2. Table of
Contents
Title Slide
Table of Contents
What Education Can Learn From the Arts(1)
What Education Can Learn From the Arts(2)
My Thoughts on What Education Can Learn From the Arts
New Visions: Art For Early Childhood(1)
New Visions: Art For Early Childhood(2)
My Thoughts on New Visions: Art for Early Childhood
They Want to Learn How to Think: Using Art to Enhance Comprehension(1)
They Want to Learn How to Think: Using Art to Enhance Comprehension(2)
My Thoughts on They Want to Learn How to Think: Using Art to Enhance Comprehension
Conclusion
References

3. What Education Can Learn
From the Arts
“Even though the arts are considered a core subject in recent legislation
pertaining to No Child Left Behind, in the reality of the school day,
they are often hard to find.”
- Elliot Eisner, author of “What Education Can Learn From the Arts”
Thesis of the Article: The improvement of education is made possible not only
by understandings promoted through scientific methods, but also those
promoted through methods that are deeply rooted in the arts.
- Offers eight specific things that education can learn from the arts
- Along with the eight things, the article supplies reasons why it is important to
know them
- Points out the importance of making a “work of art” no matter what field you are
working in

4. What Education Can Learn From the Arts
Cont’d
1. Education can learn from the arts that form and content cannot be separated. How something
is said or done shapes the content of experience.
2. Education can learn from the arts that everything interacts; there is no content without form,
and no form without content.
3. Education can learn from the arts that nuance matters. To the extent to which teaching is an
art, attention to nuance is critical.
4. Education can learn from the arts that surprise is not to be seen as an intruder in the process of inquiry but as a
part of the rewards one reaps when working artistically.
5. Education can learn from the arts that slowing down perception is the most promising way to see what is
actually there.
6. Education can learn from the arts that the limits of language are not the limits of cognition. We know more
than we can tell.
7. Education can learn from the arts that somatic experience is one of the most important indicators that
someone has gotten it right.
8. Education can learn from the arts that open-ended tasks permit the exercise of imagination, and the exercise of
imagination is one of the most important of human aptitudes. It is imagination, not necessity, that is the
mother of invention.

5. My Thoughts on “What Education
Can Learn From the Arts”
“What Education Can Learn From the Arts touches on
many things I have found myself worrying about for
years. When I was in middle school, I had art all year
every year; now-a-days students have art for one
semester one year. I truly believe all my knowledge of
art has helped me in everything I have ever done. I have
an unorthodox way of thinking that I would not have had
if it weren’t for all of my art training. I loved that this
article didn’t just say that art is important, but gave
reasons as to WHY are is important. Since this article
was written fairly recently, perhaps it will actually make
a difference. It offers really wonderful advice for the
modern school to follow.

6. "Our mission is to promote the arts as essential to early
learning and to advocate for programs where art experiences
are integral to the education of young children.“
- Mission Statement of Early Childhood Art Educators Issues Group (ECAE)
- The ECAC is a group that the authors of this article belong to
- This article “New Visions: Art for Early Childhood” addresses
another article titled “Spirit in the Studio”
- The article “Spirit in the Studio” discusses different ways to bring
the “spirit” of the studio into the classroom, thus improving the way
we educate our young people

7. New Visions: Art for Early Childhood
Cont’d
- This article brings up the concept of broadening the role of the
art teacher in the school
- The article goes on to suggest that the arts be truly
“embedded” in the school, not just something students work
on forty-five minutes one day a week
- One of the principles of the ECAC is very important in the
article:
"A child needs plenty of unhurried time, both structured
and unstructured to explore the sensory/kinesthetic
properties of materials and to develop skills and concepts
in re-presenting his or her experiences"
- This principle suggests that students require the ability to do
things on their own time, in both structured and unstructured
settings

8. I absolutely loved this article!
It was wonderful for me to read that someone else
values using the studio experience in the classroom. I
have had so many epiphanies while painting a picture
of writing a song—I really hope new students can
have the same opportunities that I had to do those
things. I know it may not be popular to use the arts
this heavily in a school, but I truly believe if it were
tested more, the results would speak for themselves—
students would be greatly improved in all kinds of
areas.

9. They Want to Learn How to
Think: Using Art to Enhance
Comprehension
“We die from lack of meaning”
- David Hickey
- This article begins with the quote above, and then offers the
question: without art, does life really have meaning?
- The article addresses the ways that art can be used to help
students comprehend different things, for example: reading
- Young students have a strong desire to learn about everything
around them, says the article
- The article was written by a team of teachers, one teaches 3rd
grade, one teaches art, and one is a professor of literacy education
- The spent several hours each week devoted solely to
“comprehension instruction,” or teaching how to comprehend.

10. They Want to Learn How to
Think: Using Art to Enhance
Comprehension
- The students taught about comprehension were
of lower socio-economic status
- Despite that, the results proved that these
students “perform well beyond conventional
academic expectations in response to meaningful
comprehension instruction. They do not lack
intelligence or originality.”
- They began to teach the students about different
concepts using visually appealing tools, such as
pictures of models
- Soon after, the students began to show vast
improvements in understanding

11. “We hope to see art and its attending benefits for
reasoning play an essential role in the elementary
literacy curriculum of the future,” said the authors
of the article, and I couldn’t agree more. It was
wonderful for me to find an article that had a great
example of how to use are in different areas to increase
understanding. This article seemed to tie my other two article
together and show that, perhaps, there is hope for keeping art
in the schools—if not in a typical way, at least in a new and
contemporary way.

12. Conclusion
Art is too important to be neglected from the
modern day classroom. The educational
value
of art has yet to be fully discovered, but what
we
do know is this: Art makes a huge
difference in the way a child learns.
Removing it from the classroom
would be a tremendous mistake. We
should, instead, think of new and
creative ways to integrate it throughout the whole
school. I would not have made it through all my
years of schooling if it hadn’t been for art.
I hope everyone gets the same opportunities
for a creative outlet that I did.

13. References
Barton, Jim, Donna Sawyer, and Cindy Swanson. 2007. "They
Want to Learn How to Think: Using Art to Enhance
Comprehension." Language Arts 85, no. 2: 125-133. Teacher
Reference Center, EBSCOhost (accessed June 19, 2009).
Eisner, E. (2009, March). What Education Can Learn from the
Arts. Art Education, 62(2), 6-7. Retrieved June 12, 2009, from
Teacher Reference Center database.
Tarr, P. (2008, July). New Visions: Art for Early Childhood. Art
Education, 61(4), 19-24. Retrieved June 18, 2009, from
Teacher Reference Center database.