1. Richard J. Deasy Arts Education Partnership www.aep-arts.org
Why Arts Education?
Richard J. Deasy
Arts Education Partnership

2. Arts Education Partnership
Founded and financed by the U.S. Department of Education and the National Endowment of the Arts in cooperation with the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies.
Coalition of more than 100 national education, arts, business and philanthropic organizations
Demonstrates through research and best practices the role of the arts in improving schools and student achievement.

3. AEP Goals and Activities
Deepen the knowledge of the nature and effects of learning the arts
Influence policies and systems that control resources and access
Identify and promote promising practices in arts education
Build a national infrastructure of support for arts education through partnerships

4. Public perceptions of the arts
Not cognitive – not ways of acquiring or expressing knowledge; physical expressions of emotion
You are born with the talent or gift; for others a casual, leisure pursuit
Not a pathway to college nor to a decent job

5. Research Publications
Arts Education Partnership
Research Publications
Gaining the Arts Advantage: Lessons from School Districts that Value Arts Education (1999)
Young Children and the Arts: Making Creative Connections (1998)
Champions of Change: The Impact of the Arts on Student Learning (2000)
Critical Links: Learning in the Arts and Student Academic and Social Development (2002)

6. Arts Education Partnership
Critical Links: Learning in the Arts and Student Academic and Social Development
Funded by the U.S. Department of Education and the National Endowment for the Arts
Reviews 62 studies of dance, music, theatre, visual arts and multi-arts
Studies selected by teams of researchers from Harvard and UCLA
Most studies are experimental, using both quantitative and qualitative methods

7. Arts Education Partnership
Findings: The Arts Involve and Develop Fundamental Cognitive Capacities
Spatial Reasoning:
Organizing and sequencing ideas, concepts, and images
Conditional Reasoning:
Developing and testing theories
Symbolic Interpretation:
“Decoding” multiple modes of representation

8. Arts Education Partnership
Fundamental Cognitive Capacities
Imagination:
Visualizing new possibilities for thought and action
Persistence:
Sustaining concentrated attention
Resilience:
Managing challenges; overcoming failure and frustration

9. It IS about thinking
“A work of art is above all an adventure of the mind.”
Eugene Ionesco, playwright

10. Arts Education Partnership
Findings: The Arts Involve and Develop Personal and Social Skills and Behaviors
Self Identity/Self Efficacy:
Realistically valuing oneself
Social Tolerance:
Respecting multiple points of view
Empathy:
Understanding another’s point of view

11. Arts Education Partnership
A Crucial Finding
Rates of improvement in literacy are more significant for children from economically disadvantaged circumstances and those with reading difficulties in the middle grades.
Why the Arts Have These Effects
They demand and reward active engagement in complex tasks that invoke cognitive, affective and kinesthetic “meaning-making” activities.
The multiple benefits of the arts and their particular significance for lower SES students makes their robust presence in the curriculum a matter of equity.
Some Implications

12. Third Space: When Learning Matters
How do the arts contribute to the improvement of schools that serve economically disadvantaged communities?
Comparative analysis of 10 “high poverty” schools

13. The Schools
Recognized by national, state or local processes for their high performance
Attribute their success to the arts
At least 50% of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch

14. What arts? Classes in the art forms – dance, music, etc.
“Integrated arts” where the learning experience includes the content and processes of an art form and the content and processes of another subject or discipline – literacy, math, science, social studies
Partnerships with artists and community arts organizations

16. What’s My Story?, photograph by Samantha, Sheridan Global Arts and Communications School

17. Third Space: When Learning Matters
Key Findings
Students are the epicenter of school transformation and develop the habits of mind and dispositions predicted by Critical Links.
Teachers success and satisfaction increases
Parents become actively involved
A sense of community develops within the school and with the community

18. How and Why: “Third Space”
Entering a space where new sets of relationships emerge in creating, performing, or responding to works of art
E.g., a play, a dance, musical performance, a painting

19. Students at Peter Howell Elementary School Perform an Opera

20. Students in the Third Space
New perceptions and understandings of students – by teachers and peers
Affirmation of students lives, knowledge, abilities
Students full members of a community of learners: teachers, students, artists

21. The Role of Artists Model achievement in the form
Understand and respond to the meaning and personal expression displayed in student work
Energize teaching in the school and give teachers access to community arts and arts venues

22. A Central Falls High School teacher congratulates a student on his performance

23. Learning Matters The arts link school and “lived worlds” of students
It’s about them
Become “agents of their own learning”
Motivated to learn
The arts are “hard fun”

24. Destiny, quilt by Anyeli, Central Falls High School

25. Adaptive expertise Swartz, Bransford & Sears (2005) Innovation
Frustrated Novice?
Adaptive Expert
Innovation
Routine Expert
Novice
Efficiency

26. Teacher satisfaction
50% of all new teachers quit within the first five years
Teachers in these schools felt empowered, creative, and successful

27. Involving parents
Essential for school and student success but difficult
Parents share the success of their students in these schools
Overcome barriers of fear, language, culture
Enter the community of teaching and learning

28. Building communities Communities, not cliques, in these schools:
Inclusive
Outwardly directed to “perform”- to serve
The foundation of a democratic society

29. Third Space: When Learning Matters
Key Findings
Students are the epicenter of school transformation and develop the habits of mind and dispositions predicted by Critical Links.
Teachers success and satisfaction increases
Parents become actively involved
A sense of community develops within the school and with the community

30. Learning Should Be Alive, Living and Breathing, Like We Are
--Poem by Deanna, teacher, Central Falls High School
Learning doesn’t happen between 4 walls. It happens between people. Teachers should not only be facilitators, but also lifelong learners, letting their students have a turn at guiding them. Schools should not live within the borders of Monday through Friday 8:00 am to 2:30 pm. Schools should be responsible institutions; responsible for educating, responsible for creating a positive and supportive culture, responsible for reaching out, pulling in, taking hold, and letting go. Schools should be the great collaborators of our communities; fostering global thinking, and global understanding.
SCHOOLS SHOULD OFFER HOPE

31. Schools should offer hope
“Hope is different from optimism. It is a state of the mind rather than a response to the evidence. It is not the expectation that things will work out successfully but the conviction that something is worth working for, however it turns out.”
Seamus Heany quoting
Vaclev Havel