The Historical, Cultural and Social Contexts in Fine Arts Education

Studying the historical, cultural and social contexts of the arts helps students develop their thinking skills, especially complex applications referred to as higher-order thinking or critical thinking. Research has shown that students who study the arts are more empowered in achieving their goals and are better able to critically evaluate their own work (Stanley, 2003). Students working in arts programs develop three sets of skills:

Theory building and checking out the possible;
Translating and transforming;
Projecting and reflecting (Heath, Soep, and Roach, 1998).

In addition, learning in drama and theatre enhances students’ personal and social development, helping them build the skills they need to become successful adults. These skills include taking risks, exploring and expressing thoughts and feelings and participating in their communities. When students use the arts to recognize, interpret and discuss feelings, they are better prepared to understand and express their feelings in other subjects and areas of life outside of school (Hughes and Wilson, 2004).

Studying the historical, cultural and social contexts of the arts also helps students move beyond stereotypical thinking. For example, students learn to question gender and ethnic stereotypes by critically examining visual representation and the writings of artists (Stout, 1999). Students may grapple with issues such as why men and women have different roles, how these roles are depicted in the arts and how these depictions influence society’s thinking (Kiefer-Boyd, 2003).

Educational experiences in drama--studying Shakespeare, for example--show students that literature is universal and timeless in its themes and ideas. Reading Shakespeare’s plays teaches students that themes and ideas can be interpreted in more than one way, and ambiguity can be tolerated. They develop the ability to grasp multiple meanings (Seidel, 2000).

By using familiar art objects, students discuss and understand cultural differences and similarities that impact how they see and interpret aesthetically. (Stokrocki, 2001). Learning in the arts helps students form, appreciate and understand multiple perspectives.

Arts learning and learning in other subjects is multidirectional and interactive. This cross-content study reinforces students’ abilities to elaborate, and increases their fluency and originality. Burton, Horowitz, and Abeles (2000) found that studying the arts teaches students how to view events through multiple perspectives and to understand complex, multilayered relationships. Efland (2002) notes that the arts help students discover and know about their world through narrative (stories) as an alternative to other frames of reference such as science and math.

The arts help develop higher-level thinking skills by requiring that students not only acquire knowledge, but reflect on its meaning and decide when and how to apply it. They develop these skills through interpreting their own artworks and those of other artists (Stevenson and Deasy, 2005).

Developing Multicultural Perspectives

Studying the historical, cultural and social contexts of the arts can improve students’ understanding of cultural differences. Multicultural curricula help students recognize the origins of peoples’ differences, broaden their perspectives of the world and its people, and lead them to develop their own viewpoints while respecting the viewpoints of others. Teaching about cultures also can improve the self-esteem of minority students. For example, dance education helps students learn about their inner selves and to develop greater self-knowledge about their feelings toward other people and cultures (Lutz and Kuhlman, 2000). Learning about a variety of artistic traditions leads students to develop more sophisticated thinking about other people and to reduce racism among students (Thapalyal, 2004).

Studying the arts can help students to understand that the things people know and how they learn them are culturally specific (Lave & Wenger, 1991). For example, students who study ethnomusicology may learn that in traditional societies, music has deep community connections. Learning music in those societies is an important part of students’ total life experiences, rather than a subject that they learn only in school. (Senders and Davidson, 2000).

Creativity

As part of critical-thinking involved in studying the arts, students develop the skills that define creativity. These skills include:

Divergent thinking (the ability to identify multiple solutions or ideas);
The willingness to take risks;
The discovery and pursuit of the most appropriate medium for a given task;
The ability to develop a distinctive style (Levine, 2002).

The Arts and Language

Aschbacher and Herman found that integrating arts themes with literature and social studies makes learning more interesting for students. From such integrated programs, students develop richer insights that influence their writing, a deeper understanding of history and social studies, and are able to see diverse connections across the curriculum. The same study revealed that students in arts programs develop more positive attitudes toward learning, are motivated to attend class more frequently and are better able to resist dropping out of school.

According to Efland (2002), learning is a process of using and manipulating symbols within social and cultural contexts to make and communicate meaning constructed from experiences. The arts provide particularly rich experiences. Sipe (1998) confirms this connection by studying the role of picture books as a vital part of children’s early learning. In these texts, verbal and visual comprehension are both essential and reinforce each other. Looking at pictures in books helps young children develop theories about what they know and how they know it.

Students who act out stories after hearing them read develop a better understanding of the whole story and comprehend important details more thoroughly than children who hear the story and then process it through a traditional classroom discussion (Caterall, 2002). For many students, dramatic enactment is a superior alternative to a traditional classroom discussion led by the teacher. In addition, student writers may benefit from acting out situations or topics instead of relying on traditional classroom instruction about the topics (Catterall, 2002). This is important because using language is not a single competency but a complex chain of increasingly sophisticated events. For example, as students’ language skills progress, they put separate chunks of language into more complex structures including sentences, paragraphs and narratives (Levine, 2002). Beyond language, nonlinguistic representations such as visual images and kinesthetic activities are among the most powerful strategies in teaching any subject. (Marzano, Pickering, and Pollock, 2001).

The arts have special impacts for at-risk students. Studies have found that relationships between arts learning and the development of higher levels of cognitive skills transcend differences in socioeconomic status. This finding implies that culture-related activities are particularly helpful for students who enter school with low levels of cognitive readiness. (Beasley, 2002). Drama and theatre help these learners increase their “social capital” by improving their mastery of standard English using metacognitive strategies (Kempe, 2003).

Increasing Minority Student Enthusiasm for Learning

The well-planned integration of arts and history based on topics and themes can motivate minority students to improve their school work results. Taking students to locations outside of the classroom such as local museums or cultural centers can strengthen this effect. Open-ended discussions in a museum setting can stimulate students’ higher-order thinking. These programs also enhance home-school relations and accommodate multiple learning styles (Cruz and Walker, 2001). In addition, students who are involved in arts education at young ages are more likely to be involved in the arts as adults (Bergonzi and Smith).

Connecting Families and the Community

The arts can play powerful roles in connecting families of diverse cultures to the schools and educational activities of their students. By highlighting the accomplishments of students of diverse cultures, school-wide arts festivals can transform schools into inviting and inclusive environments for parents and families of minority students (Sikes, in press). Comprehensive arts instruction is associated with increases in parental self-esteem. Any program that fosters and encourages creativity serves children in a variety of ways (Luftig, 2000).

Impact on the Classroom

Increasingly, research demonstrates that the arts have a powerful role in developing multicultural classrooms and schools. For example, students’ differing preferences for musical styles and genres are connected to social differences that originate in cultures and families (Hargreaves and Marshall, 2003). Research also has found that learning styles vary significantly with ethnicity (Cho and Forde, 2001). The arts can be integrated with other subjects in ways that focus the curriculum around key ideas that are complex and ambiguous, and have multiple perspectives and cultural contradictions (Ohio State University TETAC Mentors).

These findings make a strong case for school-community involvement. Field trips or visits to community sites can stimulate strong ideas that students can represent artistically (Kamara, 2003). Place-based education (the study of local communities and neighborhoods) can teach students how to document what they are learning as they study history, nature and folk life (Umphrey).

Methods for teaching the arts have changed over time. In the early 20th century, visual arts instruction used child-centered approaches through Discipline-Based Art Education. Contemporary strategies include Visual Culture and the Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) program (Yenawine, 1998). The Visual Culture approach to art education uses mass culture as a way to strengthen students’ critical understanding of images (Stankiewicz, 2004). These varied strategies help students learn to apply visual thinking strategies through classroom instruction that includes open-ended questions and discussions. Aesthetic development and visual thinking unfold naturally in several stages, moving from telling stories about objects to developing complex frameworks for looking at and understanding artworks.