining a robotic march toward standards implementation, these AI teachers see themselves as instructional architects charged with envisioning innovative ways to reach challenging educational goals. Today, their creative practices and indefatigable courage are producing undeniably impressive learning results—concrete testaments to how the forces of can’t do and won’t work are being defeated.
Indeed, the vision of the arts as the “fourth R” has become a classroom reality, with imagination and creative inquiry made integral to the educational main course. Instead of drill and kill, AI teachers engage and un-cage, drawing students into problem solving by issuing intriguing challenges laced with what if and how might questions. Thus, AI breathes life into learning in every content area.
Fueling Arts Integration
AI is powering a sea change in education. Fuel for this AI engine comes from numerous sources, including . . .
• Growing dissatisfaction with an oppressive test-driven school culture and outdated teaching methods that have failed to narrow troubling achievement gaps between haves and have-nots.
• Challenging standards that demand students be prepared for 21st century higher education and work, which requires coordination of complex thinking in order to comprehend sophisticated texts and skillfully articulate synthesized conclusions using written, spoken, and multimodal communication forms.
• Mounting research results that confirm that the arts “level the playing field” for the hardest to-reach students by motivating and teaching them how to make sense of challenging subject matter.
• Ready access to searchable arts education research databases, such as those available at Arts Education Partnership, which allow educators to maintain a bead on what works.
• Designation by federal legislation that the arts are to be treated as core academic disciplines with equal status to other curricular areas.
• Government investment in diverse arts integration projects across the country, including model dissemination grants and Title I funded programs.
• National organizations, such as the Kennedy Center’s Partners in Education, which support school efforts to put arts-based educational research into practice.
• Philanthropic organizations such as Annenberg, Ford, Dana, and other foundations that have given millions of dollars to investigate and support arts-based education.
In contrast to previous educational movements built on shifting sands, the foundation for AI has a broad and rock-solid base. A unique coalition of educators, arts and cultural organizations, government agencies, and hundreds of businesses and corporations have joined forces around a common goal—to improve education by devising innovative instructional practices that align with curriculum goals aimed at preparing students for our constantly evolving future.
The efforts of diverse collaborations have honed AI into a powerful and nimble tool that has proven to have potent effects on learning.
Mounting Evidence
A wealth of studies now document that carefully planned and thoughtfully implemented arts integration (AI) projects can significantly impact students’ academic performance and develop essential prosocial behaviors. Amazingly, AI models appear to have the most dramatic effects on the cognitive and affective development of our most needy learners, particularly those from the lowest income strata in the United States.
After decades of work, AI has shown itself to be more than just another educational reform. Indeed, AI transforms; teachers dramatically alter their views about students and learning when they place creative practices central to the arts at the core of instruction. Now, an expanding research base documents that when substantial links are forged between the arts and other academic studies, an impressive range of positive educational consequences results. In particular, AI approaches . . .
• Increase motivation for learning, primarily by teaching students to solve problems using creative processes inherent in arts work. Problem-centered teaching ignites curiosity and thus
motivates students to employ the highest levels of thinking—those embodied in creative inquiry, with its component critical thinking.
• Elevate student achievement (learning, grades, scores), which reflects increased involvement in the aforementioned self-motivating creative inquiry process. Some of the most difficult to reach students are “turned on” by academic study infused with interesting arts-based practices and content.
• Develop desired social skills. “Habits of the mind” most sought after in the 21st century, such as independent problem solving—reliant on integrating a set of creative critical thinking and working processes—is inherent in cross-disciplinary AI learning. As students develop multiple skill sets, they also learn to collaborate with others, choose to persist at difficult tasks, take prudent risks, think more flexibly, and deal with ambiguity and complexity with confidence. With coaching from teachers and arts specialists, the self-efficacy of learners grows. As kids become more capable, they feel increasingly empowered to be actors, instead of puppets, on the stages of school, career, and life.
Zooming In on the AI Advantage
How has this unique instruction approach, with a host of variations, been able to break the back of persistent student achievement gaps? At the heart of AI is the unstoppable force that drives human success—creativity. And the arts are a major storehouse of creative practice.
Viewing the arts as potential instruments of daily learning in every curricular area invites active creative investigation by students. In essence, the arts become learning levers, raising motivation and thus increasing achievement as students become more involved and in control of their own learning. In essence, the arts act as connective tissue for the entire curriculum— parallel to how the processes of reading and writing must be woven throughout every discipline. But when the arts are added to every student’s communication repertoire, there are special effects, particularly aesthetic engagement, which widens the circle of understanding to include emotional ways to know and respond.
By design, AI is accompanied by traditional specialist-led arts classes meant to teach the “arts for arts’ sake” courses. Without adding teaching time or subtracting rigor from any discipline, AI increases access to arts literacy by making arts learning integral in all classes. And access to the arts is vital to achievement—as demonstrated by the correlation found between low scores and inequities in availability of arts education opportunities (National Assessment of Educational Progress in the Arts, 2003-2012).
Using principles described in previous paragraphs, schools that choose AI undertake to develop the arts instructional efficacy of every teacher, create a more aesthetic school-wide climate, and expand the circle of education to make families and community agencies genuine partners in learning. Thus, AI boosts student achievement because it promotes . . .
• Focus on creative thinking. As students learn how to address challenges using the creative inquiry process (imagine possibilities, collect information, connect ideas, conclude, critique, and communicate), they expand their capacities to understand/comprehend, represent, and share synthesized “big ideas.” Personal life, as well as educational and eventual career success, becomes more probable as youth learn to manage this vital process. Indeed, creativity is the source of innovation (e.g., technology), so it is unsurprising that CEOs around the world claim it is the most important leadership quality (IBM Corporation,2010). Moreover, employers rank arts study as second only to a track record in entrepreneurship in identifying those with the highest creative potential (Lichtenberg, Woock, & Wright, 2008).
• More positive school climate. AI philosophy and practice establish a context for using creative practice and promote a culture of respect for diverse ideas and unique ways to learn. Teachers benefit when freed to take risks, experiment, and work together to solve problems. Most importantly, kids benefit when their teachers are empowered to empower them.
• Greater collaboration. Teachers cooperate across grade levels and disciplines, working with arts specialists to tackle every manner of learning challenge. Viewing themselves as learners first, teachers work collaboratively with students—co-investigating academic challenges.
And collaboration doesn’t cease at the schoolhouse door. AI invites community members in. Teaching artists, museum educators, parents, community leaders—all are potential partners in cross-disciplinary planning for arts-based teaching and learning with real world applications.
• Improved instructional effectiveness. Collaborative planning and implementation of inquiry oriented, problem-centered, and project-based cross-disciplinary work connected to real world work and life produces memorable lessons with stunning learning results.
• Amplified use of differentiated teaching. AI instruction is customized in the sense that diverse student needs, interests, and strengths are viewed as entry points for learning. AI works because it celebrates individual differences instead of suppressing them. When students learn to skillfully employ multimodal arts communication to understand, represent, and express their conclusions, they are liberated to search for their own special niches.