Transforming Education through the Arts

Brian Caldwell, Tanya Vaughan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781136519406
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Éducation générale

This timely book takes up the challenge of maintaining programs in the arts in the face of unrelenting pressure from two directions; the increasing focus on literacy and numeracy in schools, teamed with the cut-backs in public funding that often affect the arts most severely. Drawing on the wealth of evidence already available on the impact of the

1 The social and educational
costs of neglecting the arts

In a powerful critique of Australia's preoccupation with national testing in literacy and numeracy, Richard Gill, then director of the Victorian Opera, declared that ‘this abhorrent method of assessing children, teachers and their students needs to stop now’. He argued that the tests and associated transparency in results for all schools in the country on the My School website have ‘nothing to do with the education of a child’ (Gill 2011: 15). He went on:

Evidence is now available that schools all over the country are cutting back on arts education to devote more time to subjects that make children literate. It can demonstrably be proven that activities used in teaching for the national tests destroy individuality, stifle creativity, stultify thought and make all children respond in the same way – a sort of educational circus in which the children are the trained animals and the teachers the poorly paid ringmasters.

(Gill 2011: 15)

Critics in comparable countries, notably England and the United States, argue along the same lines. What will it mean to a nation if Richard Gill is correct and, moreover, the curtailment of arts education not only robs students of the intrinsic benefit of an artistic experience but further reduces the performance of students in literacy and numeracy? Moreover, what will it mean to a nation if such a cut-back increases the gap between high- and low-performing students on these same tests and decreases the life chances of students, even to the extent of increasing the probability they may subsequently be involved in crime or other anti-social behaviour?

Our purpose in Transforming Education through the Arts is to critically examine these issues and provide evidence that Australia and similar nations will benefit from greater rather than lesser engagement in the arts in school education.

Indeed, we go further and contend that a major design flaw has opened up in these nations and that school education, especially in the public sector, is at risk unless corrective action is taken as a matter of urgency.

Major themes

Schools and school systems around the world face the challenge of maintaining programs in the arts in the face of unrelenting pressure from two directions. One is the justifiable focus on literacy and numeracy, often accompanied by high-stakes testing that is exerting pressure on other areas of learning and teaching. The other is cut-backs in public funding, with international evidence suggesting that programs in the arts are often the first to suffer. The paradox is that study after study reveals the benefits of student participation in the arts.

The challenge described here is occurring at the same time that an increasing number of students are becoming disengaged from schooling. Part of the blame in the view of many observers is that school systems are trapped in a traditional model of schooling that is ill-suited to the needs of the twenty-first century and to the ways young people learn in a globalised, high-tech knowledge world. Disengagement occurs across all strata of society but is acute in highly disadvantaged settings where there is often a risk of involvement in juvenile crime. It seems that improvement in current approaches to schooling is not enough and change on the scale of transformation is required.

Among the many concerns of educators as far as recent attempts at reform are concerned is the narrowing of the curriculum, especially when the focus has been on literacy and numeracy, and schools have had to operate in a regime of high-stakes testing. This focus is often at the expense of the arts and pedagogies that endeavour to nurture innovation, creativity and problem-solving. These trade-offs have been especially noteworthy in schools in disadvantaged settings.

Governments in many nations in the Western world seem to be at their wits’ end in devising policies that will close the gap in achievement between high- and low-performing students. Among strategies that have been adopted are new curricula, often at the national level; high-stakes testing programs with unprecedented levels of transparency; performance pay for teachers; structural change through different approaches to governance and choice; and reform in initial teacher education. Yet countries like Australia, England and the United States still lag behind countries in Scandinavia and East Asia. While there are exceptions, it is proving very difficult to achieve improvement on the scale of transformation, especially in schools in highly disadvantaged settings.

Foundation in research

Transforming Education through the Arts builds the case for the arts to be at the centre of efforts to achieve such a transformation. It draws on the wealth of evidence already available on the impact of the arts but includes the findings of a landmark experimental study in Australia that puts the case beyond doubt in settings where disengagement of students has hitherto presented as an intractable problem. There are powerful implications for all stakeholders, including policymakers and the wider community. The case for expanding the involvement of the non-profit philanthropic sector in new kinds of partnerships is presented. Illustrations are provided from around the world of how the arts have transformed learning for disengaged students. Strategies for policy and practice are provided that leave no doubt about the ‘why’ and the ‘how’.

The findings from research around the world provide the touchstone for an evidence-based approach in this book. Particular attention is given to groundbreaking research in several of the most disadvantaged communities in Australia (Western Sydney in New South Wales) in state schools which did not previously offer programs in the arts. An intervention by the national non-profit arts organisation The Song Room (TSR), with the support of a high-profile foundation (Macquarie Group Foundation) to provide such programs in primary schools has led to gains on almost every measure of student achievement and wellbeing. Particularly noteworthy is the fact that these gains have been on indicators that are predictive of engagement in juvenile crime. Teaching was conducted by successful artists.

The Australian research is a rare example of experimental design in education wherein the performance of students in schools that offered programs in the arts was compared with the performance of students in matching schools that did not offer such programs. The effects were much larger than expected and the findings suggest strategies that should be adopted if levels of achievement and wellbeing are to be raised.

The book sets the findings in national and international research in the context of efforts around the world to achieve improvement on the scale of transformation, defined as significant, systematic and sustained change that secures success for all students in all settings. International research on the impact of the arts is summarised along with studies of conditions that predict the incidence of juvenile crime. Case studies of successful practice in different countries are provided and these include descriptions of approaches to learning and teaching which proved to be instrumental in achieving the desired outcomes. Implications for policymakers and professionals are offered. These implications will challenge several current strategies to improve schools.

In Chapter 1 we document the social and educational costs of neglecting the arts in schools and school systems. In England, the Cambridge Primary Review drew attention to this and proposed a new curriculum with a central place for the arts. In the United States, the arts are often the first programs to be cut as states and school districts introduce savage cuts in funding. It took a major effort to get the arts on the agenda in the national curriculum in Australia. These developments are puzzling given that high-performing nations on international tests of literacy and numeracy such as the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) protect the arts; for example, China, Finland, Japan, Korea and Singapore. It is even more puzzling given the wide gap between high- and low-performing students in countries such as Australia, England and the United States when evidence to date and to be developed further in the book shows how the arts can help close the gap.

What do we mean by ‘the arts’?

The draft of the Australian Curriculum for the arts provides a useful starting point for explaining what we mean by ‘the arts’:

We experience and engage in the Arts through sensory, cognitive and affective dimensions of perception. We make sense of the Arts within our three realms of experience:

• the realm of personal experience

• the realm of our relation to others and the society we experience

• the realm of people, places and objects which lie beyond our direct experience.

Through the five art forms we create representations of these three realms.

(ACARA 2010a: 4)

Dance, drama, media arts, music and visual arts are the five art forms in the Australian Curriculum, and these were considered to be ‘reasonably distinct’ although ‘organically connected, and not easily separable in some contexts’ (ACARA 2010a: 4).

Finland, which consistently performs well in PISA, specifies nine forms of the arts in its national curriculum which include literacy arts, performing arts (circus, theatre) and visual arts (architecture, visual arts and craft) (Finnish National Board of Education 2011).

The arts have been part of human history and have encouraged human expression in daily life and cultural ceremonies. The origins were explored by Nathan (2008):

Our ancestors knew the arts were synonymous with survival. We created art to communicate emotions: our passions, jealousies, and enduring conflicts. We designed pageants to dramatise the passing of seasons and other more temporal events. Daily life, communication, and rituals were circumscribed and delineated in a range of artistic expressions.

We went into battle with the sounds of trumpets, piccolos, and drums all over the globe. We buried our dead with song and even dance. We created theatre that proposed solutions to our woes. We drew pictures of our kings and queens, and also cave drawings to tell the history of our day. Was this our primitive form of expression, or were we informing future generations in a way that language will never do alone? In short, the performing and visual arts have been the foundation of our recorded existence. I believe the arts are key to how we educate ourselves.

(Nathan 2008: 177)

A distinction is made between arts and culture, with culture considered in part to refer to ‘any combination of race, gender, social practices belonging to a distinct human group and not necessarily to artistic content’ (ACARA 2010a: 4). In her evaluation of arts education in Iceland, Bamford described the importance of the arts to ‘reflect unique cultural circumstances’ (Bamford 2009: 51). The Singapore Art Syllabus (primary and lower secondary) notes that ‘through making art, our students learnt to reflect and express their uniqueness by communicating their thoughts and emotions using images and objects’ (Ministry of Education Singapore 2008: 1). The relationship between culture and the arts is described in the following terms:

[All] art making and artworks are culturally mediated, and the meanings they express are directly related to the culture in which the artists and audiences live. The Arts are shaped by their culture, its history and traditions and in turn help to shape and re-shape it.

(ACARA 2010a: 4)

The case for the arts

In this section we summarise the case for the arts by (a) examining their contribution to overall economic wellbeing, (b) exploring the relationship between the arts and science, (c) noting their place in a balanced curriculum, (d) establishing the arts as a human right, and (e) describing how they might support those who are most vulnerable. This is a general introduction to the theme. In Chapters 4, 6 and 7 we summarise more highly focused research on the impact of engagement in the arts.

Arts education and creative nations

The importance of ‘the creative class’ in successful economies has been well documented by Richard Florida, who reported that there is ‘broad agreement among economists and business forecasters that the growth of the overall economy will come in the creativity or knowledge-based occupations and in the service sector’ (Florida 2005: 29). He documented growth in the creative sector, especially, and also the service sector, compared to sharp declines in the manufacturing and agricultural sectors, and reported that ‘nearly all of the growth in jobs [in the United States] has come in two fields: expert thinking and complex communications’ (Florida 2005: 31). Florida compared the performance of nations as far as creativity is concerned:

• The creative class accounts for more than 40 percent of the work force in nine countries: Netherlands (47 percent); Australia (43 percent); Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, Norway (all 42 percent); Belgium, Finland (both 41 percent); and Germany (40 percent) (Florida 2005: 137).

• The Global Talent Index has two dimensions: Human Capital and Scientific Talent. On the Human Capital Index, measured by the percentage of the population with a bachelor's or professional degree, the top-ranked nations are the United States, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands and Canada. On the Scientific Talent Index, measured by the number of research scientists and engineers per million people, the top-ranked nations are Finland, Japan, Sweden, Norway, the United States, Switzerland and Denmark. When the two indices are combined, the top-ranked nations are Finland, Japan, Norway, Australia, Iceland, the Netherlands, Sweden and Canada. The United States ranked 9th, the United Kingdom 13th, Germany 18th and France 22nd (Florida 2005: 144–45).

• Along with technology and talent, tolerance is one of three factors in economic growth in the twenty-first century. The Global Tolerance Index has two dimensions: Values and Self-Expression. Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Japan, Germany, Switzerland, Iceland, Finland and New Zealand are the leaders (Florida 2005: 151).

• The Global Creativity Index provides a measure of national competitiveness based on the three factors accounting for economic growth: technology, talent and tolerance. The 12 top-ranked nations are Sweden, Japan, Finland, the United States, Switzerland, Denmark, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Germany, Canada and Australia, ahead of the United Kingdom (15th), France (17th) and New Zealand (18th) (Florida 2005: 156).

• Nations can be ‘talent magnets’ in respect to the proportion of university students who come from other countries. Top-ranked countries are Australia, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Sweden, Denmark, New Zealand, Ireland and the United States (Florida 2005: 148). The United States has the highest number of foreign students in absolute terms, accounting for 36 percent of the world total (Florida 2005: 147).

Florida contends that:

America will continue to be squeezed between the global talent magnets of Canada, Australia and the Scandinavian countries, who are developing their technological capabilities, becoming more open and tolerant, and competing effectively for creative people; and the large emerging economies of India and China, who rake in a greater share of low-cost production and are now competing more effectively fo...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Transforming Education through the Arts
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Foreword
• Preface
• List of abbreviations
• 1 The social and educational costs of neglecting the arts
• 2 The challenge of transforming schools
• 3 Pitfalls in educational reform
• 4 Research evidence on engagement in the arts
• 5 Methodology for Australian study
• 6 Impact on student achievement
• 7 Impact on student wellbeing
• 8 Studies of schools where arts interventions have succeeded
• 9 Turning around schools through engagement in the arts
• 10 A policy agenda
• Appendix
• References
• Index