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Artists pair with early childhood teachers to find success in STEM education

Jan 15, 2018
Special note:
Akua Kouyate-Tate of the Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts will present at this week’s webinar on January 17, 2018 at 4 p.m. EST. Register here.

Did you know that the performing arts can improve performance in math? So says the educators at the Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts. A professional development program at the foundation’s education arm teams classroom teachers with specially trained performing artists to blend arts education with math lessons. The young children exposed to this hybrid curriculum have tallied much-improved math scores. To find out more about the program, we contacted Akua F. Kouyate-Tate, vice president, education, for Wolf Trap, which is based in Vienna, Virginia:

Q: Why did Wolf Trap redesign its arts-integrated professional development to concentrate on nurturing STEM skills in young children?

A: Wolf Trap’s flagship education program, Wolf Trap Institute for Early Learning Through the Arts, continually advances our work to align with the latest guidelines and recommendations for developmentally appropriate practices in early childhood education.

Rather than redesign, we have expanded our program to incorporate STEM learning through the arts, as our methods of professional development and teaching and learning through the arts are inherently positioned to expand early childhood educators’ instructional practice and tools for teaching STEM subjects. Our decision to incorporate STEM learning in our program started about 12 years ago.

In 2005, we were studying an arts-integrated program focusing on language and literacy skills across Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia. The children who participated in this program showed positive results in language and literacy skills development.

However, we were pleasantly surprised that they demonstrated higher scores in logic and math — an outcome we did not anticipate. Research confirms that young children can learn STEM concepts, as the brain is very receptive to learning math and logic between the ages of 1 and 4. Other research confirmed that early mathematics learning is the single greatest predictor of later learning in not only math but also other areas, including reading.

We saw the opportunity to learn more about the power of arts-integrated math teaching specifically. This is when we began intentionally developing performing arts content and strategies as an approach to teaching math content and skills.

In 2010, the U.S. Department of Education awarded Wolf Trap a four-year grant to research and disseminate our Early Childhood STEM Learning Through the Arts (Early STEM/Arts) model program. Early STEM/Arts adapted Wolf Trap Institute’s established model for teacher professional development to create and deliver an innovative approach of arts-integrated learning of STEM concepts with a specific focus on math.

The results of the four-year study indicated that when teachers applied active, multi-sensory, arts-integrated strategies in math instructional techniques, children earned significantly higher scores on a standardized mathematics test. In fact, the gains were equivalent to 1.3 additional months, or 26 additional days, of learning for students whose teachers participated in the program.

Q: What is the link between the arts and math?

A: Content and concepts of math learning are also applied in arts learning. Consider the pattern, which is a critical component of math learning for young children. Patterns are also concepts in music and dance. Wolf Trap’s arts-integrated approach combines content and skills from the arts, including singing, dancing, role-playing and storytelling, with math learning content and concepts as well as those of other core subjects such as language, literacy and science.

Additionally, the skills children need to succeed in STEM — problem-solving, creativity and collaboration — are intrinsic to arts-integrated learning.

Q: Explain how artists and early childhood teachers are trained together at your institute.

A: We have customized a professional development model that pairs educators with professional teaching artists — musicians, dancers, actors and puppeteers — to train through classroom residencies.

To prepare teaching artists for classroom residencies, they receive training from Wolf Trap in early childhood (EC) development and developmentally appropriate practice, along with receiving information and resources about EC curriculum approaches and national and local standards.

Our teaching artists then are taught how to apply performing arts skills and techniques to support student learning and how to guide early childhood educators to integrate the arts into their instructional practice.

Q: What do the artist-teacher teams then bring to the classroom, and how do they transmit their lessons to their students?

A: The centerpiece of Wolf Trap’s program is the classroom residency. In a residency, a teaching artist partners with an educator to plan and implement lessons in the classroom. Each lesson is designed and customized to meet the goals the teacher has for her students as well as the professional development goals identified for the teacher.

The teacher is able to see the application of arts integration in her own classroom and practice using the strategies with the support of the teaching artist. Over the course of the residency, teachers learn to integrate the arts into daily instruction independently and long after they’ve completed the residency with us.

Q:  Has this program been evaluated? What results have been found?

A: Independent research of the Wolf Trap model, research from the arts education and early childhood fields, and Wolf Trap Institute’s over 35 years of experience, indicate that the infusion of arts integration strategies into curriculum content provides powerful teaching tools that enhance all areas of development including science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM skills; language and literacy; social/emotional growth; as well as 21st century skills that I mentioned before: critical thinking and problem-solving, communication, collaboration and creativity.

Q: How can other early childhood teachers integrate such lessons into their curriculum?

A: Wolf Trap offers an online community of practice for educators: education.wolftrap.org. This is a login-based website, so it requires registering an account, however, it’s free to join the site, and signing up is quick and easy.

The site provides content and resources including video tutorials, audio clips, lesson plans and forums. Teachers can access the site and make use of these resources on their own, whether they have or have not yet participated in Wolf Trap programs.

It was important to us to make our materials accessible to a wide range of teachers to use and modify as they need.

Q: Is there anything else you would like to share about this program?

A: STEM industry employers continually stress that they need employees who are creative, can think outside of the box and persist through problems to find solutions.

However, schools feel pressure to have students perform on math and literacy assessments. So, the question is: How can we tap into children’s natural curiosity and build on it, while also teaching important curriculum topics and skills?

With arts-integration it is not an either/or approach. When teachers utilize the arts to teach subjects such as math or science, they fuel students’ critical thinking skills, and the students become invested and excited about their learning. Their creativity flourishes.

We know as fact that when teachers engage children in active, multi-sensory learning through the arts, they can adapt their instruction to support various learning modalities, higher-level thinking and 21st century skills development. This happens for young children in the EC classroom.

We’ve seen through decades of practice and research that the performing arts have a tremendous impact on children’s learning. By ensuring that children’s first STEM-learning experiences are effective and compelling, the arts can foster children’s excitement and cultivate their natural curiosity about STEM.

 

 

By Rob Evans 01 Nov, 2023
by Heather Sherman, Director of STEMx The 2023 STEM Innovation Forum: Activating Collaborations to Advance an Inclusive STEM Workforce was a success! Through our collaboration with STEMconnector and Million Women Mentors, we convened 160 leaders from industry, government, non-profit organizations, and education institutions from all over the United States to discuss strategies and best practices to support the STEM workforce. We were honored to host a variety of dynamic speakers including: Jared Polis, Governor of Colorado Brynt Parmeter, Chief Talent Management Officer, U.S. Department of Defense Dr. Athina Kanioura, Executive Vice President, Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer, PepsiCo and Dr. Lisa Hinkelman, Founder and CEO of Ruling Our eXperiences (RoX). We extend our gratitude to our panelists, Learning Session speakers, and participants who joined us in Denver. Broadening participation We set out share information on trends in STEM education and workforce development, with an emphasis on broadening participation in STEM careers. Resources from sessions highlighting strategies for broadening participation are linked below: DoD STEM: Developing a STEM Workforce to Support the National Security Mission Priming the Pump for High Demand STEM Careers STEM Workforce Readiness for Teen Girls: “If She Can See It, She Can Be It” Driving change Another goal of the forum was to feature high impact strategies, programs and solutions that are driving change, and STEMx members from LASTEM , the PAST Foundation and MBRT showed how they are engaging youth and building career awareness through their workforce programs. Emerging technologies We looked towards the future to better understand how emerging technologies will change the world and the ways we must prepare STEM talent for jobs in logistics, artificial intelligence, research safety , bioenergy , and renewable technologies. Chevron‘s sponsored panel, “Cultivating the Talent to Drive the Innovation and Technologies for Ever-Cleaner Energy” was a rich discussion featuring experts from Chevron, Project Lead the Way and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Dr. Jamie Vernon, Executive Director, and CEO, Sigma Xi Society was a fantastic moderator for this discussion. Next steps We have linked event resources including videos, slide decks and collateral on the event landing page . The event photo gallery is located there as well. If you attended, please complete our 30 second event survey . Five lucky winners will be selected at random to receive a Forum water bottle! More importantly, your feedback matters to us. If you did not attend, mark your calendar for next fall - we’re looking to make next year even bigger! If you are interested in hosting in your state, or have thoughts about compelling content that we should include, please reach out to Heather Sherman .
By Rob Evans 03 Oct, 2023
Join us for The STEM Innovation Forum: Activating Collaborations to Advance an Inclusive STEM Workforce
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