09 Mar CRDG Teams with Hawai‘i Arts Alliance
CRDG’s Program Research and Evaluation Section completed the final stages of an evaluation of the three-year ARTS FIRST Windward Research Project as 2006 came to a close. The project is a collaboration between CRDG and the Hawai‘i Arts Alliance and was funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education. Its focus was to develop and implement procedures for training elementary school teachers in how to use strategies from dance, music, drama, and the visual arts to help teach reading and mathematics. The Hawai‘i Arts Alliance implemented the project in three randomly selected public elementary schools on O‘ahu, and CRDG compared teachers and students in the three schools with those in a group of three randomly selected control schools in a mixed-method, quasi-experimental study. Over the course of the project, fifteen teachers in grades three through five were trained in how to use the arts to enhance their teaching of language arts and mathematics. The project will finish in 2007 with an observational study of the quality of teachers’ implementation of arts strategies, production of a final report, and submission of an article for publication. Preliminary results show that the project successfully affected project students’ attitudes and achievement. CRDG and the Hawai‘i Arts Alliance are continuing to collaborate and have begun a second project, also funded by the U.S. Department of Education, to study the arts in education in four O‘ahu schools over the next four years.