How School-Based Arts Programming Supports Social Emotional Learning for Elementary School Students

• In Event: Prevalence of Arts Engagement in Childhood and Associated Benefits for Cognitive, Physiological, and Social-Emotional Outcomes

Abstract

Participating in the arts improves education outcomes for all students (Rabkin & Hedberg, 2011). The arts are described as a “core subject” in the No Child Left Behind Act, and identified as part of a “well-rounded education” in the Every Student Succeeds Act. However, access to arts education has become significantly more inequitable in the past 30 years. The performing arts, specifically dance and theatre, have suffered the most under the general decay of arts programming in public schools: a 2015 NCES report indicates that only 3% of public elementary schools offer designated instruction in dance and 4% in drama/theatre (Bowen & Kisida, 2017). Dance and theatre have been eliminated almost entirely from the public elementary school curriculum, setting up an “arts opportunity gap” that is impossible to bridge without external assistance (Walker, 2012).

In the absence of permanent and robust arts programming at schools, performing arts residencies during school time can have powerful impacts on social-emotional learning (SEL) outcomes among students. In this presentation, we share the results of the first year of a two-year, mixed-methods study aimed at understanding how arts education impacts SEL skills and growth for students.

Quantitative data includes utilizing assessments already collected in participating schools, such as student school climate surveys (student satisfaction and sense of belonging) and teacher referral data on discipline infractions reported by teachers, which can be indicators of student school adjustment and sense of connectedness. Distal measures include school behavioral incidents and referral profiles as indicators of social-emotional outcomes; we will use historical control data that permits inspection of score gains using an interrupted time-series design (Shadish et al., 2002). We supplement existing data with more proximal assessments to capture intervention effects directly in relation to arts programs. We used a pre-, post-, follow-up administration of proximal measures, in evaluating the maintenance of intervention effects over time following the intervention period (Amabile, 1982; Authors, 2018, 2021; Olivier et al., 2010).

Our qualitative data collection uses semi-structured interviews with youth participants, classroom teachers, and teaching artists as well as observations to address the implementation of performing arts programs in situ (Authors, 2022). Qualitative data is analyzed using both linguistic measures of agency (Konopasky & Sheridan, 2016) and thematic coding (Saldaña, 2021) to understand how students describe the impact of arts programming on their social and emotional well-being. We also triangulate findings across quantitative and qualitative measures to forge connections between in-the-moment arts practice and validated measures of change.

Analyses of quantitative data using repeated-measures ANOVAs showed statistically significant changes in both art skill and SEL efficacy beliefs over time and descriptive statistics showed differences between the control and the treatment school students. Through linguistic and thematic qualitative analyses, we have also seen that students exhibit greater agency over their own social and emotional learning lives, with an emphasis on collaborative practice and physical and emotional connections. These analyses inform the refinement of research instruments and our second round of comparative data collection both within and across schools.

Authors

• Erica Rosenfeld Halverson, University of Wisconsin - Madison
  Presenting Author

• Yorel Lashley