Strong Arts, Strong Schools


Book Description

In this passionate, eloquent book, the late Charles Fowler argues that, far from a luxury, the arts are a vitally important part of our society and our schools. In 18 compelling essays, Fowler demonstrates the importance of the arts in our culture and the necessity of rescuing the arts for our future. He offers specific recommendations for reform--including how to pay the bill.




Why Our Schools Need the Arts


Book Description




Cornerstones of Strong Schools


Book Description

This book describes the practices of principals who develop and maintain purposeful learning communities. It applies and extends nine of the leadership responsibilities identified in research conducted by Marzano, Waters, and McNulty in School Leadership That Works.




Small Schools and Strong Communities


Book Description

In this insightful book, Kenneth Strike develops a new vision of school reform. Arguing that good schools are first and foremost strong communities, Strike maintains that the small schools movement is the best hope to create such schools. He shows how the core assumptions that characterize the “community paradigm” are preferable to those of standards-based reform and choice. Part I examines student disengagement as an issue largely unaddressed by current views of school reform; demonstrates that belonging is essential to authentic learning; and argues that good schools create a sense that “we are all in this together.” Good schools have a “shared educational project” and exhibit the four Cs of community: coherence, cohesion, care, and connectivity. Part II discusses the small schools movement. The author shows that small size is not sufficient to create strong communities or good schools—we cannot just downsize and hope that something good will happen. Strike looks at the educational practices and policies required to create successful small schools, and develops a view of accountability appropriate for building successful educational communities. He argues that if we expect small schools to be successful we cannot view them as simply a strategy for succeeding on standards-based reform, but rather we must see the creation of strong communities as a distinct paradigm for school reform.




Creative Schools


Book Description

A revolutionary reappraisal of how to educate our children and young people by Ken Robinson, the New York Times bestselling author of The Element and Finding Your Element. Ken Robinson is one of the world’s most influential voices in education, and his 2006 TED Talk on the subject is the most viewed in the organization’s history. Now, the internationally recognized leader on creativity and human potential focuses on one of the most critical issues of our time: how to transform the nation’s troubled educational system. At a time when standardized testing businesses are raking in huge profits, when many schools are struggling, and students and educators everywhere are suffering under the strain, Robinson points the way forward. He argues for an end to our outmoded industrial educational system and proposes a highly personalized, organic approach that draws on today’s unprecedented technological and professional resources to engage all students, develop their love of learning, and enable them to face the real challenges of the twenty-first century. Filled with anecdotes, observations and recommendations from professionals on the front line of transformative education, case histories, and groundbreaking research—and written with Robinson’s trademark wit and engaging style—Creative Schools will inspire teachers, parents, and policy makers alike to rethink the real nature and purpose of education.




Soft Boundaries


Book Description

American education and culture are suffering from a terrible, soul-numbing imbalance, in which there is an overemphasis on basic, quantifiable skills and knowledge and a de-emphasis of more creative areas of the humanities, especially the arts and aesthetics. Detels indicates that the marginalization of the arts and aesthetics in American education has been caused by a hard-boundaried paradigm that has come to dominate American education. According to this paradigm, the arts are wrongly viewed and taught as separate, unconnected disciplines of music, visual arts, dance, and theater, while their intimate connections to each other and to aesthetic experience and life in general are completely unrepresented. The way out of this crisis is to change paradigms, from a hard-boundaried, single-minded valuation of specialization to a more soft-boundaried curriculum that allows for specialized education in individual art forms as well as widespread interdisciplinary integration of the arts with each other and with general education at the K-12 and college levels. Without such a change, we will be unable to equip our students with the necessary skills to understand and communicate about the increasingly complex, sensually immersive artistic media and forms of the future.




The Death and Life of the Great American School System


Book Description

Discusses how school choice, misapplied standards of accountability, the No Child Left Behind mandate, and the use of a corporate model have all led to a decline in public education and presents arguments for a return to strong neighborhood schools and quality teaching.




The Schools Our Children Deserve


Book Description

Arguing against the tougher standards rhetoric that marks the current education debate, the author of No Contest and Punished by Rewards writes that such tactics squeeze the pleasure out of learning. Reprint.




Critical Links


Book Description

Two purposes of this compendium are: (1) to recommend to researchers and funders of research promising lines of inquiry and study suggested by recent, strong studies of the academic and social effects of learning in the arts; and (2) to provide designers of arts education curriculum and instruction with insights found in the research that suggest strategies for deepening the arts learning experiences and are required to achieve the academic and social effects. The compendium is divided into six sections: (1) "Dance" (Summaries: Teaching Cognitive Skill through Dance; The Effects of Creative Dance Instruction on Creative and Critical Thinking of Seventh Grade Female Students in Seoul, Korea; Effects of a Movement Poetry Program on Creativity of Children with Behavioral Disorders; Assessment of High School Students' Creative Thinking Skills; The Impact of Whirlwind's Basic Reading through Dance Programs on First Grade Students' Basic Reading Skills; Art and Community; Motor Imagery and Athletic Expertise; Essay: Informing and Reforming Dance Education Research (K. Bradley)); (2) "Drama" (Summaries: Informing and Reforming Dance Education Research; The Effects of Creative Drama on the Social and Oral Language Skills of Children with Learning Disabilities; The Effectiveness of Creative Drama as an Instructional Strategy To Enhance the Reading Comprehension Skills of Fifth-Grade Remedial Readers; Role of Imaginative Play in Cognitive Development; A Naturalistic Study of the Relationship between Literacy Development and Dramatic Play in Five-Year-Old Children; An Exploration in the Writing of Original Scripts by Inner-City High School Drama Students; A Poetic/Dramatic Approach To Facilitate Oral Communication; Children's Story Comprehension as a Result of Storytelling and Story Dramatization; The Impact of Whirlwind's Reading Comprehension through Drama Program on 4th Grade Students' Reading Skills and Standardized Test Scores; The Effects of Thematic-Fantasy Play Training on the Development of Children's Story Comprehension; Symbolic Functioning and Children's Early Writing; Identifying Casual Elements in the Thematic-Fantasy Play Paradigm; The Effect of Dramatic Play on Children's Generation of Cohesive Text; Strengthening Verbal Skills through the Use of Classroom Drama; 'Stand and Unfold Yourself' A Monograph on the Shakespeare and Company Research Study; Nadie Papers No. 1, Drama, Language and Learning. Reports of the Drama and Language Research Project, Speech and Drama Center, Education Department of Tasmania; The Effects of Role Playing on Written Persuasion; 'You Can't Be Grandma: You're a Boy'; The Flight of Reading; Essay: Research on Drama and Theater in Education (J. Catterall)); (3) "Multi-Arts" (Summaries: Using Art Processes To Enhance Academic Self-Regulation; Learning in and through the Arts; Involvement in the Arts and Success in Secondary School; Involvement in the Arts and Human Development; Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education (CAPE); The Role of the Fine and Performing Arts in High School Dropout Prevention; Arts Education in Secondary Schools; Living the Arts through Language and Learning; Do Extracurricular Activities Protect against Early School Dropout?; Does Studying the Arts Engender Creative Thinking?; The Arts and Education Reform; Placing A+ in a National Context; The A+ Schools Program; The Arts in the Basic Curriculum Project; Mute Those Claims; Why the Arts Matter in Education Or Just What Do Children Learn When They Create an Opera?; SAT Scores of Students Who Study the Arts; Essay: Promising Signs of Positive Effects: Lessons from the Multi-Arts Studies (R. Horowitz; J. Webb-Dempsey)); (4) "Music" (Summaries: Effects of an Integrated Reading and Music Instructional Approach on Fifth-Grade Students' Reading Achievement, Reading Attitude, Music Achievement, and Music Attitude; The Effect of Early Music Training on Child Cognitive Development; Can Music Be Used To Teach Reading?; The Effects of Three Years of Piano Instruction on Children's Cognitive Development; Enhanced Learning of Proportional Math through Music Training and Spatial-Temporal Training; The Effects of Background Music on Studying; Learning To Make Music Enhances Spatial Reasoning; Listening to Music Enhances Spatial-Temporal Reasoning; An Investigation of the Effects of Music on Two Emotionally Disturbed Students' Writing Motivations and Writing Skills; The Effects of Musical Performance, Rational Emotive Therapy and Vicarious Experience on the Self-Efficacy and Self-Esteem of Juvenile Delinquents and Disadvantaged Children; The Effect of the Incorporation of Music Learning into the Second-Language Classroom on the Mutual Reinforcement of Music and Language; Music Training Causes Long-Term Enhancement of Preschool Children's Spatial-Temporal Reasoning; Classroom Keyboard Instruction Improves Kindergarten Children's Spatial-Temporal Performance; A Meta-Analysis on the Effects of Music as Reinforcement for Education/Therapy Objectives; Music and Mathematics; Essay: An Overview of Research on Music and Learning (L. Scripp)); (5) "Visual Arts" (Summaries: Instruction in Visual Art; The Arts, Language, and Knowing; Investigating the Educational Impact and Potential of the Museum of Modern Art's Visual Thinking Curriculum; Reading Is Seeing; Essay: Reflections on Visual Arts Education Studies (T. L. Baker)); and (6) "Overview" (Essay: The Arts and the Transfer of Learning (J. S. Catterall)). (BT)




Valuing Music in Education


Book Description

Noted music education and arts activist Charles Fowler has inspired music educators for more than 60 years. In this book, editor Craig Resta brings together the most important of Fowler's writings from the journal Musical America for new generations of readers. Here, Fowler speaks to many timeless issues including creativity and culture in the classroom, school funding, reform and policy, assessment and pedagogy, and equality and pluralism in music education. The articles are both research-based and practical, and helpful for many of the most important concerns in school-based advocacy and scholarly inquiry today. Resta offers critical commentary with compelling background to these enduring pieces, placing them in a context that clarifies the benefit of their message to music and arts education. Fowler's words speak to all who have a stake in music education: students, teachers, parents, administrators, performers, community members, business leaders, arts advocates, scholars, professors, and researchers alike. Valuing Music in Education is ideal for everyone who understands the critical role of music in schools and society.