Defining Arts Integration Part 2: Arriving at Teaching Artistry

When I taught a dance-integrated 8th-grade math course at Granite Park Jr. High from 2015-2017, I knew my focus would be on the math standards. As predominantly a dance teaching artist, the dance standards were indelibly connected to my pedagogical practice when instructing on any topic. Yet, I knew I would never assess students' knowledge of dance standards. My goal was to help my students develop mastery in mathematics by utilizing dance pedagogy and dance experiences to elevate attitudes, meet diverse learning needs, and to provide positive emotional experiences. My belief was that the integration of dance pedagogy rather than dance content would combat learned helplessness I had observed in my students, and develop a strong collaborative classroom culture and a safe environment for learning.

PHYSICALIZE MATHEMATICAL REASONING

In creating experiences for my math students I strived to design experiences that allowed students to use movement to learn, to physicalize mathematical reasoning or patterning, and to use movement to think and communicate mathematically. Often in mathematics education teachers are encouraged to integrate manipulatives (tangrams, coins, geometric models, etc) for exploratory learning; it was my goal to use the body as the manipulative for discovery. This task was not easy, but when I did develop exercises that achieved these goals the learning was easily assessed, solid, memorable, and thorough.

MNEMONIC DEVICE

I also relied heavily on movement in the math classroom to serve other purposes. I used movement as a mnemonic device for memorization or as a drill for rote skill-building. Rote learning is not always given enough credit. In the Kennedy Center’s arts integration checklist there is this question, “Are the students engaged in constructing and demonstrating understanding as opposed to just memorizing and reciting knowledge?” (Silverstein and Layne). While I am seeking to help students form new knowledge I have found that in order to get to problem-solving and the construction of knowledge, students needed foundational skills first which may require memorization and recitation. This is level 1 thinking on Bloom's Taxonomy and is essential in understanding both the discipline of dance and mathematics, plies and tendus are to dancers as multiplication facts are to mathematicians.

ENGAGEMENT & ASSESSMENT

Additionally, I capitalized on the novelty of using movement in the math classroom to aid in engagement. I wanted to keep students on their toes, and make every day different. They could never predict what was going to happen. I also used movement to quickly assess student learning and student understanding of the targeted math principles and standards.

My belief now, having gone through the experience of integrating dance into a math classroom, is that arts integration should be used to serve the diverse, yet specific, needs of individual students. I don’t believe arts integration has to always serve both the arts and other core content subjects equally, as it may not be the best instructional strategy for student’s learning every time.

AN EVOLVING DEFINITION

The definition of arts integration shared by the Kennedy Center includes the idea of “evolving objectives” and that students continue to remain challenged in the art content and non-art content in an integrated experience. “Objectives evolve and unfold over time as students’ experience and understandings develop. As students master each objective, they are ready to take on the next, more challenging ones” (Silverstein and Layne). This vision of helping students evolve in mastery with continuing challenges means that we must recognize where our students are and where we want to take them. If a student needs more experience in the art form, before they can explore the other content area through the art form, then an arts integration lesson objective may emphasize the art form more than the other content area. We cannot help our students evolve if we do not meet them where they are and attend to the highest priority learning needs.

What my students needed more than mastery of dance standards was a dance-inspired pedagogy that brought artistic learning experiences into the curriculum that could engage them in the learning process, address their different modalities of learning, and provide them with positive emotional experiences surrounding math learning. My 8th-grade math students did not need to master dance standards in math class. They did need to master shape making, use of axial and locomotor steps, and positive & negative space. Helping students understand those elements of dance was my objective in some lessons, only so that they could participate more fully in more complex activities that would bring them to further mathematical understanding.

Elisha Foshay expresses that much of arts integration is done at a mediocre level (Foshay) and that objectives are softened when integration isn't attended to properly. I believe this is because teaching artists do not often explicitly state the purpose behind the design of their arts integration experience. They label their practice as arts integration when what they are really doing is practicing arts infusion.

I believe that the purpose of integrating the arts should be intentional and described explicitly. When using movement to assess, be clear about that objective, and be sure instruction aligns with the assessment strategy. When asking students to practice a skill, make it clear the movement is being used for a drill, not an experience for artistic discovery.

With the default belief being that arts integration is when both the arts and other content areas are treated equally (in terms of the depth of attention to the disciplines standards), arts integration that is done for engagement, assessment, memorization, or drill will not match the perceived expectations and will thus appear mediocre.

Foshay also addressed the attitude prevalent in much of public education that “the arts aren’t worth standalone exploration” and that the arts are only valuable in education for the learning that transfers to knowledge in other subject areas, for example learning science through dance, or math through dance. I find this attitude frustrating not only because I have seen the impact of an arts-focused education on student learning in other subjects but also because research that claims to prove the transfer of knowledge to other subject areas “the arts make you smarter” is some of the most discredited or contested research (Hetland, 2007).

THE MYTH OF TRANSFER IN ARTS INTEGRATION

Lois Hetland et al. in their book “Studio Habits of Mind” posit the idea that we need to stop trying to prove the transfer of knowledge through arts integration but rather look at the benefits of an arts education solely focused on the development of skills in an art form. Hetland et al. share what habits of mind a visual artist can develop through studying visual arts. The 8 habits of mind identified in the research include engage and persist, reflect, observe, envision and express, develop craft, understand arts communities, stretch and explore. It is argued that these habits of mind are also fostered in the work of dancers, actors, or musicians in their own respective studio spaces and studio practices.

While we should not claim that arts integration is going to serve learning in other common core subjects until we have adequate and appropriate research, I believe we can claim that the arts can impact instructional practices and student learning experiences that may result in increased student learning and achievement due to increased motivation, appropriately differentiated learning, or increased engagement. Hetland et. al’s work proves Foshay’s point that the arts are worth learning and understanding in their own right and that focusing on transfer in arts integration is a slippery slope that will not serve to legitimize arts education and certainly not arts integration as it is popularly practiced throughout the nation.

CONCLUSION

I want to reiterate what I stated earlier, I do place a higher value on dance integration activities that are designed so that students use movement to discover knowledge or construct understanding about themselves and the world around them, but I do not believe this level of integration is always essential or appropriate if it does not meet the immediate needs of the learners being served. I believe the acceptance of a broader scope for the function and purpose of arts integration, and transparency and integrity to the type of integration being implemented by a teaching artist would legitimize the arts in education and the practice of arts integration more.

I don’t want to call what I did with my 8th grade math class “arts integration” because I didn’t attend to the standards of both subject areas equally. But I want to call it arts integration because we were a class that integrated math and dance. Cally Flox, the director of the BYU ARTS Partnership, in a conversation about arts integration, helped me clarify that I was a teaching artist in a math classroom not integrating dance and math so much as integrating arts teaching pedagogies with traditional instructional strategies. She argued that arts integration is a theory and practice that only developed as a result of the loss of arts in schools with the No Child Left Behind Act. As a director of professional development in the arts for elementary school teachers her goal is not to focus on arts integration, but to integrate arts teaching practices into the general classroom and to inspire regular classroom teachers to teach like an artist. It was in her description of this goal that I realized, what I really offered my students wasn’t arts integration, as defined by many arts organizations and educational institutions. I offered my ability to teach like an artist would create a work of art. I offered a different type of integration: teaching and artistry. I offered teaching artistry.