Perspectives on Social Studies and Visual Arts Integration

Like many school systems in economically stressed parts of the country, the Everett, Mass., school district had cut back on arts instruction over the years, to the point where most students were getting only a single art class per week. But since 2013, and thanks to a grant from the U.S. Department of Education, Everett has designed and implemented a new model of arts integration in its elementary and middle grades, providing teachers with intensive support and coaching to help them combine their regular instruction with serious lessons in theater, the visual arts, design, and more.

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Organic Creativity for 21st Century Skills

Education Sciences ◽

10.3390/educsci11110680 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (11) ◽

pp. 680

Author(s):

Jane Piirto

Keyword(s):

Elementary Education ◽

Social Studies ◽

Advanced Placement ◽

Visual Arts ◽

Risk Taking ◽

Gifted And Talented ◽

Educational Psychology ◽

School Administration ◽

World Languages ◽

The Subject

This article contains 15 “takeaways” about how to teach organic creativity, from actual teachers with several hundred total years of experience. Teachers of English, physics, Advanced Placement Calculus, science, theater, the visual arts, dance, school administration, school counseling, educational psychology professing, world languages, mathematics, the education of the gifted and talented, social studies, music, and elementary education describe their strategies for teaching for intuition, imagination, insight, imagery, risk-taking, openness to experience, feeding back, improvisation, and other aspects of creativity that arise from the subject matter.

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Best Practices in K-12 Arts Integration

Advances in Early Childhood and K-12 Education - Curriculum Integration in Contemporary Teaching Practice ◽

10.4018/978-1-5225-4065-6.ch004 ◽

2017 ◽

pp. 95-124

Keyword(s):

Problem Solving ◽

Social Studies ◽

Integrated Curriculum ◽

Arts Integration ◽

The Self ◽

Production Performance ◽

Effective Strategies ◽

The Arts ◽

Creative Problem ◽

K 12

Arts integration is a necessary part of the STREAMSS (science, technology, reading, engineering, art, math, and social studies) curriculum model. Within an arts integrated curriculum, K-12 students can communicate thoughts and emotions through arts criticism, arts history, aesthetics, and arts production/performance. The goal of arts learning is to better understand the self and others through artistic expression about important topics and themes. The arts provide opportunities for students to think independently and critically, to solve real world problems, and to creatively work for a better future. Arts strategies for students encourage reflection, analysis, synthesis of new and existing knowledge, and creative problem solving. Teaching practices and effective strategies integrating the arts for K-12 students are provided for educators to create curriculum using the STREAMSS approach.

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