Joshua Feinberg is an arts educator, curriculum writer and group facilitator who has worked for institutions including The Jewish Museum, the New York Historical Society, Yeshiva University Museum, the Stepping Stones Museum for Children and the Herbert and Eileen Bernard Museum of Judaica. He is a consultant to Avoda Arts. Debbie Krivoy, M.Ed., is the Director of Avoda Arts. She has 20 years of broad-based experience in curriculum design, classroom instruction and teacher training. Debbie currently serves on the board of directors of Lander-Grinspoon Academy, the Solomon Schechter School of the Pioneer Valley.

This review of literature is abridged and reprinted with permission. The original, expanded essay can be accessed at http://tinyurl.com/jelarts1.

While there is surely educational value in teaching the arts for their own sake—that is, in learning in the arts (see, for example, McCarthy et al., 2004)—this review will focus primarily on literature related to “learning through the arts.”

Because our goal is to better under­stand how the arts can enhance Jewish education, our main thrust will be to explore the cross-curricular benefits of the arts, to examine the ways in which the arts can be integrated with other subjects, and to expose the critical factors for successful arts integration.

Theoretical frameworks

As a prelude to an examination of current research and prac­tice in learning through the arts, it will be instructive to examine some broader conceptual frameworks that may inform our understanding of the potential role of the arts in education.

The past century has produced numer­ous theories about art, educa­tion, and the aesthetic experience; will look briefly at five theoretical approaches that may offer useful background for the ensuing discussion.

John Dewey: Art as experience

The writings of philosopher John Dewey (1859–1952) have contributed immeasurably to our understanding and practice of education in the 20th century and into the 21st. His work has particular implications for the arts.

Dewey understood human develop­ment as a series of experiences – transactional interactions between the self and the external world. Some interactions have the capacity to “prepare a person for later experience of a deeper and more expansive quality” (Dewey, 1938, p. 28). Such “educative experiences,” Dewey said, help to engender growth and development, while other types of experiences are developmental dead-ends. Dewey saw the function of schools as creating opportunities for educative experiences, and he believed that art experiences had the potential to be particularly educative (Jackson, 1998).

The experience of creating or appreciating art, Dewey said, was inherently fulfilling and generative. Aesthetic experiences help us see things anew and break us out of routine modes of interaction. “When the method of the teacher leads the pupil to see in the object features and relations he had not seen before,” Dewey wrote, “both teacher and pupil come into intellectual and emotional control of the situation. Then the habit of objective seeing is formed, and the habit operates in subsequent seeing…. Experience is immediately enriched, and the capacity for growth, for continuing experience, is expanded and directed” (Dewey, 1929, p. 7).

An art experience carries all the elements of what Dewey would call meaningful experience: intensity, clarity, concentration, and integration. Furthermore, according to Dewey, art experiences are not fundamentally distinct from everyday experiences—only more intense. We can thus use our experiences with art as models for other interactions, to help us infuse aesthetic qualities into ordinary experience. In other words, art does not transport us to other worlds; it reveals the potential in this world (Jackson, 1998; Dewey, 1934).

Dewey emphasized the importance of aesthetic education early on in his work, writing about the educational role of museums in his 1902 book The School and Society (Leddy, 2008). Dewey also understood play to be an important part of a child’s develop­ment and saw art as a way to reach this goal. He wrote, “Education has no more serious responsibility than making adequate provision for enjoyment of recreative leisure; not only for the sake of immediate health, but still more if pos­sible for the sake of its lasting effects upon habits of mind. Art is again the answer to this demand” (Dewey, 1916, p. 241).

Piaget and Vygotsky: Constructivism

The Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget (1896–1980) is considered by many to be the father of the educational theory known as Constructivism. Like Dewey, Piaget con­cep­tualized human development not as the passive absorption of information, but as a dynamic process built on interaction with one’s environment. Specifically, Piaget believed that children construct their own knowledge as they interact with objects in the world around them. As learners encounter new experiences, they actively try to assimilate these experiences into exist­ing cognitive structures. When the infor­mation does not fit, new structures are created to accom­modate the input. Through this ongoing process of cognitive restructur­ing – assimilation and accom­mo­dation – the mind makes sense of the world around it (Martin, 2001; Efland, 2002).

Lev Vygotsky (1896–1934) was born the same year as Piaget, and his own theory of Social Constructivism builds on Piaget’s work. He too saw develop­ment as a process of interaction. But while Piaget believed that knowledge was constructed primarily through interactions with the physical environment, Vygotsky contended that human development occurred through experiences in the social sphere (Althouse et al, 2003).

Vygotsky observed that children performed tasks at a higher level when they collaborated with an adult or a more capable peer than when they worked alone. He identified the difference between what children could do individually and what they could do collaboratively as the “Zone of Proximal Development” or ZPD. Vygotsky said that all learning takes place within the ZPD, as the learner internalizes the meanings that are first expressed in the social context (Vygotsky, 1978).

How do the theories of Piaget and Vygotsky help us understand the place of the arts in education? Like Dewey, Piaget and Vygotsky understood that learning occurs through doing. Arts projects (as well as other forms of constructivist engagement) enable students to explore and integrate new experiences within both their physical and social environments. In particular, Vygotsky’s emphasis on the social context of learning suggests the powerful potential of collaborative arts projects as educational tools.

Maxine Greene: Aesthetic education

In her work, contemporary philos­o­pher Maxine Greene focuses on the educative—and transformative – role of aesthetic experience; that is, the inherent value of engaging with works of art. Her influential ideas form the theoretical basis of the Lincoln Center Institute’s Aesthetic Education Program (Smith, 2005).

Like Dewey, Greene believes that perceiving a work of art is an active process that requires personal involvement (Greene, 1990). But unlike Dewey, Greene sees authentic encounters with artworks – what she calls “privileged objects” – as funda­mentally unique and distinct from other human experiences. “Privileged objects, for me, include paintings, sculptures, poems, novels, plays, musical pieces, and dance perfor­mances,” she writes, “with unique capacities to complicate and deepen our experiences in the world and with each other. They have the potential as well to plunge us into adventures of meaning and to open new perspec­tives on an always problematic world” (Greene, 1990, p. 149).

By experiencing, interpreting, and reflecting on artistic works, Greene believes, we can gain new perspec­tives, see new patterns, create new meanings, and reach new levels of awareness. But, she says, what one receives from the experience is dependent on what he or she puts in. Therefore, we must train students to be open and sensitive to the aesthetic experience. This is the goal of Greene’s approach to aesthetic education – to help individuals learn to connect with works of art so they can access the inherent value these privileged objects offer (Greene, 1990; Greene, 2001; Smith, 2005).

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: The flow experience

Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has spent years researching and writing about the phenomenon he calls “flow.” Through hundreds of inter­views with individuals who engage in a wide range of activities, from mountain climbing to computer coding to music making, he has iden­tified the flow experience as a state of intrinsic moti­vation. It is a sense of engagement and fulfillment one feels when participating in certain pleasur­able and challenging activities (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). Csikszentmihalyi has described the flow experience as “being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost” (Geirland, 1996).

In a study of art museum profess­sionals, Csikszentmihalyi and co-researcher Rick Robinson have found personal engagement with works of art to be a distinct form of flow. They note many similarities between aesthetic encounters and other examples of the flow experience. Both involve a heightened state of consciousness, an experience of becoming lost in the activity, and a sense of rising to the challenge.

Csikszentmihalyi and Robinson also point out the powerful educational role that flow experiences in general—and aesthetic experiences in particular – can play: “All flow experiences lead to a more intense interaction with the environment, to a development of potentialities… The aesthetic experience develops sensitivity to the being of other persons, to the excellence of form, to the style of distant historical periods, to the essence of unfamiliar civilizations. In so doing, it changes and expands the being of the viewer” (Csikszentmihalyi and Robinson, 1990, p. 183). Flow theory thus suggests an important place for the arts within human development.

Howard Gardner: Multiple intelligences

Harvard University’s Howard Gardner has been one of the most influential voices in educational theory over the past several decades. His theory of multiple intelligences backs up what many educators have known intuitively for years: that different students have different learning styles, different ways of knowing, and different ways of communicating their understanding.

In his research, Gardner observed that children’s development often proceeds differentially; that is, young people learn new skills and competencies unevenly. They do not simply “get smarter;” rather, a student may become adept in one area but not develop appreciably in another.

Gardner also studied individuals who had suffered brain damage and found that brain injuries often affect certain abilities but not others, depending on the location of the damage. In addi­tion, he examined cognitive develop­ment from a cross-cultural perspec­tive to learn what counts as “intelli­gence” in other human societies. Gardner’s research led him to chal­lenge the notion that intelligence is a singular entity “integrally connected in what Piaget would call a ‘structured whole’” or that it is some­thing that can be measured with a simple pen-and-paper test (Gardner, 1990).

Gardner redefined intelligence as “an ability to solve problems or to fashion a product, to make something that is valued in at least one culture” (Gardner, 1990, p. 16), and he identified at least eight discrete and unique types of intelligence. These include (but ultimately may not be limited to): linguistic, logical, spatial, musical, naturalistic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and bodily-kinesthetic. Educators have traditionally focused on the first two, but, as Gardner points out, we may fail to reach the majority of students effectively when our methods of teaching and assessment neglect the other six (Gardner, 1990; Gardner, 1999; Burnaford et al, 2001).

Significantly, Gardner’s list of intelligences does not include “artistic intelligence.” He notes, “I do not believe that any intelligence is inherently artistic or non-artistic. Rather, intelligences singularly or in combination can be put to artistic uses” (Gardner, 1990, p. 20). Furthermore, he says, “As I see it, every intelligence has the potential to be mobilized for the arts” (Gardner, 1999, p. 5).

Thus, in Gardner’s framework, the arts carry a rich potential to reach students across intelligences, to connect learning within different forms of intelligence, and to allow students opportunities to express their learning through a variety of intelligences. Gardner’s theory has, in fact, formed the conceptual basis for many arts-in-education programs, including the Arts PROPEL curricu­lum, developed by Harvard University’s Project Zero.

Recent research

Educational theory clearly suggests that the arts have a significant role to play in the effective education of our children. But how, specifically, do students (as well as teachers, schools, and communities) benefit from the incorporation of the arts into ongoing teaching and learning? In this section, we will examine some of the recent research that has attempted to answer this question.

The Arts and academic achievement: The question of transfer

Arts advocates have long recognized the intrinsic value of the arts. But the culture wars of the early 1990s forced many arts advocates to seek more measurable, extrinsic benefits of the arts (McCarthy et al, 2004). Since then, much of the research on arts and education has sought to identify the links between arts study and academic achievement. In particular, many scholars have tried to prove the existence of “transfer” – the capacity to apply learning in one discipline (e.g., the arts) to performance in another (such as math or reading).

In 2002, the Arts Education Partner­ship (a coalition of educational, arts, government, and philanthropic organizations working to promote the essential role of the arts in education) published Critical Links: Learning in the Arts and Student Academic and Social Development. The report summarized and reviewed sixty-two published studies that looked at the relationship between student achievement and exposure to music, dance, drama, and the visual arts. Richard Deasy, editor of Critical Links, concluded that there was evidence to support the notion that “well-crafted arts experiences produce positive academic and social effects,” including assisting in the development of critical academic skills such as literacy and numeracy (Deasy, 2002, p. iii). The publication featured a two-page chart listing sixty-five academic and social outcomes correlated to arts learning, including spatial reasoning, mathematics proficiency, and reading readiness.

Cognitive dispositions / habits of mind

Some scholars, however, have challenged the notion of direct transfer. In 2000, Ellen Winner and Lois Hetland, both of Harvard University’s Project Zero, published a meta-analysis of studies that had investigated the links between art study and specific academic outcomes such as verbal achievement, mathematical achievement, spatial reasoning, nonverbal reasoning, and visual and verbal creative thinking. Winner and Hetland found the evi­dence for transfer lacking. Although they noted some correlational relationships between the arts and academic achievement, causation was often not clear (Winner & Hetland, 2000). In a subsequent publication, Hetland, Winner, and colleagues (Hetland et al, 2007) proposed that while arts learning might not directly improve academic performance in other areas, the arts do cultivate broader dispositions that have the potential to transfer to other areas. Based on a study of five arts class­rooms, they suggested that the arts help students expand their capacity in the following areas: developing craft, engaging and persisting, envisioning, expressing, observing, reflecting, stretching and exploring, and under­standing the art world. These capacities would likely be applicable across many disciplines. This list echoes the work of Elliot Eisner, Professor Emeritus of Art and Education at Stanford University, who has written extensively on the arts and education.

Like Winner and Hetland, Eisner has noted that the evidence for transfer of specific skills is not clear, and has proposed that the arts instead train students in particular “habits of mind.” His list includes: attention to relationships, “flexible purposing” (that is, the ability to shift direction while solving problems), using materials as medium, expressing self through form, imagination, seeing the world from an aesthetic perspective, and translating experience into verbal expression (Eisner, 1992; Eisner, 1998; Eisner, 2002). A number of other writers (e.g., Davis, 2008; Efland, 2002; Perkins, 1994) agree with both Eisner and Winner & Hetland, noting that the development of cognitive and social dispositions—such as creativity, flexibility, and the ability to consider multiple inter­pre­tations—may be a more important benefit of the arts than transfer of specific skills. There is research to support this idea. In his study of the SPECTRA+ arts program in Hamilton, Ohio, for example, Richard Luftig (2000), found evidence of enhanced creativity among students in arts-infused schools.

Researchers at Teachers College also found that students in “arts-intensive” settings showed more creativity and cooperation, and better articulation of ideas and feelings than children in other schools (Fiske, 1999). And Shirley Brice Heath has shown that arts-based after-school programs for at-risk students offer excellent opportunities for developing communication, complex-thinking, and problem-solving skills (Fiske, 1999). In reviewing the evaluations of six large-scale arts partnerships, Rob Horowitz concluded, “Looking cumulatively at the studies, it appears there is a relationship between arts-integrated programming and learning across academic areas when they are more broadly defined than through the skills contained in high-stakes tests” (Horowitz, 2004, p. 26).

Emotional Connection and Student Motivation

In addition to the potential cognitive benefits, the arts have the capacity to reach students on an emotional level. Efland (2002) points out that thinking and feeling are not mutually exclusive (as is often assumed), and that engagement with the arts carries both cognitive and affective components. As Burnaford et al note, “The arts integrate thought, feeling, and action” (Burnaford et al, 2001, p. 10). This powerful combination of emotional and intellectual content may enable the arts to captivate students in a way that other approaches do not.

Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi’s flow theory suggests that the very nature of the arts experience may provide intrinsic motivation (Csikszentmihalyi and Robinson, 1990). Some researchers have explored the degree to which arts experiences are inherently motivational and perhaps able to engage students more fully. Michael Gazzaniga (2008), for example, has shown that interest in the performing arts can engender a high state of motivation, which can lead to greater attention and improvement in other cognitive domains. Similarly, an experimental research design by Michael Posner and colleagues (Posner et al, 2008) supports the theory that arts training among those with an interest in the arts leads to increased motivation and thus increased attention and improved cogni­tion. And Craig Sautter (1994) has cited a 1990 study by the Florida State Univer­sity’s Center for Music Research that docu­mented the role of the arts in motivation and drop-out rates among high-school students. The study showed that atten­dance was positively affected by arts participation. Sautter quoted the study as saying, “This enthusiasm for expressing oneself through the various art forms seems to be a motivating force for student attendance in these classes.” (Sautter, 1994, p. 436).

Community and Culture

In addition to the benefits the arts offer individual students, research has shown that arts programs can be effective in forging connections within communities and among cultures.

In 2001, Jessica Hoffmann Davis used a combination of observation, inter­views, and contextual analysis to study school culture and learning at three elementary schools with a strong arts focus. She found that in each case members of the school community experienced a strong feeling of connectedness. Davis reported that each school had managed to “engender a strong sense of community within the school by fostering collaborative endeavors among all constituents even as they cultivate the involvement of members of the broader community” (Davis, 2005, p. 118). In another study of six community arts centers, Davis and her colleagues found that the most educationally effective centers were able to nurture strong relationships among community constituents and help young people transform or articulate their personal identities (Davis, 2005).

In their seminal review, Gifts of the Muse: Reframing the Debate About the Benefits of the Arts, McCarthy et al (2004) have noted the particular power of group art projects to help build and strengthen community. They point out that the communi­cation required in such situations and the trust associated with revealing one’s creative expression help make group projects especially effective in forging connections, bridging social divides, and communicating cultural heritage.

Charles Fowler also looked at the role of the arts in several arts-infused schools. He found that not only was there a greater sense of connection to the larger commu­nity and a “humanization” of the learning environment, but that students were also better able to connect across cultures: “[The arts] were a key ingredient in encouraging students and teachers to examine their intuitive and emotive selves, to develop empathy and compassion, and to share and appreciate different cultures” (Fowler, 1996, p. 144). As Merryl Goldberg points out, art always occurs in a specific cultural context and can serve as a kind of cultural text. She writes, “Indeed, using the arts of different cultures as primary sources of learning history introduces children to the ‘feel’ of a culture in addition to the ‘facts’ of a culture” (Goldberg, 2001, p. 11).

Specific Benefits of Learning Through the Arts

It is worth noting that in much of the literature cited above, little distinction is made between “learning in the arts” (i.e., arts instruction) and “learning through the arts” (i.e., arts integra­tion). In examining the broad benefits of the arts in education, researchers have often lumped together these different approaches. This may result partly from the fact that many of the “arts-rich” schools studied simul­taneously utilize multiple modes of arts education, including instruction in specific arts disciplines as well as arts integration across the curric­ulum. But where the specific effects of learning through the arts can be isolated, the educational benefits of the integrated approach have been shown to be particularly strong.

Rob Horowitz has noted, for example, that in studying the effectiveness of the Chicago Arts Partnership in Education (CAPE) program, evaluators found instruction falling along a continuum of integration, defined by the amount and depth of the interaction between disciplines and concepts. The researchers found that in the more integrated settings, “students seemed to be more intrinsically motivated, were challenged by their work, and were more interested in pursuing the content outside of class” (Horowitz, 2004, p. 19). Burnaford et al (2007) have cited a series of evaluations that looked at the effects of an arts integra­tion program in Minnesota called Arts for Academic Achievement (AAA). The studies showed increases in student achievement in the AAA schools particularly among disadvan­taged learners, and Burnaford and her colleagues point out that “it was not the mere presence of arts integration but rather the intensity of the initiative that related most directly to gains in student learning” (Burnaford et al, 2007, p. 36).

Some writers (e.g., Eisner, 1998; McCarthy et al, 2004) have warned that an arts-integration approach carries a risk that the intrinsic value of painting, sculpture, drama, poetry, and other art forms will be de-emphasized. They worry that using the arts instrumentally to teach other subjects will lead to a diminishing, a “watering-down,” of arts experiences. It is important for educators and policy-makers to bear this warning in mind when devising arts-based curricula. Learning through the arts must incorporate authentic, robust engagement with a range of art forms, so that individual works of art – as well as the artistic process itself – can be appreciated on their own merits (Fineberg, 2004; Trent et al, 1998).

References

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