Thanks to a generous grant from the Meadows Foundation, your Education Service Center and selected school districts will offer a three-hour professional development session for arts educators on this cutting-edge arts class. The Center for Educator Development in Fine Arts (CEDFA) is partnering with the Texas Cultural Trust and The University of Texas at Austin College of Fine Arts to offer an opportunity for secondary art teachers to explore the curriculum of a new innovative course. This course, Art and Media Communications, has been approved by the Texas Education Agency.
In order to introduce this cutting-edge arts class, your Education Service Center and selected school districts will offer a three-hour introductory professional development session for arts educators. This session is designed to introduce visual arts instructors to the curriculum and criteria to prepare them to teach the course during the 2012-2013 school year. A more in-depth three-day exploratory of the curriculum will be offered by the University of Texas at Austin in June.
Support appears to be growing for efforts to incorporate the arts into science, technology, engineering and math teaching, transforming STEM into STEAM. The concept is being considered at both the federal and local levels, with some advocates saying art and design can help drive innovation in STEM fields. “We believe there is a powerful opportunity here to use the arts and arts-based learning to spark transformational change in science education,” said Harvey Seifter, director of the Art of Science Learning.
In these three-hour professional development sessions, elementary or secondary science and math educators explore ways to use fine arts content and strategies to teach science or math objectives. These interactive face-to-face training sessions will involve participants in an inquiry-based learning experience using integrated model lessons designed by teams of fine arts and science or math educators. Each model lesson addresses a science or math concept with which many students struggle.
For more information about when this training opportunity will be in YOUR Regional Education Service Center follow this link to the CEDFA – Rider 42E Information Center.
General Appropriations Act, Article III, Rider 42 E 81st Texas Legislature Integration of Mathematics, Science, and Fine Arts.
Collaboration among the Texas Education Agency (TEA), Region 20 Education Service Center (ESC-20), Center for Educator Development in Fine Arts (CEDFA), and Resources for Learning (RFL) to provide professional development training to teachers of mathematics, science, and fine arts (art, dance, music, theatre), grades K-12, related to effective and appropriate methods of integrated teaching and learning within these three academic disciplines through coordination of lesson plans, instructional strategies, and curricula that is based upon the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS).
The Secretary of Education delivered a very interesting open letter in August recognizing the “importance of the arts as a core academic subject and part of a complete education for all students”.
Read More…
Visit Department of Education’s web site for arts education
CEDFA opens the beginning library of information discussed and reviewed from Summits past.
A Harvard-based study has found that children who study a musical instrument for at least three years outperform children with no instrumental training – not only in tests of auditory discrimination and finger dexterity (skills honed by the study of a musical instrument), but also on tests measuring verbal ability and visual pattern completion (skills not normally associated with music).
While these results are correlational only, the strong predictive effect of training duration suggests that instrumental music training may enhance auditory discrimination, fine motor skills, vocabulary, and nonverbal reasoning. Alternative explanations for these results are discussed.
PLOS ONE publication archives of the October, 2008, report.
Download the PDF report
Children exposed to a multi-year program of music instruction involving training in increasingly complex rhythmic, tonal, and practical skills display superior cognitive performance in reading skills compared with their non-musically trained peers, according to a study published in the journal Psychology of Music. According to authors Joseph M. Piro and Camilo Ortiz from Long Island University, data from this study will help to clarify the role of music study on cognition and shed light on the question of the potential of music to enhance school performance in language and literacy.
The report is sponsored by the Dana Foundation Arts and Cognition Consortium. It is a collaboration of studies conducted by neuroscientists representing seven universities from across the United States pertaining to the association of arts training and higher academic performance. The consortium’s findings provide an understanding of the possible causal relationships between arts training and the ability of the brain to learn in other cognitive domains. The results of the studies should be helpful to students, parents, educators, and the general public in policy-making decisions as related to the importance of high quality arts education in our schools.
With the passage of SB 815, the TEKS are now required of all Texas school districts when providing instruction in art, dance, music, and theatre.
