Collaborative Interdisciplinarity and the Arts: Developing Curricular Innovations in Urban Teacher Education

• In Event: Teaching to Transgress: Implementing and Sustaining a Culturally Responsive Teacher Education Program

Abstract

1. Objectives or purposes:
The proposed presentation will share a new model for integrating arts-based methods into the preparation of urban teachers in high-need, hard-to-staff schools and content areas. The model represents a programmatic innovation developed within a larger teacher education reform project. The innovation is grounded in collaboration, with a university, a large urban school district and a nonprofit community organization working together to develop new arts-based curricular and pedagogical approaches to teaching science, math and world languages at the secondary level. The presentation will explore the model in light of the prototyping process whereby veteran practitioners collaborated with arts educators and practicing artists to co-plan, co-teach, and co-assess arts-integrated units of study and then share their innovations with pre-service and new urban teachers.

2. Perspective(s) or theoretical framework
This topic is approached from a lens of metaphor theory, which posits that substantive arts integration must begin from a recognition that cognitive processes of perception and conceptualization are shaped by analogical thinking and schema construction (Marshall 2005). This framework is combined with a theory of collaboration in which individuals working in partnership on creative endeavors appropriate and deepen each other’s contributions. (John-Steiner 2000). The model of arts integration advanced through the presentation frames the resultant innovations in curricula and pedagogy aligned with a co-planning, co-teaching approach to urban teacher education in which partners from differing domains and perspectives join together to support pre-service and in-service teachers.

3. Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry
This study employs a longitudinal design with an ethnographic approach. Data are analyzed, triangulated and integrated to elicit a full understanding of the impact of the arts-integrated prototype that was incubated and taken to scale in this program.

4. Data sources, evidence, objects, or materials
Data are collaborative in nature and provided primarily by the district’s veteran teachers participating in the design of the prototype. Project evidence includes reflections, focus groups and individual interviews. Data from several pre-service and newly certified teachers participating in the program are also include.

5. Results and/or substantiated conclusions
The study outcomes fall into two main categories: programmatic and practice. The arts-based component of urban teacher preparation has resulted in a reinforced commitment to arts-based approaches to teaching and learning. Preliminary evidence indicates that veteran teachers perceive high value in integrating the arts into their science, math and world language classroom practice, and that pre-service and in-service teachers experience higher levels of student engagement and mastery of content through this approach.

6. Scientific or scholarly significance of the study or work
The challenge of attracting diverse and high caliber students into programs that prepare them to be highly qualified teachers – ones who will stay in the profession – continues to be most acute in high need, hard-to-staff areas typically located in urban and rural communities (Ingersoll, 2004) and especially in high need subject areas. The proposed model for arts-integration in science, math and world language in urban classrooms is one aspect of educating and supporting highly qualified teachers.

Authors

• Kerry Dixon, The Ohio State University - Columbus

• Mindi Rhoades, The Ohio State University

• Madith Barton, The Ohio State University - Columbus

• Sandra A. Stroot, The Ohio State University