Howard Gardner and Ellen Winner on Arts Education
After 50 years of arts-learning research with Project Zero, Howard Gardner and Ellen Winner have a pile of data that they’ve learned from and the learning continues. In the Education Week article The Arts Have Much More to Teach Us written by Gardner and Winner provide a summary of the work. In the 90s Lois Hetland worked with Winner to look at the data on students with high and low exposure to the arts and their math and reading achievement. Many of you are familiar with and use Lois Hetland’s Habits of Mind framework published in Studio Thinking: The Real Benefits of Visual Arts Education.
Education Week has put together a collection of articles and research on arts education on topics that you’ve been hearing and reading about and in many cases considering including in the development of curriculum. They claim that arts education is “a discipline in transition”. When I take the long view of my career in arts education I believe that we’ve always been in transition. At some level ‘shifting’ is the nature of our discipline. Depending on the school, district, and the attitude towards the arts (based on the experiences of those in decision making positions), that is what determines the view of and commitment to arts education. Having said that the following are worth the read and can help influence your thinking when it comes to teaching, creating curriculum, advocating, and a list of other arts education related topics and ideas. And, the bottom line is the arts have a rightful place in our schools and it is our responsibility as educators to see to it that they are ESSENTIAL for all learners. A PreK-grade 12 education without excellent arts education instruction is not acceptable!
The Arts Need to Be a Central Part of Schooling
The research in favor of arts learning is stacking up, writes Johns Hopkins University’s Mariale Hardiman.
There’s Something Missing From STEM Learning
Including arts in science and math instruction promotes student creativity and job preparation, writes STEAM specialist Susan Riley.
Arts Integration Is a Sucker’s Game
Turning “STEM” into “STEAM” won’t stop arts from getting squeezed out of the curriculum, cautions researcher Jay P. Greene.
How to Assess Arts Education—And Why You Should
Arts instruction and understanding the creative process can help prepare students for 21st-century challenges, write Emily Gasoi and Sonya Robbins Hoffmann.
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