1. What have you heard during the conference that strikes you as a promising research direction?

2. What have you heard during the conference that strikes you as a promising instructional or pedagogical direction?

3. Can you report on any interesting research that you feel would have an impact on arts education?

4. Can you report on any interesting lesson plans or courses that involved the arts in learning in other subjects or learning across the curriculum?

5. Can you suggest future directions to involve artists and scientists in research partnerships for the support of arts education?

Comments
 
 
 
 

1. What have you heard during the conference that strikes you as a promising research direction?

• Research on the relationship of creative activity and complex uses of the brain in arts education and arts experiences, such as the development of the frontal cortex and the effects of heightened emotional states on memory retention. This research should directly and publicly be applied to reinstating the arts in education. (8 responses)

• Research on the transference from arts learning to core curriculum learning, to self-esteem, to pride of school, and to performance improvement. This research should focus on how arts learning is not unidirectional but has benefits for the larger society. It might compare standardized test scores of high-arts schools with the scores of low-arts schools. Research data must be aggressively distributed to policy-makers and school board members. It should also use qualitative data alongside quantitative data as valuable and reliable assessment. (9 responses)
• The research of Eisner's nine elements. (See Keynote Address.)(1 response)
• Research on using the arts to promote healing for disturbed individuals. This is in association with the example of the ArtsBridge program being used to help sick children. The arts might collaborate with various disciplines such as occupational therapy or social work in the analysis of data. (5 responses)
• Research on the possible increase in empathic response after exposure to the arts, substantiating the importance of arts practices on learning. Long-term studies of high school students with arts education might focus on whether or not the arts help people of this age with their emotion management skills. (3 responses)

• Research on children's art works to discover how we can increase their creativity and how we can encourage their explorations. (2 responses)
• Research on the differences between active learning experiences and passive learning experiences. This research on children's learning development should help update curriculum to make it more relevant. (2 responses)
• The research of "Learning in and through the Arts," by Dr. Horowitz, Teachers College, Columbia University. (See Proceedings.)(1 response)

• The use of story telling, "object making," or other kinesthetic performances to get students involved through active learning. (2 responses)
• The encouragement of risk taking and engagement in the community. (1 response)
• The teaching of many subjects through the arts. One example would be to teach anatomy and drawing together. (4 responses)
• The teaching of art and dance as discreet subject areas rather than for their transfer effects. (1 response)
• Finding intelligent ways to engage students' emotions through existing works of art and through student's own art making experiences. (1 response)
• Bringing research about art into the classrooms so that students and parents better understand the power of what they are learning. (1 response)

• Working with "at risk" students, special education classes, and children who have medical problems.

• Developing collaborative projects with defined goals of curricular reform, stressing how the arts and the sciences are similar and how they complement each other. The projects should be aligned with K-12 education and state curriculum documents. (2 responses)
• Developing an ArtsBridge Web site with bulletin boards to share lesson plans, project plans, and ongoing trials and tribulations. The Web site could also include a profile of what ArtsBridge has accomplished to date. An ArtsBridge chatroom could also be created to allow scholars & mentors from many campuses to converse. (3 responses)

• "An Evaluation of the Extended Benefits of a Museum/School Program" (Donna Love Vliet, Phd, 1987 Masters Thesis, from the University of Texas at Austin).  The purpose of the study was to do an extended evaluation of the "Art Enrichment Program".  This was a museum/school collaborative program of the Archer M. Huntington Art Gallery (now the Blanton Museum of Art) at the University of Texas at Austin and the Austin Independant School District, Office of Gifted Education.
• "The British Museum And the National Gallery of Art: Resources for British School Curricula" (Donna Love Vliet, Phd, 1994 Doctoral Dissertation, from the University of Texas at Austin).
• The National Assessment of Educational Progress.
• Research by the California Arts Project on the effects of their program on teachers.
• Research by the Packard Foundation, currently funding research in Santa Ana County with Dominic Wolf of Howard PACE.
• Research on brain imaging with functional magnetic resonance methods. This could help us understand how cognitive mechanisms function.
• "Getting off the List," a New York City Report.
• PEW Charitable Trust published statements.
• The Galef Institute Evaluation work by James Catterall, UCLA. (2 responses)
• "Your Brain on Music." This might be useful as a service announcement.
• Research in association with constructivist theory.

• "Ask Me if I Care," a program developed in association with UCSD Preventative Medicine and the San Diego Children's Museum. Through a collaborative art process, teens represent those situations in which they are at risk (gang violence, safe sex). This information is presented to health care specialists to create an active conversation about wellness.
• "Curriculum Connections": Interdisciplinary art museum lessons for K-6 grades.
• Creative Leaps International.
• LACMA "Looking at History through Art" interdisciplinary units. LACMA Teachers Academy shows elementary teachers ways in which they can use works of art as a point of inquiry and departure in history, social science, language arts, and arts curricula. The course takes teachers through a process of developing their own interdisciplinary teaching materials around works of art.
• UNC-Chapel Hill's Communication Studies Department classes that use performance as a learning/analytical tool for history, media, literature, and philosophy.

• Combining old media history and theory with new media by teaching content analysis where students produce a critical Web site instead of final term paper.
• Developing the education of teachers in ways to bring drama back into the classroom as a way of bringing learning "off the page," alive, and in the students' bodies.
• Using "improv" games to create a safe environment for students in abusive environments to foster respect and trust.
• Having students write a full play. Students would spend a lot of time writing and reading to each other.
• Using actors to role-play as patients for medical students to learn bedside manner. For example, how do you tell someone they have cancer? How do you deal with the emotional response those patients will have?
• Bringing playwrights and actors into the classroom to create new work.

• Research on the extent to which art skills (multi-tasking, problem solving, making sense of a changing environment, and actively expressing one's concerns to the community) aid cognitive development. Study the strengths of various ways of learning (i.e., kinesthetic, audio, and visual) with students immersed in the arts and those who are not. (4 responses)
• Research on digital art and how artists/musicians partner with sciences. This might focus on the use and impact of digital technologies combined with art practices in K-12 projects. (1 response)

• Research on the state of the arts today. Analyze where the arts were, where the arts are going, and how they might be continually improved. This might include calculating statistics on the effects of cutting arts education. (2 responses)
• Evaluating the psychological and social science aspects of arts classrooms. This research might partner scholars with scientists to develop assessment tools and to record data on the effectiveness of the arts. In the beginning, the scientists and arts educators might examine one small thing as a starting point for learning one another's languages. (8 responses)

• Providing a plan for "translation" of the arts research data to lay terms. And most importantly, disseminate this knowledge to school boards, power brokers, and arts advocates. (3 responses)

• Developing experimental paradigms that assess an individual's creativity in quantitative ways, possibly with computer graphics stations. The experiments might consider both qualitative and quantitative methods. The dialogue between the two functions could be deepened by creating teams that allow students and classroom teachers to assist as researchers. (2 responses)

• Developing projects in multicultural education that come from an arts base. This would teach students about national and international cultural differences via art. (1 response)
• Developing classroom projects that team arts teachers & scientists. This might include a pre-post contact assessment between arts scholars and scientists. This project might be standardized so that all of the UC systems can simultaneously implement it. (3 responses)
• Extending ArtsBridge across the academic spectrum. Scholarships could be offered to students in the social and cognitive sciences to encourage them to venture into the field with ArtsBridge scholars to objectively identify and document the nature of activities and their outcomes (i.e., engage in both descriptive and experimental research). This would also provide the common base of experience that facilitates cross discipline discourse. (2 responses)

• Developing a cohesive plan to integrate the various arts-related educational organizations and programs such as TCAP and ArtsBridge. It might also be useful to develop an organization of scientists/artists to bring some of this research to the decision-makers at the policy-making levels. (1 response)
• Inviting artists to science conferences. (1 response)
• Inviting a coalition of concerned scientists to do an article on why arts should be in the core curriculum. (1 response)
• Pairing scientists and artists on a personal basis for better communication. Artists and scientists need to have more opportunities to have informal discourse together to decide, with art educators, on areas for research. (1 response)
• Developing coalitions among national associations for relevant science and arts disciplines. (2 responses)
• Inviting artists to science classrooms and laboratories. At the UCSD psycho-aesthetic laboratory, visual artists, musicians, dancers and theatre professionals (from both UCSD and the community) are frequent guests?both as consultants and as research participants. (1 response)
• Asking the scientists how they want to participate. (1 response)
• Advocating science/teacher "tag teams." (1 response)
• Advocating state and federal joint briefings of scientists, artists, and arts educators. (1 response)
• Developing a steering committee composed of conference participants. (1 response)

• The need for a national campaign to celebrate the humanities. To help accomplish this goal, the methods of those who are the innovators and entrepreneurs in the use of the media need to be defined and utilized.
• The need for information about how to conduct research. Pre- and in-service teachers are often not trained to be researchers.
• The need for reemphasizing content, invention, authorship, creation, and risk taking in schools. There appears to be a tension between students who are media proficient and adults who are not. Adults need to appreciate what students can do.

• The concerns with educational reform and arts classrooms. All of the changes demanded by educational reformers have been a reality in arts education classrooms (e.g., authentic assessment, student-centered classes, constructive curriculum, and heterogeneous grouping).
• The concerns with how to deal with current social and economic issues in schools. The Pop-culture appears to dominate the world while a dynamic economy transforms life styles and creates new problems. Our schools are being asked to deal with these issues and must find ways to cope with such dramatic changes.
• The concerns with the impact of high-stakes testing on arts education. While some feel there is a need to show that the arts raise test scores, others think that this is not the way to go. Arts may or may not raise test scores, and arts learning is more dynamic and complex than the skills measured in standardized tests.
• The concerns with integrating arts and sciences in the classroom. Art should not need to be justified relative to the scientific curriculum because it has recognizable merits of its own. Research that demonstrates the presence of these qualities is ignored because they are seen as secondary to the school curriculum. The procedure of trying to integrate art through the "back door" as a teaching tool is deleterious. However, art gains value when justified relative to the scientific curriculum. There are two elements of education: Art and Science. They are not subjects, but methods of learning. We do not teach "Science" we teach investigation through scientific means. We could promote art as an alternative investigative means.

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