By Dr Pamela Costes-Onishi, Research Scientist, Office of Education Research (OER)

Target audience: Student teachers, alumni and faculty

1. What is art in education?
There is a distinction between arts education and arts in education. To put this simply, arts education is learning in the arts with the aim of developing skills and ways of thinking in each art form, while arts in education is learning through the arts with the aim of enhancing academic achievement and promoting cognitive transfer.

2. Why do we need the arts in the education of our children?
The most beneficial impact in having arts in education are the habits of mind nurtured during engagement in the arts. This is true whether, or not, the objective is to nurture the skills, competencies and dispositions for the changing needs of the globalized economies of the twenty-first century. Artistic Habits of Mind means knowing what the arts actually teach and how artists actually learn. These are types of thinking that can potentially transfer to other endeavours. Artistic Habits of Mind or Artistic Thinking means developing within the students the skills, competencies and dispositions that innovative artists intuitively apply in their creations, which includes the interdisciplinary scientific thinking that merges during the process.

3. How can engagement in the arts prepare our youth emotionally to face complex social dynamics?
One of the most important challenges we face socially is addressing the issues of diversity and equity. In the schools, we are faced with learners who comes from different backgrounds and who are exposed to other types of knowledge that may differ from their peers and teachers. We are also faced with learners who are in different stages of their abilities. These challenges are reflected in real-world contexts, which the students will experience throughout their lifetime. When they go out to join the workforce they will have to prepared not only to face diversity but also other unexpected complexities that this globalized world might bring as technological advancements change the way we do things and relate to each other. The relevant artistic thinking that can help the youth or anyone to face our complex social dynamics would be seeing things in different perspectives, finding multiple solutions to solving a problem, disposition to constantly reflect, having a keen sense of observation of surroundings and appreciating the beauty in all things.

4. What are some of the research works or case evidences demonstrating such social adaptability/resilience?
In the book Artistic Thinking in the Schools, evidences are presented concerning specific contexts that offered suppositions or ideas in order to explain how the arts in education function to develop artistic habits of mind that support cognitive and affective learning. One of them would be on how direct engagement with the arts enhances the capacity for self-reflection, self-regulation, self-transformation and self-emancipation relative to present and future social realities.

5. The theme for this issue of NIEWS is “Growing into Teacherhood”. As a researcher in the arts and education, what are some of evidences of the benefits of arts in teacher development?
In the same book, one example mentioned was teacher reflective practice as a form of artistic thinking. It was explained how both teaching and the artist’s process operate in highly contextualized and fluid environments which require in situ judgments to solve specific problems. Teachers must hone their capacities for critical reflection. The importance of critical reflection in teaching is in support of the theory that pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) or the ability to transform subject expertise into content of instruction is not sufficient for effective teaching.

6. In what ways can arts nurture and prepare a teacher for 21CC?
Developing artistic thinking and dispositions can help teachers achieve the competencies mentioned earlier (see #3), which when translated into teaching, will enable teachers acquire aesthetic teaching skills such as the ability to pay attention to the emotional dimension along with the cognitive dimension in the teaching-learning process and to be more attentive to the classroom contexts. Having these qualities will hone the teachers to be more flexible in their choice and implementation of teaching approaches. When a teacher thinks artistically, they will be more inclined to take risks in their teaching approaches by designing more imaginative lessons that cater to their diverse student backgrounds and learning styles.

7. How will nurturing artistic thinking enable a teacher/student to handle uncertainty and the future of everything?
The artistic thinking I referred to earlier can provide the necessary skills and dispositions to prepare students and teachers for the unpredictable future. Some of these qualities include having a keen sense of observation of situations and surroundings, disposition to constantly reflect, courage to take risks, seeing things in different perspectives, ability to represent volatile emotions in positive ways, persistence to achieve perfection, willingness to start over again in case of failure and finding multiple solutions to solving a problem. These are acts an artist do intuitively; they are habits of mind that artists apply in the way they express through their art and the way they think about other circumstances.

8. You have advocated that professional knowledge and artistry of art and music teachers can be done through teacher inquiry. What is teacher inquiry and how can it be used to for teacher development?
In the book, teacher inquiry was defined as inquiry-based professional learning or teacher research that takes the form of lesson study and action research among many. Teacher inquiry is an important form of teacher personal professional development because it allows teachers to play an active role in knowledge construction through critical reflection of their own practice. We normally just see teachers using predetermined educational theories to apply to their own practices; but in teacher inquiry they become proactive in searching and researching those theories that could actually work for their specific professional learning needs in order to be effective in the classrooms. This form of inquiry is not incompatible to Artistic Thinking as this points to a disposition of constant reflection in one’s own works and constant search for different angles to solve the problems encountered in the process of creating, performing or responding.

9. How can teachers self-reflect and use creative inquiry for integration and metacognition?
The real benefits of the arts in education will not be evident when these subjects are treated as frills or standalone disciplines in the curriculum. When we talk about integration, this means it becomes an important element in building a curriculum and its processes become part of pedagogy. To quote Julia Marshall from the book Artistic Thinking in the Schools, “In this approach, art practices and thinking provide fresh ways of seeing as well as new and imaginative ways of thinking about and exploring academic knowledge”(p.88). This type of integration is a process of connecting different forms of knowledge and finding the underlying common ways of thinking or habits of mind that innovators intuitively practice. It is a way of knowing that behind every innovation there lies a way of thinking and feeling that integrate the disciplines. Engaging in the arts and integrating the arts effectively in teaching and learning can effectively develop this type of thinking and feeling. Throughout the process the students learn to connect their subjective thinking to objective knowledge and contextualize both of these in real-world scenarios. This enables them to reflect on how they are thinking and learning, or better, to reflect on their thinking about their learning through connected knowledge and experiences.

10. What are the usual impediments to such a process?
The most salient impediment to the process would be the general misconception about what the arts and artists are. Socially, the arts have always been seen as essential in as much as we do it on the side because they cannot help individuals thrive financially. Academically, they are seen as activities to help students unwind from their rigorous, more important subjects. Politically, the arts are primarily considered as instrumental in growing the economy. There is a lack of awareness about how artists work and think before producing something delightful and beautiful or even jarring and provocative. This process when understood correctly will enable thinking and doing in other disciplines become more retro- and introspective for more socially responsible outcomes. This can only be fully understood when experienced within the artistic processes.

11. Would you be able to share your own epiphany experience/anecdotes from such self-reflections?
There are many examples mentioned in the book that can address this question. All the chapters there provide empirical evidences of experiences of both teachers and students who benefitted from a curriculum and pedagogy that emphasize artistic thinking. This includes research evidences beginning from how teachers are prepared to be future-ready; creating arts-based thinking pedagogical frameworks for classroom applications; examining implicit artistic processes in arts practices; impact of arts engagement to at-risk students; and ending on arts education in non-school settings. I invite the audience to read through for their own reflections. I also invite everyone to attend the public talk we are planning to shed more light on this topic. Please stay tuned for announcements from OER.