ââåguggenheim Study Suggests Arts Education Benefits Literacy Skillsã¢ââ by Randy Kennedy
Guggenheim Study Suggests Arts Pedagogy Benefits Literacy Skills
Correction Appended
In an era of widespread cuts in public-school art programs, the question has become increasingly relevant: does learning about paintings and sculpture help children go better students in other areas?
A study to be released today past the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum suggests that it does, citing improvements in a range of literacy skills amidst students who took role in a programme in which the Guggenheim sends artists into schools. The study, now in its 2nd year, interviewed hundreds of New York City 3rd graders, some of whom had participated in the Guggenheim program, called Learning Through Fine art, and others who did non.
The study constitute that students in the plan performed ameliorate in vi categories of literacy and critical thinking skills — including thorough description, hypothesizing and reasoning — than did students who were not in the program. The children were assessed as they discussed a passage in a children's volume, Cynthia Kadohata'south "Kira-Kira," and a painting by Arshile Gorky, "The Artist and His Mother."
The results of the report, which are to be presented today and tomorrow at a briefing at the Guggenheim, are probable to stimulate debate at a time when the federal instruction law known equally No Child Left Behind has led schools to increase class time spent on math and reading significantly, often at the expense of other subjects, including art.
Yet the study also found that the program did non assist meliorate students' scores on the city'due south standardized English language arts examination, a result that the report'south creators said they could not fully explain. They suggested that the disparity might exist related to the fact that the standardized test is written while the study'southward interviews were oral.
"We purposely chose to have students talk to us instead of writing because we idea they would show linguistic communication skills, not purely reading and writing skills," said Johanna Jones, a senior associate with Randi Korn and Associates, a museum research company conducting the written report over iii years with a $640,000 grant from the federal Department of Pedagogy.
Ms. Jones said that the written report, which graded students' responses as they talked about the painting and the passage from the book, plant substantially the same results during the 2005-six school twelvemonth as it did during the 2004-5 school year. "We really held our breath waiting for this twelvemonth's results, and they turned out to almost exactly the same — which means that final year's don't seem to have been an anomaly," she said. "That'southward a large deal in this world."
While it is unknown exactly how learning well-nigh art helps literacy skills, she said, "the hypothesis is that the use of both talking about art and using inquiry to aid students tease apart the meaning of paintings helps them larn how to tease apart the meanings of texts, too. They apply those skills to reading."
The categories of literacy and critical thinking skills were devised by the research company with the help of a group of advisers from Columbia Academy, New York University and the metropolis's Department of Education, amongst other institutions.
The Guggenheim plan, originally called Learning to Read Through the Arts, was created past a museum trustee in 1970, when New York schools were cut art and music programs. Since it began, information technology has involved more than 130,000 students in dozens of public schools. The museum dispatches artists who spend one mean solar day a week at schools over a ten- or 20-week menstruation helping students and teachers learn almost and brand art. Groups of students are also taken to the Guggenheim to see exhibitions.
Officials at the Guggenheim said they hoped the report would give ammunition to educators in schools and museums effectually the country who are seeking more money and classroom time for arts education.
"Basically, this study is a major contribution to the field of art and museum education," said Kim Kanatani, the Guggenheim's managing director of educational activity. "We think it confirms what we as museum education professionals have intuitively known merely oasis't ever had the resources to bear witness."
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/27/books/27gugg.html
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