Justifying Arts-Based Learning

Katrina Pickett-Rust
EDE340
Due: April 6, 2015

The way we have been taught has not changed much over the years, but
the way we learn has changed tremendously. Our current education system is
outdated and is in need of a reform. Robinson (2011) states that The problem is
that the current system of education was designed and conceived and structured
for a different age. It was conceived in the intellectual culture of the Enlightenment,
and in the economic circumstances of the Industrial Revolution.
Most children, today, are taught in the same way, every day, throughout the
year. The fact is, everyone learns in a different way. No two children are the same,
therefor, they cannot possibly all learn in the same way. Howard Gardners theory of
multiple intelligences from Smith (2008) states:

In the heyday of the psychometric and behaviorist eras, it was generally

believed that intelligence was a single entity that was inherited; and that
human beings initially a blank slate could be trained to learn anything,
provided that it was presented in an appropriate way. Nowadays an
increasing number of researchers believe precisely the opposite; that there
exists a multitude of intelligences, quite independent of each other; that each
intelligence has its own strengths and constraints; that the mind is far from
unencumbered at birth; and that it is unexpectedly difficult to teach things
that go against early naive theories of that challenge the natural lines of
force within an intelligence and its matching domains. (Gardner 1993: xxiii)
What this is saying is that how researchers thought we learned, in the past, is not
the way we learn best today. Most students spend the majority of their day, outside
of school, using some form of technology. They are either watching television,
playing video games, on their tablets, or on their computers or smart phones.
Technology is very stimulating. This is why people love it so much and spend so
much of their time with it. Our students enjoy being stimulated yet they come to

school and are expected to sit, quietly, at a desk for hours upon hours each day.
They will not learn this way. They need to be engaged and we need to do this in as
many ways as possible.

"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn"

-- Benjamin Franklin (Franklin, 2011)
This is one of my favorite quotes for education. I believe that students need
to be involved and fully engaged in their learning to truly comprehend what is being
taught. When I went to grade school, this was not the way I was educated. I did not
enjoy school. I did not retain most of the information that was being presented to
me. I think it is important to bring excitement into the classroom. A teacher should
not be there just to lecture, give handouts and then a grade. A teacher's job is to
make the classroom fun and enjoyable while getting the children fully engaged in
the learning process.
While the use of technology is very important in the modern day education
system, there are also other ways to get our students engaged in their learning.
With that being said, creative arts are being stripped away from our schools at a
very fast rate. This is truly unfortunate because children learn so much when they
are engaged in creative art forms. According to Robinson (2011),The Arts
especially address the idea of aesthetic experience. An aesthetic experience is one
in which your senses are operating at their peak. There is not much, we as
teachers, can do about our art, music, and performing arts programs being stripped
away from our schools by the districts and states of our country, but there is
something we can do to better the education of our students while they are in our
classrooms. By giving our lessons some minor tweaks, they no longer have to be

boring, seated-at-desk lessons that entertain no one. We can transform them into
fun, engaging lessons that really teach each and every one of our students, by
incorporating the different elements of creative arts.
Howard Gardener has split our learning styles into nine different types of
intelligences. Put simply, they are nature smart, musical smart, numbers/reasoning
smart, existential intelligence, body smart, word smart, self smart, and picture
smart (Gardner, 2013). In a course I took at University of Michigan-Flint, called
Creative Learning Experiences, we learned to reach out to these types of
intelligences by including their distinctive elements into our lesson plans. This can
be done for any subject area. For example, we reached number smart and body
smart students by incorporating dance elements into a mathematics lesson on
adding fractions. To do this, we assigned each number a different ballet move and
each math symbol had a movement to go along with it, as well. The students
figured out the answer to their math problems in small group discussions and then
they figured out the movements to go along with the problem and answer. At the
end of each problem/answer, they had created a small dance to go along with it. In
another lesson, we reached our word smart, people smart, and picture smart
students by incorporating drawing into a language arts lesson on how adding
prefixes and suffixes to root words changes their meanings and can also change the
meaning of the whole sentences those words are in. The students were split into
small groups and were given a sentence with no prefixes or suffixes. They had to
talk about what the sentence was saying and draw a picture of what the sentence
meant to them. Next, we added a prefix or suffix to one of the words in the
sentence to change its meaning. The students had another discussion and drew a
different picture to represent the new meaning of the sentence. Everyones

drawings were unique, which made for a great discussion, afterwards. These
lessons could have been taught by giving lectures and handing out worksheets. The
students could have done them both by sitting quietly at their desks, bored out of
their minds. Instead, they were smiling, out of their seats, having group discussions,
having fun, and engaging entirely in the lesson.
Another thing that we learned to incorporate into our lesson plans is the
Creativity Wheel. This wheel lists many ways to open up students minds to art,
creativity, and divergent thinking. These three things are all completely different.
Art is an activity. Creativity is what we need to have to come up with great ideas.
Divergent thinking is used when figuring something out. Robinson (2011) states:

Divergent thinking isn't the same thing as creativity. I define creativity as the
process of having original ideas which have value. Divergent thinking isn't a
synonym, but it's an essential capacity for creativity. It's the ability to see lots
of possible answers to a question. Lots of possible ways of interpreting a
question.
The creativity wheel sets the environment and gives us a list of goals for students to
reach once we introduce them to a creative learning lesson plan. An example of
this would be I try out lots of different ways to do things and solve problems. If we
included something like this in our creative learning lesson, we would expect the
students to try to solve problems and do things in different ways when trying to gain
an understanding of the topic you are teaching. This can be accomplished through
artistic mediums, thoughts, or manipulatives. This would be an example of
divergent thinking since we are encouraging the students to come up with more
than one way to solve a problem. In this same creative learning lesson, we would

incorporate an actual art form by means of art, music, or dance. Through this art
form, the students would express their own sense of creativity.
Teaching in this way is amazing. We are reaching all of the different types of
learners. We are teaching our students to think outside of the box. We are getting
them to be more creative and we are engaging them in ways they may not have
ever been engaged before. This is why integrating creative arts into our classrooms
is so important. So much can be gained from doing so. Everyone in the classroom
benefits from doing things this way, as well. The students will enjoy their education
more which will keep them involved and engaged. Because they will be engaged in
ways that will reach each of the multiple intelligences, they will all be learning.
When all of the students are learning and on task, the teacher is happy because
he/she is accomplishing what he/she was hired to do.

The arts are an essential element of education, just like reading, writing, and
arithmeticmusic, dance, painting, and theater are all keys that unlock profound
human understanding and accomplishment.
William Bennett, Former US Secretary of Education (Bennett, 2012)

Resources
Bennett, W. (2012). National Performing Arts Convention. Useful Quotes for Arts
Advocates | National
Performing Arts Convention. Retrieved April 2, 2015, from
http://performingartsconvention.org/advocacy/id=28

Franklin, B. (2011). Wisdom Word. Benjamin Franklin Tell me and I forget. Teach me
and I remember.
Involve me and I learn. Wisdom Word. Retrieved April 2, 2015, from
http://www.wisdomword.info/benjamin-franklin/
Gardner, H. (2013). Random Thoughts of a Nigerian Youth. 9 TYPES OF
INTELLIGENCE (By Howard
Gardner): Random Thoughts of a Nigerian Youth. Retrieved April 2, 2015,
from http://arturozinga.wordpress.com/2013/02/06/9-types-of-intelligence-byhoward-gardner/
Robinson, S.K. (2011). Positive Psychology. Positive Psychology: Sir Ken RobinsonChanging
Paradigms. Retrieved April 2, 2015, from
http://lewisonpositivepsycholgy.blogspot.com/2011/01/transcript-sir-ken-robinsonchanging.html
Smith, M. (2008). Contents @ The Informal Education Homepage. Infed.org. Howard
Gardner, Multiple
Intelligences and Education. Retrieved April 2, 2015, from
http://infed.org/mobi/howard-gardner-multiple-intelligences-and-education/