W10P1: Interdisciplinary Students

Minneapolis public schools partnered math with the arts to improve achievement. Ingram and Riedel (2003) reported findings for “Arts for Academic Achievement (AAA)”, an organization dedicated to showing the power of arts on standard core subjects (p. 1). Including 45 schools, grades three through five, and lasting almost four years, the AAA produced considerable gains. Most notably, the authors reported the biggest strides were those garnered by disadvantaged children.

 This program impacted all students regardless of socioeconomic status, community, parental involvement, or previous education; no student suffered from an arts integrated curriculum (Ingram and Riedel).

However, current paradigms call for the arts in modern classrooms (Eisner, 2004). In order to pay tribute one may reference the skilled by calling them an artist at their craft. Education can learn from what art teaches individuals. The result of aesthetic experiences may be transferrable to all disciplines. Eisner identifies six major advantages of artistic rationalization. Trust in one’s self to make intuitive judgments, visualization, understanding and expressing in an alternative construct, resourcefulness, satisfaction in engagement, and bridging concepts are important principles education can learn from the arts (Eisner)

Despite logistical and systemic concerns, holistic education has been a persuasive factor in the debate for effectiveness in arts integration (Gullat, 2008). Sousa and Pilecki decree the purpose of STEAM academies is better preparation of students for life after school (2013). As teachers become more competent in crossing curriculums, they will be more involved with strategies such as project-based learning and inquiry driven instruction to implement arts during other content (Kilinc, 2010). Arts-based education has the potential to expose teachers to more innovative instructional activities. Project-based and twenty-first century learning allow students to remain product-focused, creating solutions to challenging problems that require students to design, analyze, create, and present findings while reflecting on their own self-discovery (Kilinc, 2010).

Multidisciplinary inclusion is a staple of current educational reform (Meagher, 2006). Advocates for cross-curriculum instruction argue that teacher morale and student achievement can be improved by planning across disciplines. However, many teachers misunderstand the true benefits and practices involved (Meagher, 2006).

Teachers are often secluded from one another, physically and departmentally, making it more difficult to coordinate high functioning interdisciplinary lessons (Combs & White, 2000). Educational leaders are beginning to realize the importance of an integrative curriculum by restructuring school systems to accommodate teacher collaboration and planning, shifting the “emphasis from helping individual teachers improve instruction to helping teams of teachers ensure that students achieve the intended outcomes” (DuFour, 2002, p. 13).

 The work conducted by Catteral et al. (2012) found at-risk youth participating in integrated and/or extracurricular arts programs outperformed their counterparts in mathematics. These students were five times more likely to participate in other school activities, such as athletics or journalism, and arts involved students were eager to engage in civic responsibilities. For example, students took “an interest in current affairs, as evidenced by comparatively high levels of volunteering, voting, and engagement with local or school politics” (p. 18).

More impressing, arts involvement enables at risk students to outperform students of a high socioeconomic status (SES) (Catteral et al., 2012).

In processing the work, engineers displayed a backwards design approach, labeled “teleological” (Fantauzzacoffin et al., 2012, p. 2). Artists approached scholarly tasks with an open-ended path, guided by experiment and impulse called “stochastic” (p. 2). Engineers worked with the end in mind, charted a stable route to completion, and relied on predictable outcomes. Artists tended to indulge a creative process, yielding emergent results, and remained adaptable in uncertainty (Fantazzacoffin).

Van der Veen’s (2012) study was driven by ambition to “promoting at least a more equitable gender balance in the physics community in future generations” (p. 359). The task was finding a medium that could improve instruction and bridge gender gaps. Van der Veen (2012) decided to integrate “Maxine Greene’s Aesthetic Education” to “humanize the teaching and learning of physics” (p. 359). The author aimed to instill imagination and innovation into abstract topics of study while not forgoing heightened academic computations.

Van der Veen noted several advantages to merging arts and science. First, “incorporating arts-based learning strategies of Aesthetic Education can help reduce barriers presented by language” (p. 363). The author clarifies that physics and the formal language involved can become a social barrier to minority groups of certain cultures. Science is a language that can remain unilaterally interpreted, but introducing art for reflection and response can aid in translating cultural barriers. Therefore, “the language of the arts can provide a means of helping students visualize the relationships in the physical world that are described by mathematics” (p. 364).

Resources, space, and expertise are universally shared amongst the students. It was found that through “creating an environment in which students must work with colleagues who come from other, very different disciplines, the students are forced to make design compromises that consider factors beyond their own area of expertise” (p. 3E-5). These tough conversations lend to unconventional solutions that otherwise may not have been reached. The objective is for engineering students to ensnare the creative spirit and vision of artists. For artists, they look to gain an in depth knowledge of more technical aspects of academia. Together they will learn to discuss and share their expertise with a layperson, demonstrating an acute understanding of subject matter.