How can theatre and visual arts activities in an out-of-school program foster social-emotional learning and a growth mindset for K-2 students and their primary caretakers?
Arts Integraton
Social-Emotional Learning (SEL)
Parental Involvement
SEL for early learners
School-wide SEL
Definitions, Frameworks, Programs
Theatre
Early learners
Visual arts
After-school programming
Early learner SEL
SEL supported through the arts
Casciano, R., Cherfas, L., & Jobson-Ahmed, L. (2019). Connecting Arts Integration to Social- Emotional Learning among Special Education Students. Journal for Learning through the Arts, 15(1).
Ashdown, D., & Bernard, M. (2012). Can Explicit Instruction in Social and Emotional Learning Skills Benefit the Social-Emotional Development, Well-being, and Academic Achievement of Young Children? Early Childhood Education Journal, 39(6), 397–405. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-011-0481-x
Aspen Institute, N. C. on S. E. & A. D. (NCSEAD). (2018). How Learning Happens: Supporting Students’ Social, Emotional, and Academic Development. An Interim Report. Aspen Institute.
Farrington, C. A., Maurer, J., McBride, M. R. A., Nagaoka, J., Puller, J. S., Shewfelt, S., & Wright, L. (2019). Arts Education and Social-Emotional Learning Outcomes among K-12 Students: Developing a Theory of Action. University of Chicago Consortium on School Research.
Holochwost, S. J., Wolf, D. P., Fisher, K. R., & O’Grady, K. (2016). The socioemotional benefits of the arts: A new mandate for arts education. The William Penn Foundation.
Hutzel, K., Russell, R., & Gross, J. (2010). Eighth-Graders as Role Models: A Service-Learning Art Collaboration for Social and Emotional Learning. Art Education, 63(4), 12–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/00043125.2010.11519074
Lee, W. K., & Joo, Y. S. (2020). Adolescent extracurricular activity participation: Associations with parenting stress, mother–adolescent closeness, and social skills. Children and Youth Services Review, 116. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2020.105110
Ludwig, M., Marklein, M. B., & Song, M. (2016). Arts integration: A promising approach to improving early learning. American Institutes for Research.
Müller, E., Hunter Naples, L., Cannon, L., Haffner, B., & Mullins, A. (2019). Using integrated arts programming to facilitate social and emotional learning in young children with social cognition challenges. Early Child Development and Care, 189(14), 2219-2232.
Growth Mindset
Wang, S., Mak, H. W., & Fancourt, D. (2020). Arts, mental distress, mental health functioning & life satisfaction: fixed-effects analyses of a nationally-representative panel study. BMC Public Health, 20(1).
Goldbard, A. (2018). Art and well-being: Toward a culture of health. US Department of Art and Culture.
Anderson, R. C., Haney, M., Pitts, C., Porter, L., & Bousselot, T. (2020). “Mistakes Can be Beautiful”: Creative Engagement in Arts Integration for Early Adolescent Learners. Journal of Creative Behavior, 54(3), 662–675.
Carol Korn-Bursztyn. (2012). Young Children and the Arts: Nurturing Imagination and Creativity. Information Age Publishing.
Ennis, G. M., & Tonkin, J. (2018). ‘It’s like exercise for your soul’: how participation in youth arts activities contributes to young people’s wellbeing. Journal of Youth Studies, 21(3), 340–359. https://doi.org/10.1080/13676261.2017.1380302
Garnett, H. (2018). Developing Empathy in the Early Years : A Guide for Practitioners. Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Henriksen, S., & Smith, S.. (2016). Fail Again, Fail Better: Embracing Failure as a Paradigm for Creative Learning in the Arts. Art Education, 69(2), 6-11.
Center for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL)
Ingalls, J. S. (2018). Improvisational Theater Games: Performatory Team-building Activities. JOPERD: The Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance, 89(1), 40–45.
Low, S., Smolkowski, K., Cook, C., & Desfosses, D. (2019). Two-year impact of a universal social-emotional learning curriculum: Group differences from developmentally sensitive trends over time. Developmental Psychology, 55(2), 415–433. https://doi-org.proxy- tu.researchport.umd.edu/10.1037/dev0000621.supp (Supplemental)
Oberle, E., Domitrovich, C. E., Meyers, D. C., & Weissberg, R. P. (2016). Establishing systemic social and emotional learning approaches in schools: a framework for schoolwide implementation. Cambridge Journal of Education, 46(3), 277–297.
Oliver, K., Hall, M. P., Dalton, J., Jones, L. F., Watson, V., Hoyser, C., & Santavicca, N. (2019). Drawing out the soul: Contemporary arts integration. International Journal of Education through Art, 15(2), 165–181.
Taylor, K. V. (2020). Building school community through cross-grade collaborations in art. International Journal of Education through Art, 16(3), 351–370.
Van Katwyk, T., & Seko, Y. (2019). Resilience Beyond Risk: Youth Re-defining Resilience Through Collective Art-Making. Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal, 36(6), 609. https://doi-org.proxy-tu.researchport.umd.edu/10.1007/s10560-018-0590-0
Wheeler, H., Goodwin, H., Connor, J., & National Children’s Bureau. (2009). Parents, Early Years and Learning : Parents As Partners in the Early Years Foundation Stage - Principles Into Practice. National Children’s Bureau.
White, A., Moore, D. W., Fleer, M., & Anderson, A. (2017). A thematic and content analysis of instructional and rehearsal procedures of preschool social emotional learning programs. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, 42(3), 82–91.
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You Can Do It! Early Childhood Education Program (YCDI)
The YCDI approach is based on cognitive-behavioral psychology. Their approach provides explicit instruction in the following categories of SEL: confidence, persistence, organization, getting along, and emotional resilience.YCDI supports these categories with 12 habits of the mind: “I Can Do It, Accepting Myself, Taking Risks, Being Independent, Giving Effort, Working Tough, Setting Goals, Planning My Time, Being Tolerant of Others, Thinking First, Playing by the Rules, and Being Socially Responsible” (p. 398)
Explicit, as opposed to implicit, SEL lead to higher improvement scores on SEL competences
SEL promotes academic learning, teachers need strong social-emotional skills, families and communities must also be tied into the work
"SEL is the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions." https://casel.org/what-is-sel/
The researchers found that the students in their study “valued opportunities in arts integration for (a) choice, (b) the expression of their unique interpretations, (c) taking risks and making mistakes, (d) recognizing and applying their Studio Habits of Mind, and (e) enhancement of motivation and engagement in learning” (p. 662).
The first section of this book includes a chapter on getting parents involved in their child’s creative process, which I believe will be very helpful for me. The chapters on visual arts and theatre projects will also provide me with guidance and inspiration as I choose the activities for my program.
The authors found thirteen categories of benefits from participation in a theatre program and a circus program, including themes like “finding my people” (p. 349) and “freedom, safety, risk” (p. 350).
Chapter 4, “Establishing Empathy in our Pedagogy,” has broad suggestions for ways to promote empathy in a classroom with young learners. The following chapters offer more specific strategies for empathy-building such as intentional play, narrative, and communication.
Intellectual risk-taking practices (not risky behavior or dan- gerous risks) have long been considered an integral component
for creativity (Clifford, 1991; Dewett, 2007; Glover, 1977; Martins & Terblanche, 2003)." p. 7
"Ambiguity can make even the most creative individuals question how they should proceed; however, creating an environment where learners knows there are rarely easy solutions can inspire them to face such challenges bravely." p. 10
"Embracing failure has the potential to shift classroom learning culture toward great creativity. This can be approached through mechanisms for assessing learners’ reflective process, structuring class time to negotiate experiences with failure, and open-ended assignment structures to support individualization." p. 11
The writers focus on four social-emotional competencies: engagement, self control, interpersonal skills, and leadership. The qualitative data discussed in the article is sourced from a case study of a federally-funded arts integration program called Everyday Arts for Special Education (EASE). Their findings suggest that arts integration strategies provide teachers with activities explicitly teaching social-emotional competencies, and with activities that increase student engagement, which in turn increase prosocial behavior.
Section 1: theory of action for arts-integration for SEL; Section 2: surveys the effectiveness and provides examples of arts education in three specific areas of social- emotional learning: self management and discipline, interpersonal and relationship skills, and self-expression and identity; Section 3: suggestions for further research
Data from over 900 students on the effects of after-school arts programming on SEL. Main conclusions and contributions: the finding that arts programs foster SEL especially for students with already high SEL scores and younger students, the contribution of survey tools to measure SEL, and data from children with lower socioeconomic backgrounds than most studies previously done on arts and SEL.
"...transformative art inte- gration practices are holistically rooted in notions of care and work to offer transformative experiences through the way we design and implement meaningful, rich, emotionally diverse, and socially engaged arts- based curriculum." p. 166
Uses CASEL Framework. Outlines 10 arts-integrated lesson plans that were implemented with the pre-k students and 8th graders.
The authors argue that involvement in ECAs has positive social and learning effects on participants. This article examines why some students particpate in ECAs and others do not. In particular, they look at how a mother's stress can affect student participation in ECAs.
Looks at WolfTrap program. Found favorable outcomes for students in program. Article also describes some lesson plans - very helpful resource!
Uses CASEL Framework. Found positive outcomes after a semester of using arts integrated lessons to teach SEL in social studies classes with kindergarteners.
Uses CASEL Framework. A Theory of Action (ToA) developed by CASEL is presented. This ToA recommends a team-based, longitudinal approach to SEL, incorporating the entire school district, if possible. The authors also discuss some challenges and barriers that might hinder school- wide SEL programming. These barriers include lack of funding and resources, and some educators’ perception that making SEL a priority conflicts with academic priorities and overwhelms their already full workloads.
Researchers found a positive correlation between arts/cultural involvement and mental health. Specifically, the researchers looked at mental distress, mental functioning, and life satisfaction and found that the more frequently participants engaged in cultural events and/or arts activities, the more positive their outcomes.
The author argues that theatre games are particularly good at giving children a sense of simultaneously having an individual voice and contributing to a group objective. Ingalls uses the paradigm of “yes, and” in theatre improvisation as a foundation for all team- building exercises.
The researchers collected data from nearly 9,000 students in two states over two years whose schools were implementing an SEL program called Second Step. The data showed improvements in “emotional symptoms, hyperactivity, skills for learning, and emotion management” (p. 415). Critically, however, the researchers noticed improvements only during the school year, and not over the summer (when students were not in school).
"Combining aesthetic and artistic explorations in the learning process opens students to the complexity of their own experiences and enables them to make connections with the world in which they live (Anderson and Milbrandt 2005; Greene 2001; Hetland 2013)" p. 170
"We demonstrate how arts inte- gration can be transformational – revealing its possibilities for educating active members of a democratic society through the development of imagination, creativity, presence and meaning-making through embodied knowing." p. 166
This article describes a project lead by a teacher at a suburban public school in which eighth graders collaborated with first graders on three creative visual arts projects. The author describes improved communication and collaboration skills as a result of the project and states that this bidirectional learning project also increased the sense of community on the school campus.
This article describes a participatory action research project in which professional artists partnered with youth in a socioeconomically struggling neighborhood to create collaborative art pieces centered on the question, “What does resilience mean to you?” The authors found that, in connection to the theme of resilience, participants often discussed the importance of belonging and connections, personal strengths and uniqueness, and external forces and pressures.
This article reports on a number of ongoing efforts to promote health in various communities through the arts. The article is split into four sections. The first section gives an introduction to the idea of a “culture of health” and generally explores some ways in which the arts can contribute to a culture of health. The second section looks broadly at a number of organizations promoting health through the arts, organized by art form. The third section examines three arts in health organizations/projects in detail. These projects are Youth Radio, Mural Arts Philadelphia, and the San Francisco Mime Troupe. The fourth section compares arts-based health interventions to commercial healthcare, and highlights some advantages of arts-based care.
The first section, on why it is important to include parents in early-learning, provides validating data for my project. The following section, on what factors influence parent involvement, will help me craft a program that is useful and feasible for parents/primary caretakers. The book also includes examples of and suggestions for successful parent involvement in youth learning.
This study compares and contrasts the methods and outcomes of several popular social- emotional learning (SEL) programs being implemented in Australian pre-schools. The article presents detailed charts of SEL techniques and their efficacy in different areas of social-emotional competency.
Most of the projects I looked at used visual arts, but I need more research on visual-arts specific work.
See articles focused on visual arts cited elsewhere on this map by authors Hutzel (SEL supported thru the arts), Henrikson (SEL supported thru the arts), and Ludwig (Arts Integration, Early Learners).
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