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Drawing from research on art integration, we discuss why visual arts and social studies can be powerful partners in promoting critical thinking skills. Because this is an increasingly visual society, visual literacy is becoming progressively more important. Through the visual arts, students have the opportunity to analyze and evaluate information, which are critical academic and citizenship skills. The integration of these two content areas and skills facilitates effective use of the limited time teachers have with students. In order to demonstrate the integration of art and social studies, we provide a lesson plan on Western Expansion.

This study of 65 elementary school teacher candidates enrolled in social studies methods classes examined attitudes toward currently contentious curriculum issues before and after participation in a practicum experience teaching an arts-integrated unit on Africa. These curriculum issues included arts-integrated project-based learning versus narrower skill-based lessons; the importance of creativity, leadership, organizational, and affective skills; and student-centered versus teacher-centered instruction. Attitudes were measured by teacher candidates placing themselves on each of ten continuums between endpoints representing opposing curriculum approaches and responding to open-ended questions. Statistically significant pre-post differences with medium effect sizes occurred on three of the continuums indicating that teacher candidates now placed greater value on arts-integrated curricula to teach social studies content; recognized that choice motivates students; and expressed more enjoyment of planning complex, long-term, student-centered projects. They recognized deep conceptual learning and engagement of elementary school students during the student-centered arts-integrated lessons but noted that the time and effort of complex project work were barriers to implementation. Social studies methods teachers need to involve teacher candidates in field experiences that offer authentic arts- integrated student-centered project work to allow them to adopt curriculum stances not experienced as elementary school students.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss integrated working between the arts and those in care settings. Identifying that the field is very broad, with diverse evidence and experience within it, the paper argues that there is a need to find ways in which to be clearer about the purpose of specific arts and care integrated projects. The paper draws on a case study project to develop some insights and a framework to help address this challenge.

The paper is a conceptual discussion and development drawing upon insights from relevant literature and a case study analysis of an integration project between a hospice service, an art gallery and an artist.

The integrated working case study project between the hospice, art gallery and artist highlights some points about a lack of conceptual frameworks to help locate the purpose of diverse arts and care projects. There is scope for much confusion about the nature and purpose of such integration projects without a clear framework for articulating the aims of individual integration endeavours and their place in relation to other arts and care work. This paper develops a framework and a clear understanding about the different kinds and goals of integrated working between arts and care settings to help with future practical and research projects.

The paper reports a case study which highlights key themes from which generalisation to other services will require interpretation for particular contexts.

The ideas present a helpful approach to articulating the goals of individual projects and to better understand the place of projects in relation to other arts and care initiatives.

There is much scope for better integrated working between arts and care settings to achieve better outcomes for users of care services, and the ideas presented here should help to better organise and evaluate such developments.

This is the first paper to set out the framework presented to help with better integrated working between arts and care settings.

The purpose of this paper is to report the findings from a study that explored the use of art and visual production as a means through which 20 third-graders developed and represented their social studies understandings. The author describes the ways the process of visual production and the finished products illustrate the nature of the students' social studies learning.

The project was grounded in an inductive qualitative approach privileging student voice. This paper reports analysis and interpretation of multiple data sources, including photographs of students' projects, digital recordings of the visual productions and student interviews, as well as field notes and informal teacher conversations.

Results suggest that in the process of visual production and in their final pieces, students moved in fluid ways between making sense of new knowledge, developing important social studies skills, and representing their knowledge. More specifically, students used historical evidence to present humanized versions of history through personalized narratives. These outcomes suggest that the integration of art and visual production can be a valuable and effective way for students to develop and apply social studies skills as well as represent their understanding.

This study provides insight into how young children can use art and visual production to develop social studies skills, make sense of new knowledge, and represent their learning, contributing knowledge on an understudied topic and population in social studies education.

The purpose of this chapter is to examine early childhood arts education as a mechanism for achieving Dewey’s goals of active, integrated learning. The approach is to examine Settlement Music School’s Kaleidoscope Preschool Arts Enrichment Program as a model, reviewing the pedagogical approach and research on program outcomes. Findings are that music, dance, and visual arts can be used to teach skills in language, literacy, science, mathematics, and social/cultural learning. Program outcomes indicate particular benefits for children from racial/ethnic minority groups as well as those with developmental delays. Comparison research documents an overall advantage of Kaleidoscope’s arts-integrated pedagogy for vocabulary growth and emotional functioning. The research is limited in that between-child comparisons have lacked random assignment. Yet within-child experiments and between-child quasi-experiments suggest that arts-integrated education offers advantages for the “whole child.” Practical implications include that early childhood professionals may use the arts to facilitate multimodal learning and emotion regulation, as well as bridge the gap that often separates home from school for children from racial and ethnic minority backgrounds. A social implication is that, although the arts are often viewed as supplemental, they can provide mechanisms for the development of skills in core early learning domains. Additionally, arts integration may offer solutions to the challenges faced by learners from diverse backgrounds and with diverse needs. This chapter makes an original and valuable contribution by reviewing both pedagogy and research from Kaleidoscope, providing a compelling model of how Dewey’s goals of active, integrated learning may be realized.

Arts-integrated social studies projects can provide meaningful learning about another culture; yet, they are rare in the current assessment-focused climate. Similarly, students are under-exposed to projects that involve spatial reasoning; nonetheless, this skill is important in everyday life and the workplace. This article describes a mixed-methods study of 65 (59 female, 6 male) pre-service elementary teachers in a social studies methods course reflecting on their participation in an African mask-making project with first and second graders that incorporated both arts integration and spatial reasoning. Pre-service teachers identified discussion with others, example masks and images, and taking time as the most helpful mask-making strategies. Most preservice teachers thought they would (42%) or possibly would (32%) implement mask making with their future elementary students because of deep, meaningful learning and active engagement they experienced and observed during the project. The authors concluded that pre-service teachers need multiple experiences with long-term arts-integrated projects that support the development of spatial skills to be confident enough to undertake them in their future classrooms and suggest that such projects be part of social studies methods courses.

Social studies is the combined study of several disciplines including cultural anthropology where expressive culture is defined and described. Expressive culture is the processes, emotions, and ideas bound within the social production of aesthetic forms and performances in everyday life. It is a way to embody culture and to express culture through sensory experiences such as dance, music, literature, visual media, and theater. By integrating the arts into social studies, students are introduced to cultural ideals, traditions, and norms inherent in their own lives. This article describes the use of cultural anthropology as a vehicle to teach social studies concepts with visual and performing arts. Two examples of coequal social studies and arts units are examined in second and sixth grades.

This paper describes how a pre-service teacher’s knowledge and pedagogy changed as she documented her reflective practice while teaching arts-integrated lessons in a fifth-grade classroom during her pre-service teacher preparation program. The pre-service teacher spent three-months conducting an action research project in collaboration with a university mentor.

This paper explores what she and her mentor learned as she prepared arts-integrated lesson plans based on the four studio structures for learning and analyzed them along with identifying and documenting evidence of deep learning through field notes and video recordings.

Analysis of field notes, video recordings and lesson plans led the authors to take a deeper look at where the four studio structures for learning overlapped in the teaching event. In the data the intersections of the four studio structures shared a pattern of increased evidence of deep learning for the students. This paper describes the phenomenon in the classroom at various points of intersection.

This action research study is preliminary, and the findings are suggestive of further research that would require indexing what deep learning looks like and gathering and analyzing student data.

It is recommended that teachers use the four studio structures to integrate the arts in their classrooms and to enhance and encourage creativity, communication, critical thinking, collaboration, character and culture and as teachers work toward deep learning for students.

This case shows how a university partnership provides fertile ground for educators of all skills and experience to participate in the expansion of the field of education as well as personal and professional development.

Globally, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary learning in schools has become an increasingly popular and growing area of interest for educational reform. This prompts discussions about Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics (STEAM), which is shifting educational paradigms toward art integration in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects. Authentic tasks (i.e. real-world problems) address complex or multistep questions and offer opportunities to integrate disciplines across science and arts, such as in STEAM. The main purpose of this study is to better understand the STEAM instructional programs and student learning offered by nonprofit organizations and by publicly funded schools in Ontario, Canada.

This study addresses the following research question: what interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary skills do students learn through different models of STEAM education in nonprofit and in-school contexts? We carried out a qualitative case study in which we conducted interviews, observations and data analysis of curriculum documents. A total of 103 participants (19 adults – director and instructors/teachers – and 84 students) participated in the study. The four STEAM programs comparatively taught both discipline specific and beyond discipline character-building skills. The skills taught included: critical thinking and problem solving; collaboration and communication; and creativity and innovation.

The main findings on student learning focused on students developing perseverance and adaptability, and them learning transferable skills.

In contrast to other research on STEAM, this study identifies both the enablers and the tensions. Also, we stress ongoing engagement with stakeholders (focus group), which has the potential to impact change in teaching and teacher development, as well as in related policies.