Developing Partnerships for Arts Education by Louis Fox and Christine Goodheart

Creative Schools, Connected Communities:
Developing Partnerships for Arts Education

by Louis Fox and Christine Goodheart

Society has had a sporadic love affair with the arts. In times of plenty, the arts flourish; in times of scarcity, the arts are in danger. This is especially true in arts education. In the sixties and seventies arts education was secure. However, with drastic budget cuts in the late 1970's, funding for the arts in our schools was cut and arts specialists and money for outside resources in the arts were eliminated from school budgets.

Today the arts are experiencing unprecedented support in the Puget Sound region. However, the resurgence of the arts is not being felt in our schools. Current conditions are grim. Some schools have no arts specialists, and in many schools the arts specialist teachers are shared between school buildings. These specialists often have a workload so great that only the most basic skills can be addressed, and schedules that preclude any planning with other teachers. External arts resources (performances, field trips, visits from a community or university artist) are sporadic and sometimes not well integrated into the overall instructional program. Moreover, many general classroom teachers have had little education in the arts themselves and are often not equipped to develop an arts-rich classroom. Indeed, in many cases, pre-service teacher training has diminished the arts component to a barely perfunctory position for most teachers.
THE ARTS AND LEARNING
What this variable support of the arts and arts education suggests is that the essential relationships between the arts and learning have not been well articulated or well documented. Specifically:

The arts enable students to understand the world in which they live.

Young people cannot participate in the human conversation or have a true understanding of human history without engaging in the study of the arts. The arts are one of the defining human activities and are as basic to enlightened citizenship as understanding the workings of numbers, words, and history.

The arts provide languages for shaping and expressing our understandings.

Whether we think of the arts as languages, forms of intelligence, or learning modalities, most educators agree that the arts can engage diverse learners and provide them with opportunities to share what they know.
The arts help develop intellectual skills.
To work in the arts, students are required to notice carefully, analyze and interpret diverse texts, think critically, pose problems, and make decisions and generate multiple solutions. The development of these capacities makes students better learners.
The arts contribute to social and emotional growth.
Students who participate regularly in the arts develop self-confidence. They see themselves as capable of doing work that is personally satisfying and publicly acknowledged. Because serious work in the arts requires persistence, students develop self-discipline and come to understand what it means to make multiple revisions to achieve high standards. Because so many art forms are collaborative in nature, students often develop the crucial ability to work on a common project with others.
The arts contribute to better teaching.
Engagement in the arts helps educators develop a broader repertoire of strategies to engage diverse students in learning. Certain powerful educational practices are inherent in the arts such as collaborative learning; portfolio assessment; emphasis on revision; and the construction of rich, long-term projects.
The arts support the formation of community.
Whether engaged as audience in a powerful common experience or engaged in creating art with others, the arts open pathways for dialogue. And because the arts deal with central aspects of the human experience, those who participate in arts experiences can come to understand one another in new ways.

The arts bring us joy.

All who have participated in the arts for any length of time talk about the pleasure they found in making and looking at works of art. We know that we can no longer divide the cognitive and affective aspects of learning—that when we feel joy we learn more easily and more effectively. The arts can bring joy to learning and make educational institutions more vibrant places.

The establishment of these relationships between the arts and learning 1 requires a dual focus on learning in the arts and on understanding the power of the arts in all areas of learning. Many projects in arts education emphasize one of these approaches to the exclusion of the other. But in the best projects there is a recognition that one cannot exist without the other.

THE NEED FOR PARTNERSHIPS

Some schools have always recognized the relationship between the arts and learning, and have maintained a commitment to rich internal resources (arts specialists, general classroom teachers who have ongoing learning opportunities in the arts, involved parents) linked to carefully chosen external resources (long term, carefully planned partnerships with museums, performing arts centers, community centers, and other community organizations) 2. These schools have continued to offer well-integrated arts experiences to their students, bucking the national trend begun in the 70's. At these select public schools, administrators and faculty have recognized that art does not deter focus on the basics of learning nor distract students from working for higher achievement.

During the same period of time, community organizations such as community centers, parks and recreation departments, community arts centers, and parent organizations began offering more and more arts opportunities after school and on weekends. However, in few places are the in-school efforts and the after-school efforts linked and developed to complement and reinforce one another.

In communities across the country 3 educators, artists, parents, and community leaders are beginning to develop partnerships to create meaningful, sustainable arts education both in and out of school. These communities are recognizing that by creating partnerships dedicated to linking in school and after-school efforts, the arts can become a dynamic part of the lives of all our children.

In these partnerships each individual and organization has a specific role to play:

arts specialists help students develop fluency in a particular art form;

classroom teachers use the arts in all their teaching to connect diverse disciplines and engage diverse learners;

parents and caregivers offer their arts expertise to the school community and become learning partners in the arts with their children;

arts organizations offer performances and exhibitions and the unique perspective of practicing artists;

community centers develop rich arts experiences after school; and

other community-based organizations such as libraries, parks, and senior centers offer additional experiences in the arts that enrich the community's overall approach.

PRINCIPLES TO GUIDE COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS IN ARTS EDUCATION

Partnerships begin when people are brought together around a common need. Those identifying the need engage in formal and informal research in order to develop a shared understanding of the context, history and character of the issue to be addressed.   Programmatic approaches to addressing the area of need take shape and common values emerge. In the next stage of the partnership there is a continual exchange between action and reflection that results in a continually evolving structure designed to respond to opportunities and need. In the best partnerships, guiding principles are made explicit and agreed upon by all participants. Below are some of the principles that might guide partnerships in arts education:

Professional development, planning and work with students should be a cycle with continuous opportunities for reflection and evaluation. In order to maximally benefit from professional development, educators must have the resources to design, execute and assess projects for their students.

Projects that seek to foster collaboration among diverse institutions must model collaborative work in their design and execution. Planning, teaching, and evaluating work should be undertaken jointly. Collaboration among institutions can only be fostered by collaboration among individuals who find this work to be mutually beneficial. Effective partnerships align individual aspirations with community aspirations and with the unique capacities of the partners.

Arts education in all settings should integrate perception (viewing, analyzing, and critiquing texts from a broad array of disciplines), production (creating their own works), inquiry (posing questions, undertaking research), and reflection (building connections between these activities, their own lives, and the world).

Learning in the arts must be seen as a good in itself as well as instrumental to other goods. The arguments centering on art for arts sake versus art for some other good (better socialization, enhanced learning in other areas) are fruitless. There must be room for exploration of both of these ends in a well-designed project.

It is not only the number of resources available that determines the quality of projects in the arts. The two most important factors determining quality are the knowledge and commitment of the participants in the project and the ways in which available resources are connected, sequenced, and woven together. Therefore, any approach must focus on immersing participants in learning in the arts balanced with thoughtful guidance and support in project design, execution and assessment.

Partnership work can not be carried out without trust and respect. All members of a partnership must actively pursue equity, justice, and reciprocity; and work to maintain a condition of openness and humility, allowing members of a partnership to learn from one another and to recognize one another's unique contributions.

PRINCIPLES IN PRACTICE

The ideals expressed above can best be communicated by constructing a specific example that shows the development and deepening of the learning process as partners are engaged.

Creating a Rich Project in a Visual Arts Classroom

Students in a middle school visual arts classroom are studying Chinese scroll painting. Their teacher, the visual arts specialist in the school, recently saw an exhibit of Chinese scroll painting at the local museum and has gathered books and slides. Students examine these images, explore the media and materials they will be working with, and talk about the history and cultural origin of scroll paintings. They then create their own scroll paintings and the arts teacher mounts a display of these paintings in the hallway for the school community to view. This is an excellent art project, one that is not common in some of our schools. In this work, students are learning to use resources to understand history and generate ideas, explore new art materials and techniques, create art works, and share their work publicly.
Broadening the Work to Include Other Teachers and a Museum Partner
The learning value of this arts experience can be multiplied many times over if pursued in partnership with other individuals and organizations. The visual arts specialist, recognizing this, pursues a partnership with classroom teachers and the local art museum. The art museum assigns a visual arts teaching artist to the school. The teaching artist and visual arts specialist design a professional development session for classroom teachers at the museum. Teachers explore the scroll painting exhibit, create their own scroll paintings and think about the connections of this work to the overall school curriculum. The professional development day is followed by a planning session in which classroom teachers, the arts specialist, and the visual arts teaching artist design a long-term project for students.

In this project, students view the exhibit of Chinese scroll painting and are guided in their looking by the teaching artist. They then work in one of the art studios at the museum to further develop their skills using particular techniques drawn from the exhibit. Following their tour of this exhibit, students visit the school library where the librarian helps each child select a Chinese poem. The librarian also creates a display in the library of books on China; assists students in researching Chinese art, literature, and history on the web; and helps students learn to do calligraphy. Students work with the arts specialist to complete their own scroll painting. The teaching artist works with students to help them curate a show of their scroll paintings in a school "museum". Students prepare a slide show of Chinese scroll paintings for a local elementary school and then give them a tour of their in-school museum.

To connect this work to social studies and language arts, classroom teachers ask students to choose a particular scroll painting from the school or museum exhibit and write a story set in that landscape, researching the historical period to make their story more authentic. These stories are also displayed in the school museum.

Within this partnership, student learning broadens. Specifically, students are developing skills of perception, developing writing and research skills, gaining and applying historical knowledge, learning about community cultural organizations, dealing with issues of presentation of materials, and crossing disciplinary boundaries.
Reaching Out to Parents
The arts are an ideal area in which to engage the parent community. While students are studying Chinese brush painting, the school offers two workshops for parents to introduce them to the techniques of Chinese brush painting and to provide them with a set of resource materials for use at home. As a culminating event, the school holds a family night at the museum where students are encouraged to bring their families to the museum to see the collection they have studied. Tables are set up so that families can work on Chinese scroll painting techniques together. This work helps erase the artificial boundaries between home and school.
Engaging the Expertise of the University
During this project and throughout the semester, a graduate student in visual arts from the local university acts as an assistant to the visual arts teacher and teaching artist. This graduate student prepares materials, assists in organizing community events, and helps students keep a portfolio of their work. An assessment specialist from the College of Education assists teachers in developing rubrics for the assessment of student work. These rubrics are shaped in relation to state arts, language arts, and social studies standards. Student teachers who wish to work in arts-rich classrooms are assigned to do their practice teaching in the school.
Extending the Work in Community Based Organizations
Teachers, recognizing the value of sustaining students' deep engagement in this work, help arrange for students to hang their exhibition in a local senior center. Teachers, students, and parent volunteers hold a series of Saturday Chinese brush-painting workshops for seniors. Students read their stories to seniors and seniors assist them in "publishing" an anthology of these stories that is available to the community at the exhibition in the senior center.

The local community center, hearing of the interest in this project, hires a master of Chinese brush painting to offer classes in the after school program. Students who have developed an interest in this art form take these classes and become more skilled. During one of the classes the artist brings a colleague who plays Chinese music and students paint to music. Seeing the success of this approach, the center director helps student mount an exhibit of their work in the center and has an open house for all involved with the project at which the musician performs.

Footnotes:

Research on some of the relationships between the arts and learning can be found in: Champions of Change, Arts Education Partnership, 1999.

The work of some of these schools and school districts can be found in: Gaining the Arts Advantage: Lessons from School Districts that Value Arts Education. Presidents Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, and Arts Education Partnership, 1999.

Four efforts are of particular note: The Lincoln Center Institute and its affiliates have evolved a powerful professional development approach and are a model for integrating perception, production, inquiry, and reflection in the instructional process through a philosophy and practice termed "aesthetic education." The Chicago Arts Education Partnership and its affiliates have created a model for sustainable neighborhood partnerships. The Empire State Partnership Program and the Annenberg Center for Arts Education have demonstrated the value of long-term, carefully planned arts organization/school partnerships.

About the Authors:
Louis Fox is the Vice Provost for Educational Partnerships at the University of Washington. He leads the UW's efforts to meet the educational needs of the state and the region, through collaboration with K-12 school districts, community colleges, public and private baccalaureate institutions, business, industry, and nonprofit organizations. He is also responsible for national and international partnerships. Fox has served the UW in many other roles, including Special Assistant to the President and Associate Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education. His charges include developing programs and strategies that use information technology to support teaching and learning on campus, developing applications of information technology to provide educational services throughout the state, and extending these programs and services nationally and internationally.   He can be reached at lfox@u.washington.edu. Read an interview with Louis Fox on this website http://www.newhorizons.org/trans/fox.htm.

Christine Goodheart is the Director of Initiatives in K-12 Arts Education in the Office of Educational Partnerships at the University of Washington. In this capacity, she works to build partnerships between University of Washington arts departments and organizations, the College of Education, professional arts and humanities organizations in the Puget Sound region, and the K-12 community. Christine has also been appointed Affiliate Professor of Curriculum and Instruction in the College of Education where she will work to further develop the role of the arts within teacher education. Prior to assuming this position, Christine was Program Development Director at the Lincoln Center Institute for the Arts in Education, the education department of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City. She can be reached at gchris@u.washington.edu.

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