AR​TS INTEGRATION

Why does Arts Integration benefit students?

Linda Crawford’s (2004)1 offers six reasons for arts integration (accessed 8/4/2014):

• The arts make content more accessible.

• The arts encourage joyful, active learning.

• The arts help students make and express personal connections to content

• The arts help students understand and express abstract concepts.

• The arts stimulate higher level thinking.

• The arts build community and help children develop collaborative work skills.

Laura Stevenson and Richard Deasy (2005)2 describe the impact of the arts on students. The arts:

• Connect students to authentic learning that matters to them.

• Provide opportunities for all learners—even struggling learners—to be successful.

• Develop feelings of self-efficacy.

• Increase intrinsic motivation to learn.

• Develop students’ abilities to apply learning to new situations and experiences.

Daniel R. Scheinfeld (2004)3 explains why arts integration activities show promise for learners(accessed 8/4/14). Arts integration:

• Motivates students to engage more fully with the related subject area.

• Extends how learners process and retain information because it combines several learning modalities (visual, aural, and kinesthetic) and thus reach a wider range of students.

• (Focused on drama and reading comprehension) “Strengthens students’ visualization of the text and their emotional engagement with it, both of which contribute to greater retention and understanding.”

Luke Rinne and colleagues (2011)4 examine how arts integration may build long-term memory of content.

• Arts integration naturally involves several ways of processing information that may have positive effects on long-term memory.

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