Arts in Primary School Education - Case Study Example

Case Study: Arts in Primary School Education Name Institutional Affiliation Case Study: Arts in Primary School Education In the recent years, the art education for teachers has been on the political debate even though it has been marginalized by math, science, and literacy. Still, psychologists and art educationalists state that art promotes important educational benefits (Jolley, 2013). The arts are an essential component in the children’s healthy brain development. The role that the arts play in brain development makes them particularly important in primary school education. The arts engage different parts of the brain to enable the children achieve right and left brain balance (class notes). This paper is based on a research conducted on a primary school teacher to underpin the importance of arts in education. The teachers capability to teach the arts depends primarily on the kinds of believes or attitudes that they have towards arts education in areas such as music, media, drama, dance, and visual arts. Teachers with positive attitude towards art education would be more willing to employ their experiences with art in their classrooms. Those with negative attitudes would limit or ignore the classroom’s exposure to arts education (Lemon & Garvis, 2013). Being the children’s natural language, the negligence of its involvement in primary education would deny the children’s opportunity to develop risk taking and creative thinking (class notes). Apart from developing aesthetic awareness, art education fosters the development of the rhythmic intelligence that in turn helps the children to develop better study skills and benefit in the other areas of education. The children are as well exposed to more opportunities to succeed and participate in arts appreciation and community development (class notes). As Bamford and Wimmer (2012) argue, it is safe to conclude that the schools or systems that use more artistic and creative methods achieve an improvement in their quality of teaching. The arts provide opportunity for social interaction, improvement in behavior quality, and enhancement of the school environment. In this project, I carried out an interview with Mrs. Susan*, who is a primary school teacher at the New Wales Primary School* located in the New South Wales. Susan says that she is a classroom teacher who specializes in teaching and assessing visual arts. Susan believes that “it is important that students are taught a variety of different forms and use a number of different types of media”. Learning in visual arts is of paramount importance to the children’s development of knowledge. Visual arts develop practice as both artist and audience. It gives the students an opportunity to learn the skills, techniques, and processes of representing their ideas. They work from different mediums to achieve their primary goals. Art always has a subject matter in the sense that it has to be about something. The elements that art could be about include people, other living things, objects, events, and places and spaces (class notes). Visual arts are particularly important for the children in the contemporary society because they expose them to the experiences that have been largely replaced with technology. In addition, the experiences help the students to consolidate and understand what they are being taught. The artificial media produced by the modern technology including television, advertising displays, videos and other media does not suffice in engaging the developing brain’s visual cortex’s needs Consultative (Conference on Education, 2009). Susan acknowledges the importance of the visual arts in helping the students consolidate and understand the knowledge by stating that, “We try to link the teaching and learning activities to units we are studying in class, for example, Religious Education, Mathematics, Human Society and its Environment, or events that are taking place (for example, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Year 6 Graduation)”. Researchers have given music most attention due to its connection to brain function not because it is more special than the other forms of art but because of the specialized neurons in the brain that only perceive music. Researchers have found that rhythm and melody gives a consistent and predictable response to all people including very young babies. Music affects the brains capacity to transfer to other activities especially those that promote reading, auditory perception, and playing an instrument (Upitis, 2011). Music helps children to perform, organize and listen through developing rhythmic intelligence (class notes). Still, music is only a means to show the effects of art on primary education. As Susan says “the arts allow students to learn and to express their learning creatively, be it visually, musically or dramatically. Students may be more comfortable and confident expressing their learning in these ways”. Music is especially important because it allows the students to sing in groups, create compositions, improvise melodic patterns, present body percussion arrangements, identify a time signature and play the instruments individually. Students are as well given the opportunity to explore and show preferences when discussing their main features, identify the different ensembles of the instruments, and notate their own compositions. The students would become arts specialists and earn respect, support, interactions, and links and supplements. Music represents all the other forms of art. Dance is related to music. Dance involves the communication of narratives, concepts, relationships, and feelings through movement. It depends on context, improvisation, interpretation and evaluation, focus, and sequencing and motor skills. More time should be allocated to the arts. Susan reports that the South Wales Primary School only allocates one hour per fortnight or half an hour a week for Visual Arts education. The same amount of time is allocated for Drama, Dance and Music. The Visual Arts activities require more time to plan, execute, and complete. It is important to give the students who are not academically brilliant an opportunity to excel in the arts (class notes). Susan states that, “The current Creative Arts syllabus outlines the outcomes and provides indicators that should be achieved by the end of each stage. It provides examples of the forms and media that should be taught throughout K-6”. The Creative Arts K-6 Syllabus for the primary curriculum defines the key learning areas. Creative Arts K-6 provides the guidelines for learning and teaching Dance, Drama, Music, and Visual Arts. The syllabus aims at enabling the provision of foundational learning in the art-forms of Music, Visual Arts, Dance and Drama for the children aged between 7 and 12. The K-6 syllabus enables the students to participate and actively engage in the learning experiences accrued from the drama, dance, music, and visual arts because they would become part of their natural and necessary process of growth and development (Creative Arts K-6, 2006). Mrs. Susan is very proud of the award that her husband designed to encourage the status of the arts in their school where each best student in each class was awarded for each term. The award in the school where Susan teaches has shown positive results as proven by the large number of artworks displayed in every classroom. As such, the government should ensure that the awards given to the existing programs and schemes are available to the practitioners in arts-in-education. The move would value the diverse works of the artists and encourage more children to experience the importance of art education. (Deenihan & Quinn, 2012). Mrs. Susan admits that she has always enjoyed visual arts right from high school. Her school has as well helped her younger sister and opportunities for staff to provide Visual Arts services. In spite of the researchers being inclined towards music, it is scientifically proven that the visual cortex of the human brain is five times larger than that of the auditory cortex. Most students opt to learn while using the visual arts as the primary medium. Most children today see the end products of the processes in the supermarkets and television instead of experiencing them from their beginning to the end Consultative Conference on Education 2009. As such, a curriculum based on promoting visual arts would enable all the primary school pupils to express, explore, and experiment the incumbent ideas as they investigate the inevitable possibilities through fiber, fabric, construction, clay, print, color and paint, and drawing. Susan concludes that “Teachers would be happy to have professional development in Visual Arts to develop or strengthen their skills and knowledge and to also make them more confident when teaching art.” In conclusion, research has proven that the role that the arts play in children’s brain development is particularly important in primary school education. The arts engage different parts of the primary school children’s brain to enable them achieve right and left brain balance. Teachers with positive attitude towards art education would be more willing to employ their experiences with art in their classrooms. The interview with Mrs. Susan has helped me understand that apart from developing aesthetic awareness, art education fosters the development of the rhythmic intelligence that in turn helps the children to develop better study skills and benefit in the other areas of education. In the New South Wales, the implementation of the Creative Arts K-6 would be paramount because it provides the guidelines for learning and teaching Dance, Drama, Music, and Visual Arts. The syllabus aims at enabling the provision of foundational learning in the art-forms of Music, Visual Arts, Dance and Drama for the children aged between 7 and 12. References Bamford, A. & Wimmer, M. (2012). The role of arts education in enhancing school attractiveness: a literature review. EENC Paper. Retrieved from http://www.kulturnibazar.si/data/upload/school_attractiveness_paper_final_website.pdf Class notes. (2016). Creative arts education. Rachel Jacobs. Conference on Education, (2009). Creativity and the arts in the primary school. Irish National Teachers’ Organization. Retrieved from https://www.into.ie/ROI/Publications/CreativityArtsinthePS.pdf Creative Arts K-6, (2006). Board od Studies: New South Wales. Retireved from https://k6.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/wps/wcm/connect/ce0d0525-fb53-44db-b4bb-f9d252549824/k6_creative_arts_syl.pdf?MOD=AJPERES Deenihan, D . & Quinn, R. (2012). Arts in education charter. The Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht & The Department of Education and Skills. https://www.education.ie/en/Publications/Policy-Reports/Arts-In-Education-Charter.pdf Jolley, R. (2013). The importance of an art education. Center for Research and Practice (AQA). Retrieved from https://cerp.aqa.org.uk/perspectives/importance-art-education Lemon, N. & Garvis, S. (2013). What is the role of the arts in a primary school?: An investigation of perceptions of pre-service teachers in Australia. Australian Journal of Teacher Education 38(9). Retrieed from http://ro.ecu.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2147&context=ajte Upitis, R. (2011). Arts for the development of the whole child. Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario. Retrieved from http://www.etfo.ca/Resources/ForTeachers/Documents/Arts%20Education%20for%20the%20Development%20of%20the%20Whole%20Child.pdf Read More