Integrating the Arts Into Elementary School Reading Instruction
Curriculum Research & Development Group (CRDG) evaluators conducted two studies of teachers’ integration of the arts into the teaching of elementary school reading.
Under subcontracts to U. S. Department of Education grants awarded to the Hawai’i Alliance for Arts Education, CRDG evaluators evaluated two projects to develop and apply K-12 teacher professional development in how to use drama and dance to teach reading comprehension. The purposes of the projects were to (a) develop and refine methods for training teachers how to use drama and dance techniques to help children improve their reading skills, (b) examine the extent to which teachers used the methods fully and well in their classrooms, and (c) examine the extent to which the project affected children’s attitudes toward school, interest in the arts, and reading achievement. During the first project, the Alliance refined its methods for using the arts to teach reading; despite the ongoing evolution of the methods during the project, the project schools tended to outperform the control schools. The second project showed less promising results, but the evaluation findings provided deep insights into teacher practices. The final report for the first project was awarded first place among 29 contestants for Best Program Evaluation by Division H of the American Educational Research Association in 2008 and was profiled in a 2010 article in the American Journal of Evaluation. All the reports and presentations stemming from the projects are shown on this page.
Reports
Evaluation of the First Year of the ARTS FIRST Windward Research Project (2004)
- Student Achievement Results for the First Year of the ARTS FIRST Windward Research Project (2004)
- Evaluation of the Second Year of the ARTS FIRST Windward Research Project (2005)
- Student Achievement Results for the Second Year of the ARTS FIRST Windward Research Project (2005)
- Evaluation of the Final Year of the ARTS FIRST Windward Research Project (2007) (awarded first place in the 2008 AERA Division H competition for program evaluation studies)
- Evaluation of the Second year of the Arts and Literacy for All Research Project
- Evaluation of the Final Year (2009-2010) of the Arts and Literacy For All Project
Presentations & Publications
- Findings and Methodological Lessons from an Evaluation of a Project to Integrate the Arts into Elementary School Reading and Mathematics Instruction (AEA 2007)
- An Examination of the Quality of Implementation of an Integrated Arts Education Program (AERA 2007)
- Methods and Results of a Three-Year Evaluation to Infuse Arts Strategies in Elementary Reading and Mathematics Instruction (AEA 2006)