New Perspectives in Arts Integration is a three-year research project the Council has undertaken to investigate how and why three exceptional arts education programs are successful at improving students performance and knowledge and also at keeping them excited about learning. The programs are:
The Council, in collaboration with its partners, Brattleboro Museum & Art Center, the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts, the Vermont MIDI Project, and Vermont Institutes Evaluation Center seeks to investigate and describe the process by which each of these community-based approaches to arts education affects schools, teachers, and students.
The project, which focuses on children in fourth through sixth grades in four Vermont schools, is examining the empirical links between each program’s strategies and its success in increasing student learning and engagement in and through the arts. Professional training is provided in each school for classroom teachers in fourth, fifth, and sixth grades, their respective arts educators, and other key school professionals. The goal of the project is to document these successes and determine how they can be replicated, particularly in Vermont’s many small rural schools struggling with limited resources.
Vermont Institutes Evaluation Center is providing guidance and technical expertise for the research aspects of this project: developing logic models, identifying or developing qualitative and quantitative methods for collecting evidence, and data analysis and interpretation. This project will measure any links between skills developed in the arts and success in such academic areas as reading and mathematics. The US Department of Education and others have called for more studies demonstrating these links. In addition to the focus on student outcomes, this study will also look at effects on teachers, other professionals, and schools as systems where professional development and support are provided for integrated arts education.
The “New Perspectives in Arts Integration” project represents a significant collaboration among those working in the arts, new technologies, and education (both curriculum and assessment) in Vermont. This project has the potential to increase knowledge and understanding of effective strategies for strengthening the use of high-quality arts in the course of other academic instruction.
New Perpectives in Arts Education currently consists of the following projects:
Words Come Alive! is a professional development program for classroom teachers that focuses on elements of the theater and dance performances that the teachers and their students see on the Flynn Center stage. It explores the creative processes behind those elements, and then applies that same exploration to what students are reading. This program empowers teachers to create ways to build their students’ expressive skills while deepening reading comprehension.
In WCA! the Flynn Center’s teaching artists instruct classroom teachers in creative drama and movement, on elements of the art forms and demonstrate the connection between the creative artistic process, strategies used in reading comprehension, and the appropriate Vermont Grade Expectations in theater, dance and reading. Each class involved in WCA! attends two Flynn Center student matinee performances per year to demonstrate the powerful relationships among theater, dance and narrative art forms, and to provide teachers and students with examples of artistic excellence.
The Vermont MIDI Project promotes music composition for students and provides on-line mentoring experiences that tap into critical thinking, problem solving and skill development. This program connects Vermont students and their teachers with professional composers around the country. The computer technology for music composition is similar to a using a word processor for writing, allowing students to hear and edit their musical ideas as they create. Compositions often begin as classroom assignments designed for students to explore musical elements by manipulating melody, rhythm, form, expressive elements, and harmony. As a next step, students often integrate their next original compositions into activities such as music for movies and multimedia presentations, puppet shows and plays.
An important element of the process requires students to describe the intent of their work and ask for feedback to improve it. Professional artists trained to serve as mentors provide comments and encourage teachers and students to participate in the critique process. The compositions are then revised and re-posted, often through several iterations. Project members adhere to a set of mentoring protocols to ensure respectful and substantive critique in a process that supports all levels of student ability. Collaboration is promoted through a group composition process at the elementary and middle school levels.
Visit the Vermont MIDI Project website
Visual Thinking Strategies consists of a series of lessons taught by classroom teachers over the school year. It is an open-ended inquiry method for engaging children in thought and discussion about visual images. Each lesson involves a discussion of carefully sequenced images chosen from many different cultures and times, and in various mediums. The process is not information-based; its goal is for the students to look, think, verbalize, and discuss what they are seeing as they participate as a community of learners.
How VTS works: Students are first asked to look at an image without talking. Then the teacher asks specific non-directive questions which encourage students to examine what they see. As students develop their observational skills, more probing and directed questions are added. The teacher ensures that each response is heard and acknowledged by paraphrasing what is said. As the discussion evolves, teachers link various related answers, helping make students aware of their converging and diverging views, and of their developing skills at constructing shared, yet varied meanings.
As students develop their connection to art, they exercise a wide variety of cognitive skills that are useful in many contexts, including: active class discussion and group problem solving; development of thinking and communication skills; development of descriptive writing skills; and enhanced ability to transfer these skills to other subject areas. VTS has helped students critique their own and their peers’ art work. Core art teachers and artists-in-residence reinforce students’ VTS learning with book-making and story-writing projects as well as projects in photography, neighborhood documentation, mural-making and a wide range of other studio arts.
Visit the Visual Thinking Strategies website
Brattleboro Museum & Art Center, Brattleboro: $16,000 to support BMAC participation in the New Perspective in Arts Integration research project with Oak Grove Elementary School.
Flynn Center for the Performing Arts, Burlington: $16,000 to support Flynn Center’s participation in the New Perspectives in Arts Integration research project with Highgate Elementary School.
Vermont Institutes Evaluation Center, Montpelier: $6,000 to support Vermont Institutes participation in the New Perspectives in Arts Integration Project.
Vermont MIDI Project, Essex Junction: $16,000 to support Vermont MIDI participation in the New Perspectives in Arts Integration research project with St. Albans Elementary School.