A Decade of Teaching the Course Aging & the Arts: Reflecting on Opportunities and Challenges

In 2010, the University of Utah Gerontology Interdisciplinary Program first offered GERON 5240/6240: Aging and the Arts. This course was developed to enrich program curricula by addressing a gap in content specific to the arts and humanities. The purpose of this presentation is to focus on identifying the opportunities and challenges experienced teaching this course over the past decade. Opportunities will highlight competency mapping, internal and external partnerships, the benefits of bridging disciplines, and innovation in teaching and problem-solving. Challenges experienced include addressing various needs (online learning, undergraduate and graduate levels, multiple disciplines), tuition differentials, and varying levels of enrollment. A stand-alone course is one method of increasing humanities, arts, and cultural gerontology within curricula. It has the potential of enhancing student interest in gerontology while also demonstrating how the arts and humanities can improve work across disciplines.

The effect of an interdisciplinary Greek traditional dance programme on Middle School students’ goal orientation and anxiety

The aim of the study was to investigate the effect of an interdisciplinary program of Greek folk dance, with topics from history and geography on Middle School students’ goal orientation and anxiety level. The sample consisted of 260 students (134 boys & 126 girls). The experimental group (n=144) followed the interdisciplinary four-week program (two lessons per week) while the control group (n=126) followed the corresponding typical physical education program. For the data collection, the questionnaire used was the “Goal orientation” by Papaioannou, Milosis, Kosmidou, and Tsiggilis (2002) and the Greek version (Kakkos & Zervas, 1996) of “Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2” (Martens et al., 1990). The students filled in the questionnaires before and after their participating in each program. Descriptive statistics, reliability analysis, and Repeated Measures ANOVA were used. Results showed that a. Cronbach’s alpha was satisfactory. b. Τhe experimental group decreased significantly the levels of “ego-strengthening” and “ego-protection”, and on the contrary significantly increase the “personal development”, and “social acceptance”. c. Experimental group’s boys and girls decreased their “ego-strengthening” and “ego-protection”, and enhanced their “personal development” and “social acceptance” more than their control group peers. d. The experimental group decreased the levels of somatic and cognitive anxieties and increased significantly their self-confidence. e. male students increased their self-confidence more than female students. These findings support the view that an interdisciplinary program of traditional Greek dance with issues from history and geography enable us to reduce the rates of ego-strengthening, ego-protection, somatic and cognitive anxiety while simultaneously increases students’ personal development, social acceptance, and self-confidence