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Social Studies Research and Practice www.socstrp.org

Volume 7, Number 2 5

Teacher Candidate Attitude Changes After Experiencing an Arts-Integrated Unit on Africa

Audrey C. Rule Sarah E. Montgomery

Denise A. Tallakson Mary K. Stichter Allison Barness Katie M. Decker

University of Northern Iowa

This study of 65 elementary school teacher candidates enrolled in social studies methods classes examined attitudes toward currently contentious curriculum issues before and after participation in a practicum experience teaching an arts-integrated unit on Africa. These curriculum issues included arts-integrated project-based learning versus narrower skill-based lessons; the importance of creativity, leadership, organizational, and affective skills; and student-centered versus teacher-centered instruction. Attitudes were measured by teacher candidates placing themselves on each of ten continuums between endpoints representing opposing curriculum approaches and responding to open-ended questions. Statistically significant pre-post differences with medium effect sizes occurred on three of the continuums indicating that teacher candidates now placed greater value on arts-integrated curricula to teach social studies content; recognized that choice motivates students; and expressed more enjoyment of planning complex, long-term, student-centered projects. They recognized deep conceptual learning and engagement of elementary school students during the student-centered arts-integrated lessons but noted that the time and effort of complex project work were barriers to implementation. Social studies methods teachers need to involve teacher candidates in field experiences that offer authentic arts- integrated student-centered project work to allow them to adopt curriculum stances not experienced as elementary school students. Keywords: arts-integration, attitudes, teacher candidates, Africa, masks, social studies, project-based, student centered, curriculum

Introduction The arts are important. In diverse cultures around the world, painting, sculpture,

drama, poetry, and music have long served as integral parts of humanity, offering an avenue for people to communicate emotionally, sensually, intellectually, or symbolically their understandings of the truths of life. The arts, which have historically supported intercultural understanding, problem solving, creativity, and communication, have, as Phyllis Gelineau (2010, p.3) wrote, “described, defined, and deepened human experience.” Despite the centrality of the arts in society, art education continues to be increasingly marginalized in schools across the nation and replaced by skills-based instruction aimed at increasing standardized test scores in focused areas such as literacy and mathematics (Au, 2007; Boyle-Baise, Hsu, Johnson, Serriere, & Stewart, 2008; McMurrer, 2008). Considering the current educational landscape, it is crucial


Volume 7, Number 2 Page 16

that teacher educators promote and model arts integration in their courses, prompting teacher candidates to thoughtfully consider the ways in which the arts can both support and enhance their content-area teaching. Exploring Teacher Candidate Attitudes Toward Arts-Integration

The content area of social studies has the unique potential to utilize the arts to educate students in deeper, more meaningful ways on issues of diversity. By using the arts to teach content about places and people around the world, social studies can support students recognizing and appreciating rich cultural diversity (Rule & Montgomery, 2011). Student engagement in social studies content through the arts may even disrupt previously held stereotypes and, in turn, encourage students to become more tolerant global citizens.

Despite the creative potential of social studies education to emphasize global understanding and promote active citizenship by teaching content through the arts, social studies is often taught in traditional, textbook-centered ways (Ross, 1997, pp. 12-13). Regarding the unique potentiality of social studies education, Nel Noddings writes,

Constant care must be taken to prevent what so often happens in social studies courses – a steady deterioration into mindless memorization of facts… I have long believed that no subject in the school curriculum is more important than social studies because it involves us most directly in the study of our earth as the home of human activity and the effects of that activity on all life. It encourages us to think more deeply about the kinds of activity that may preserve both earth and life (in Thornton, 2005, p. viii-ix).

Unfortunately, many teacher candidates have experienced a fact-oriented approach to social studies and may lack an instructional vision for how arts-integrated social studies teaching can support student learning. Considering many teacher candidates’ experiences as learners, how might social studies methods classes impact students’ attitudes and even instructional stance towards teaching and learning in general, but especially social studies education?

This article explores teacher candidate attitudes toward arts integration, project-based instruction, and student-centered learning before and after participation in a semester-long arts-integrated unit on Africa. Teacher candidates in an elementary school social studies methods course experienced many arts-integrated lessons in the university classroom and created authentic papier-mâché masks of different African cultures before assisting, as part of a practicum experience, first and second graders in similar arts-integrated lessons related to Africa that included making papier-mâché masks. Research centered on the question, “How might this extended arts-integrated social studies field experience impact teacher candidates’ overall mindset towards teaching and learning, but specifically attitudes concerning the ability of social studies content to be taught through the arts?” To explore possible attitude changes, we developed a questionnaire presenting a series of continuums between major stances connected to these curriculum issues of arts integration, project-based instruction, and student-centered learning. We asked our teacher candidates to locate their viewpoints on these continuums before and after experiencing the instructional unit on Africa. We also asked them other open-ended questions about their understandings of why teachers do or do not utilize arts-integrated curricula and their factual knowledge of Africa along with some post-test



reflections of surprising aspects and effective components of the Africa units they experienced. These qualitative responses were then used to triangulate the results of the study.

Our state, Iowa, has recently adopted a new Core Curriculum that includes methods for delivery of skills and concepts that focus on project-based learning, arts integration, and creative problem-solving. Knowing that many schools within Iowa are currently using direct instruction, worksheet practice, and rote memorization for learning, we wondered if introducing teacher candidates to an arts-integrated unit on Africa might help them adopt a new instructional stance to assist them in becoming leaders in the new Core Curriculum at their future schools. Narrowing of the Curriculum and Exclusion of the Arts

Although arts education is recognized as a core part of the curriculum through federal mandates, it is being cut from many school programs because of shrinking finances and an emphasis on curriculum areas addressed by standardized testing (Hetland, Winner, Veenema, & Sheridan, 2007). Research indicates that students who engage in the arts actually perform better on standardized tests (Deasy, 2002; Ruppert, 2006). More importantly, other advantages of education in the arts exist, such as the ability to imagine, create, and adapt to new situations along with improving student self esteem, ability to care, and insight into other cultures (Goldberg, 2008). Narrow test-based accountability systems of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) do not match the academic goals desired by surveyed (Rothstein, Jacobson, & Wilder, 2008) public and elected representatives, which include – in addition to basic knowledge and skills - critical thinking, appreciation of the arts, social skills, physical and emotional health behaviors, and occupation-specific technical skills. In a Rand study (Hamilton, et al., 2007) of teachers and administrators, teachers noted that NCLB legislation had influenced their work positively by forcing them to improve their practices and align instruction with standards. However, they also admitted narrowing the curriculum to tested topics and expressed concern for high-achieving and creative students who now receive less attention. Frenzied Focus on Assessment

At many high-performing schools, such as one in California described by Merryl Goldberg (2008), students complete many worksheets at school and have weekly flashcards of science and social studies facts they must memorize. Students who are poor test-takers attend test preparation sessions during the school day to help them perform better on standardized tests. Richard Rothstein and others (2008) found that an accountability system based on testing with a fixed proficiency point led to excessive concentration on students with performances slightly below that point and ignored students above or far below it. The Education Policy Research Unit (Mathis, 2006) focused on determining how well “adequate yearly progress” was working to identify the academic performance of schools, finding that the 100% proficient goal was unrealistic, there was no reliable evidence that adequate yearly progress was an indicator of academic performance, and it resulted in a narrowed curriculum. The current assessment-oriented curriculum focuses on what is easy to assess – content facts and specific measurable skills – with creativity, attitudes, and organizational skills that are more difficult to assess being largely ignored. This situation strongly influenced the attitudes of our teacher candidates, resulting in their development of a teaching approach filtered through a NCLB lens, as they had



completed their own primary and secondary schooling in this educational environment. Because they had not experienced multi-week student-centered arts-integrated project work themselves, they had difficulty valuing it and conceptualizing how it might be effectively implemented into content areas such as social studies (Britzman, 2003; Lortie, 1975).

Method Study Participants

Sixty-five teacher candidates (59 female, 6 male) enrolled in three sections of an elementary school social studies methods course taught by two different instructors at the University of Northern Iowa participated in the study. The teacher candidates were predominately traditional-aged and Caucasian. Permission was obtained from the University Human Subjects Committee to conduct the study and from participants for their data to be included. The Project

Over the course of a semester, the teacher candidates in these three elementary school social studies methods classes participated in an arts-integrated unit on Africa. In each of the classes, six groups, comprised of three to four students, studied a specific cultural group in Africa such as the Bembe, Bamana, Chokwe, Luba, Maasai, or Yoruba. The teacher candidate groups were randomly assigned to one of these African cultural groups and conducted collaborative research on the traditions, artwork, food, clothing, religion, and architecture of their assigned culture in addition to the landforms, native animals, and vegetation of the group’s geographic region. Next, the students studied the characteristics and symbolism of the masks of each of these cultural groups, prior to creating their own papier-mâché masks of the cultural group, making sure to include five of approximately ten characteristics of that cultural group (for example, traditional colors used; shape of eyes, nose, mouth, ears; types of scarification pattern; added decoration /ornamentation; and mask shape/style). Upon finishing their masks the teacher candidates documented information learned about the African cultural group by gluing onto the inside surface of the mask five images related to that culture, such as a map of Africa with the country in which the people lived highlighted in color, drawings of native animals or vegetation, images of landforms, food, housing, clothing, daily activities, or artwork characteristic of the culture.

The teacher candidates in each of the three classes collaborated with three primary grade classes at the university laboratory school. This school was a prekindergarten-12 facility located on the edge of the university campus. The location of the school was ideal for this project because pre-service teachers could easily walk the three blocks to the school building during the time between their 50-minute university classes, allowing field experiences within the confines of their scheduled methods course. Of additional importance, the school’s educational philosophy featured a “high commitment to diversity; the instructional program reflects an array of multicultural opportunities and activities” (Malcolm Price Laboratory School, 2011, para. 3). At the time of the study, the population of the school was composed of about 18% students of cultural or ethnic minority groups. The three classrooms included students with a large range of intellectual ability and special needs including students with autism, learning disabilities, emotional issues, and those who were identified as gifted. One of the



three classrooms was multiage and all classrooms focused on student-centered project work throughout the school year.

The groups of teacher candidates were partnered with small groups of students to whom they taught lessons about their assigned African cultural group. Subsequently they helped students create their own individual masks characteristic of the cultural group being studied. Besides tapping into creative thinking skills of students during mask-making activities, the Africa unit addressed critical and higher-order thinking skills. Elementary school students engaged in logical and abstract reasoning, for example, as they explained the various features of the masks they made such as a small mouth with large ears to symbolize the cultural rule that the mask-wearer should listen quietly to elders. First and second graders practiced classification skills as they sorted sets of cards made by pre-service teachers. These cards displayed images related to the fauna, flora, and landforms of the natural environment, foods, clothing, artifacts, and housing of the African ethnic group they were studying. The sorting schemes included using Venn diagrams, complementary groups, thematic classes, and hierarchical systems of groups and subgroups. Afterward, they considered and discussed all of the factors that influenced the culture of their people. To improve their inference-making skills, these young students asked yes-no questions about an object related to an African culture or region in a pre-service teacher-made “mystery box” and made inferences to determine its identity. Additionally, elementary school students learned to prioritize ideas when they met with pre-service teachers to plan the aspects of the African culture they had studied that they would present to the class during the final celebration.

In the elementary school classrooms, the teachers conducted many other lessons during the extended unit. They facilitated art-integrated lessons in the following areas.

(1) Initial map work to integrate science and geography along with practicing spatial skills. Students located Africa on a world political map, named surrounding bodies of water, identified climate zones on a climate map, and described topography on a physical geography map.

(2) Classroom museum of artifacts to practice science and social studies process skills while practicing spatial arrangement of artifacts, labeling and signage. Students used observations and inferences to classify items into categories. They made hypotheses of origin and use, accessing various recourses to confirm or expand ideas.

(3) African musical instruments for science integration with the arts. Students examined authentic African musical instruments, constructed string and percussion instruments, decorating them with African motifs, and demonstrated how sound results from vibration.

(4) Cardboard model of an African rondavel dwelling to utilize science, engineering, and math skills and to integrate art by painting the building in the style of the Ndebele people. Students engaged in problem-solving of how to make a round rondavel “classroom playhouse” from rectangular appliance boxes and how to attach the conical roof (they eventually punched holes and tied it with cord).



(5) African-style weavings to practice mathematical patterns and explore fiber arts. Students created a variety of bookmarks, placemats and baskets using yarns, cords, and paper strips. They made repeating patterns with color and identified them as ABAB or ABC, etc.

(6) Caftan costume with bead collar. Students created symmetrical patterns of beads on a wallpaper collar, used authentic Adinkra stamps to make African patterns on broadcloth and then measured, cut, draped, and fastened the cloth to make a garment.

(7) Storytelling and puppet drama. Students recalled story events and dramatized them with felt finger puppets they made themselves. They composed new Anansi the spider folktales.

A more detailed description of the mask-making aspects of the project can be found in another study that examined teacher candidates’ perceptions of mask-making (Rule & Montgomery, 2011) and a practice article that examined the mask-making process (Montgomery & Rule, 2011). The Attitude Questionnaire

A questionnaire was developed to measure teacher candidate attitudes toward currently contentious curriculum themes being discussed in the professional literature that affect social studies teaching. This study sought to determine if these attitudes might change through an arts-integrated social studies practicum experience. The questionnaire was improved through expert review by six education professors and through pilot testing by education faculty members who agreed that these were important controversial curriculum issues. All of the curriculum concepts addressed here concerned issues that have repeatedly surfaced during the authors’ conversations with teacher candidates, colleagues, and faculty at elementary schools.

These foundational themes of the study are described and connected here to specific questions from the questionnaire, shown in Table 1. First, movement toward, or away from, project-based/problem-based learning is occurring in many schools. Long-term projects support problem solving, creativity, and big/complex idea development (Doppelt, 2009; Garran, 2008) in contrast to shorter, skill-based lessons that target narrower objectives. Whereas long-term, integrated projects tend to foster creativity, affective, or organizational skills, academic skill-based lessons typically emphasize procedures or facts (Baines & Slutsky, 2009; Zhbanova, Rule, Montgomery, & Nielsen, 2010). In Table 1, this issue is presented in questions, 1, 3, 6, 8, and 10. Another important theme is student-centered instruction (Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2008) emphasizing student choice, interests, and strengths (Albrecht, Haapanen, Hall, & Mantonya, 2009; Hargrove, 2005) with differentiation/ individualization of instruction contrasted with all students being expected to meet the same level of learning goals through one method of instruction. This theme is addressed in questions 2, 5, 7, and 10. The current emphasis on standardized test scores (Center on Education Policy, 2009; Kober, Ayazi, & Davaney-Graham, 2009) rather than authentic, difficult-to-assess leadership, organizational, creative, and affective skills, is based upon an inferred connection to later life success. These ideas are assessed in questions 1, 8, and 9. The importance of arts integration (Goldberg, 2008; Wolk, 2008), compared to a focus on isolated subject-based



instruction, is reflected in question 4. The next section presents the design of the study in which this questionnaire was used.

Table 1 Questionnaire Endpoint Statements

Left endpoint statement Right endpoint statement

1. Logic, facts, and knowledge of the way things work are the most important concepts and skills in the curriculum.

*Creativity, finding new ways to solve problems, and generating one’s own projects are the most important concepts and skills to be learned.

2. *Students should be provided with choice of how different areas of the curriculum are approached or studied.

The teacher needs to determine the ways curriculum will be addressed so that all students experience the same approaches.

3. *A school program that focuses on project work meets the standards and helps students perform well on standardized tests.

A program with a lot of specific exercises and practice addressing skills and content information meets the standards and helps students perform well on standardized tests.

4. Because instructional time is short, teachers’ main focus should be on the reading, mathematics, science, and social studies curriculum.

* Integration of the curriculum with the arts addresses important learning areas not targeted in other ways.

5. Schools should strive to make progress towards student achievement results until every child is 100 percent proficient.

* Schools should recognize that students are unique and cannot be expected to meet the same levels of performance in all areas.

6. *Students should address standards over time through big projects that have performance-based assessments.

Student schoolwork activities should focus on specific skills from the standards with exercises that can be easily assessed.

7. *Students’ strengths should be identified and encouraged through work that addresses and teaches through those areas of interest and strength.

Areas in which a student performs poorly need to be identified and targeted with instruction and exercises focusing on those areas so that the student can improve those deficit skills.

8. *Students who engage in self-directed long-term projects will have the authentic skills to succeed after graduation.

If students learn facts and skills to perform well on standardized tests, those students will most likely succeed after graduation.

9. All instructional activities need to directly address standards and content that will be formally assessed.

* Because many important concepts cannot easily be assessed, long-term authentic project work guided by the student is of primary importance.

10. *I enjoy planning long complex projects with a lot of student choice.

I enjoy making single-lesson activities that all students complete in the same way.



Note. The endpoint statement most student-centered and long-term project-based is starred (*). Asterisks were not included on the original questionnaire.

Identical attitude questionnaires were administered to the study participants at the

beginning and at the end of the semester to determine changes in teacher candidate attitudes before and after experiencing an arts-integrated social studies unit on Africa. Statements were presented to teacher candidates in random order with some statement endpoints reversed to ensure that teacher candidates would not interpret the questions as soliciting a particular stance on the issues. Each question provided two contrasting perspectives on curriculum philosophy or practice; the participant was asked to mark an “x” in one of the seven spaces separating these endpoints to indicate where he/she stood on the continuum between the ideas. Data originally collected from “reversed” questions was adjusted for data analysis, so that all statement endpoints showed the most desired outcome from the perspective of being student-centered and promoting complex, creative, integrated project-work at the rightmost endpoint. The leftmost endpoint received a score of “1,” the next increment a score of “2,” then “3”; a score of “4” for the midpoint between the two statements, the next two segments “5,” and “6” respectively, and the final endpoint receiving a score of “7.” For final data presentation here, the questions were re-ordered differently from the original questionnaire to show the statements with the most change first and to present them all in a non-reversed way. Additional Pre-test and Post-test Questions

Teacher candidates also were asked to form a written response to the following additional pre-test and post-test questions. They answered these questions at the same times that they took the attitude survey. The answers to these questions provided qualitative data that supplemented and triangulated the findings of the questions on the attitude survey. Responses to these questions were compiled and sorted into categories using a spreadsheet. The questions were the following: (1) Some teachers are no longer teaching long-term, arts-integrated units in Social Studies.

What are the reasons arts-integrated units are not taught now, the benefits of teaching an arts-integrated unit, and your concerns (if any) about teachers not teaching arts-integrated units?

(2) Tell facts you now know about Africa. Results and Discussion

Teacher Candidate Attitude Changes A paired two-tailed t-test was conducted on the compiled student pre-test and post-test

responses to the ten questions, which had been adjusted for reversals. The p-value was <0.001, indicating a significant difference between the responses overall with a small effect size (Cohen’s d = 0.19). The difference between the overall pre-test mean and post-test mean, 4.8 and 5.1, respectively, shows an overall modest but positive trend in attitude toward arts-integrated project-based, student-centered learning. Table 2 shows the location of teacher candidate attitudes on the attitude continuums for the prompts that showed significant changes. Note that one end of the continuum is “1”, neutral is “4”, and the other end of the continuum is “7”. The mean scores ranged from 3.9 (just a shy of the neutral midpoint) to 6.0,



well into the area of arts integration and project work. Although the mean post-test score compared to the mean pre-test score showed movement in the “positive” direction for nine of the ten attitude continuums, only three of these separate measures were statistically significant.

Student attitudes showed the most movement (with a medium effect size) toward recognizing that an arts-integrated curriculum could actually address standards and teach students social studies content, rather than being a fun “fluff” activity. During the implementation of the project, teacher candidates expressed surprise at how much the students learned about Africa through the activities (Rule & Montgomery, 2011). Another area of significant growth (a medium effect size) indicating a student-centered mindset was the recognition that students appreciate and are motivated by choice in their work (Zhbanova, et al., 2010). The third statistically significant change in attitude (with a medium effect size) was toward enjoyment of planning complex, long-term, student-centered projects that were designed to allow significant student choice.

These statistically significant attitude shifts show the potential transformation of teacher candidates’ beliefs about teaching and curriculum through participation in an arts-integrated social studies field experience. While such field experiences can positively affect teacher candidates’ later instructional approaches across various subject areas, these findings suggest the potential for teacher candidates to adopt more creative, open, student-centered approaches to social studies education, which may combat the focus on traditional methods and overall current marginalization of the discipline.

Table 2 Significant Pre-test to Post-test Attitude Changes of Teacher Candidates

Statement at endpoint of

continuum with a score of “1”

Statement at endpoint of

continuum with a score of “7”

Mean pre-test score

(SD)

Mean post-test score

(SD)

Paired two-tailed t-test

Cohen’s d effect

size1

A program with a lot of specific exercises and practice addressing skills and content information meets the standards and helps students perform well on standardized tests.

A school program that focuses on project work meets the standards and helps students perform well on standardized tests.

3.9 (1.5) 4.6 (1.7) p = 0.008 significantly different

d = 0.45 medium effect size

The teacher needs to determine the ways curriculum will be addressed

Students should be provided with choice of how different areas of





so that all students experience the same approaches.

the curriculum are approached or studied

I enjoy making single-lesson activities that all students complete in the same way.

I enjoy planning long, complex projects with a lot of student choice.



Teacher Candidate Reflections on the Arts Integrated Unit

As shown in Table 3, teacher candidates continued to identify time constraints as a primary barrier to teaching arts-integrated lessons in their classrooms. Teacher candidates expressed more ideas on the post-test; they had experienced the arts-integrated Africa project and knew more of its challenges: extensive planning, additional costs or resources, increased effort, and associated mess.

Table 3 Pre-test and post-test responses telling reasons teacher candidates perceived that arts-integrated lessons are not taught in elementary school classrooms

Pre-test

Post-test Reason Arts-Integrated Lessons Not Taught

29 48 Projects are very time consuming in planning and implementation. 4 24 Money and supplies are needed and these costs prohibit the projects.

12 18 Instruction needs to focus on standards because of pressure from NCLB. 14 14 Concern that learning from projects will not show on standardized

assessments. 6 9 Lack of teacher interest or know-how. 9 8 Reading and math are the focus of instruction. 2 8 Arts-integrated projects require much effort. 0 6 Uncomfortable with messiness of projects. 0 5 Fear that classroom management skills will be needed. 3 4 Teachers don't have strong content knowledge and arts knowledge to

integrate effectively. 0 1 Storage of needed materials is a problem.

3 0 Difficult to assess integrated projects. 1 0 Art education is already part of curriculum.

83 145 Total Number of Reasons Reported

As shown in Table 4, teacher candidates provided a large number of responses regarding the benefits of arts-integrated lessons after experiencing the arts-integrated unit. Many teacher candidates remarked, during the lessons, how surprised they were that students



really understood and remembered facts about Africans. They recognized that arts integration can actually support deeper student learning and retention of content. It is important to note that prior to this long-term arts-integrated social studies project, no teacher candidates described a benefit of arts-integration as deep content learning and retention (line 2 of Table 4). Additionally, following the field experience, as shown in Table 3, teacher candidates recognized that arts integration supported students’ active learning, engagement, increased motivation, diverse ways of learning, and learning across several subject areas. Such findings reinforce earlier findings presented in Table 2 that teacher candidates now recognized that students could learn valuable content through project-based learning offering high levels of student choice and instructional differentiation. While greater creativity was noted, the focus of many teacher candidates’ responses regarding the benefits of arts integration was on the learning of content and engagement/motivation. These teacher candidates recognized how students enjoyed and learned at the same time, resulting in higher levels of student motivation. Last, the general increased engagement in learning noted here may not center solely on the elementary school students, but also serve as a reflection of how the teacher candidates felt more engaged in the activities and their own interest in learning the content presented through the arts.

Table 4 Pre-test and Post-test Responses Telling the Benefits of Arts-integrated Lessons

Pre-test

Post-test Benefit of Arts Integration

3 28 Hands-on, active learning

0 22 Deeper learning and retention of content 5 23 Fun, motivating and interesting for students and teacher 2 19 Multiple intelligences and ways of learning addressed 4 19 Integration of several subject areas

10 14 Creativity skills are practiced by students 4 8 Better understanding of concepts 3 7 Greater meaning for the students 0 6 Engagement is greater 2 5 Student-centered

33 151 Total Ideas

Overall, teacher candidates had more concerns on the post-test about teachers not

teaching arts-integrated units after experiencing the lessons, as indicated by the data in Table 5. Teacher candidates now recognized how the arts can help students learn content-rich material rather than detract from academic learning. On the pre-test, not one teacher candidate mentioned boredom or decreased student engagement could be a result of a lack of arts integration, but this was the second most frequently noted comment on the post-test. Such a finding shows how these teacher candidates were more convinced of the merits of arts



integration after they had experienced it themselves. Teacher candidates seemed to value arts learning more at the time of the post-test as seven remarked that little arts learning/teaching will occur and teacher laziness and lack of care for best instructional methods was a new concern.

Table 5 Pre-test and Post-test Responses Telling the Concerns Teacher Candidates have about Arts-integrated Lessons not being Taught

Pre-test

Post-test Category of Concerns about Teachers not Teaching Arts-Integrated Units

9 24 Amount of student learning and understanding will decrease

0 21 Boredom and lack of student engagement will result 10 21 Creative skills and expression will be lost by children 8 14 Rote knowledge will be the only learning 2 9 Little arts learning/teaching will occur 1 7 No integration of subjects and some content areas ignored 2 6 Students will not learn to think independently and problem-solve

0 6 Teacher laziness and lack of care for the best instructional methods is a concern

0 3 Motivation of students will decrease

32 111 Total Ideas

As illustrated in Table 6, on the post-test teacher candidates demonstrated an increased

knowledge base about Africa that they seemed to lack prior to the experience. This suggests that teacher candidates themselves experienced deeper learning and retention of content alongside the elementary school students they were teaching, which they noted in their responses as shown in Table 4. Teacher candidates were able to state more facts that they now knew about Africa on the post-test. On the pre-test, their first focus centered on problems of Africa and telling trivia about the climate, Nile River, and names of countries. On the post-test, there was a clear shift to recognition of the diversity of people, varied customs/lifestyles, and specific information about animals and ethnic groups. Teacher candidates were able to critically evaluate their prior notions of Africa and replace them with more specific, richer understandings of the diversity of environments, fauna, flora, cultural practices, languages, religions, foods, clothing styles, and housing of Africans. Disrupted stereotypes appeared on the post-test as students recognized their prior lack of knowledge of Africa. On the post-test, in addition to a reduction in trivia, responses regarding problems in Africa such as hunger, poverty, and disease decreased from 37 responses on the pre-test to 4 responses on the post-test, showing that they moved away from a deficit perspective. Teacher candidates’ knowledge base and areas of knowledge therefore expanded through the arts-integrated social studies unit on Africa.



Table 6 Facts about Africa Reported by Teacher Candidates

Pre-test

Post-test Reported Facts about Africa

27 59 Diversity of the people and their customs and lifestyles in Africa 8 41 Information about animals living in Africa

25 25 Africa is a continent, not a country. 15 24 Variations in environments, landscapes, and vegetation of Africa 2 23 Religions, ceremonies, beliefs of Africans 0 22 Facts about specific ethnic groups we studied 0 21 Disrupted stereotypes about Africa

0 8 Economics and natural resources 0 8 What foods the African peoples eat

13 6 Slavery, apartheid, human rights violations occurred in Africa 0 4 Crafts, arts, masks, beads, literature of Africans

37 4 Problems in Africa: Disease, poverty, hunger 18 0 Warm, dry climate in much of Africa; wet and dry seasons 14 0 The Longest river, Nile River is in Africa 10 0 Names and facts about countries in Africa 6 0 Location of Africa on the globe 3 0 History of Africa

178 245 Total Ideas

Conclusion

Prior to their engagement in an arts-integrated social studies field experience connected to a methods course, teacher candidates in this study seemed to overlook and even question the potential benefits of authentic, content-rich social studies learning through the arts. The teacher candidates, based on the findings of the attitude questionnaire in this study, were much more inclined to teach, and more comfortable with teaching, single lessons focused on particular skills that did not support differentiated instruction or elements of student choice, as shown as a national trend by many researchers (Au, 2007; Boyle-Baise, et al., 2008; McMurrer, 2008). Following an arts-rich experiential learning and teaching opportunity on Africa aimed at shifting their instructional stance, these teacher candidates demonstrated an attitude shift in their overall educational philosophy, especially in regards to social studies. Significant changes in teacher candidate’s attitudes included their belief that arts-rich project-based work could address standards and teach social studies concepts. The teacher candidates recognized that not only did elementary school student learning of social studies content occur, but their own deep content learning was enhanced as well. This supports prior research by Deasy (2002) and Ruppert (2006) reporting students involved with the arts perform well academically. Following the unit, instead of continuing to focus on surface-level trivia about Africa (e.g., the Nile River), teacher candidates demonstrated more complex understandings of the diversity of Africa, as well as disrupted stereotypes about Africa, contributing to their overall development as global



citizens. As noted by Goldberg (2008), exploring the arts of a people can bring insight into their culture. Teacher candidates’ probable deeper conceptual learning, paired with that of the elementary school students, supported their trust in using the arts to effectively teach social studies content.

Teacher candidates additionally demonstrated an attitude shift related to the importance of student choice and student-centered learning following their experience in the arts-integrated unit on Africa. This change was important to their overall instructional stance, especially in regards to social studies education. Instead of being exposed to social studies as a teacher-centered, text-based endless memorization of facts, both students and teacher candidates were immersed in an arts-rich learning experience involving choice and creative expression. These characteristics are especially important to creative and high achieving students whose needs are not met with fact and skill-focused instruction (Hamilton, et al., 2007). Noting the high levels of student enthusiasm and motivation throughout the field experience, teacher candidates recognized how the arts supported student engagement, provided student choice, and even sparked student interest in learning social studies content, as previously noted by Zhbanova et al. (2010). They experienced how students can learn social studies content effectively through the arts (Rule & Montgomery, 2011) and that student choice can be a powerful catalyst leading to deeper levels of social studies learning.

The findings from this study suggest that active engagement of teacher candidates in an arts-rich field experience in a social studies methods course might shift their overall instructional stance, but especially their stance towards teaching social studies. This study serves as an example of how an authentic arts integration experience can disrupt students’ experiences as learners and change their attitudes about effective ways to support deep conceptual learning. Instead of entering the field with a vision of social studies education centering on teacher-centered text-based social studies lessons from previous teacher role-models (Britzman, 2003; Lortie, 1975), teacher candidates experienced an alternative, and subsequently demonstrated a new appreciation for the power of incorporating the arts – especially high levels of student choice – in their social studies teaching.

Our study suggests that teacher candidates need to experience teaching and learning opportunities in social studies methods courses that model the benefits of arts integration, as well as elements of student choice. More research studies may help to define the effects of such experiences in social studies on teacher candidates and the elementary students they teach. Arts-integrated cultural activities may be a first step into shifting the attitudes of our future educators toward the unique potential of social studies education to support the learning and development of our children as global citizens. Having field opportunities for teacher candidates to work with elementary school students firsthand to see their excitement and learning during such an instructional unit is important. Host classrooms with teachers and administrators open to arts integration experiences are ideal. Having a university laboratory school (as in the situation described here) or a strong partnership with a student-centered local school greatly enhances the opportunities for modeling complex, creative, integrated project-work. Alternatively, teacher candidates could support the efforts of a community-based arts organization, a local arts-centered event, or a neighboring cultural center or museum with this



curriculum - thus working as active citizens in the community who advocate for rich arts-integrated social studies teaching and learning.

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Author Bios Audrey C. Rule is an Associate Professor of Elementary school Education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, Iowa. Her research interests include creativity, curriculum materials development, spatial skills, project based learning and enrichment/ gifted and talented education. E-mail: [email protected] Sarah E. Montgomery is an Assistant Professor of Elementary school Education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, Iowa.

mailto:[email protected]



Her research interests focus on social studies education, particularly the ways in which digital technology can be used to support democratic education. Denise A. Tallakson is an Instructor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, teaching “Expressive Arts in the Elementary School”, and teaching first/second grades at Price Laboratory School at the University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, Iowa. She specializes in student-centered subject-integrated project work and arts-integration. Mary K. Stichter is a first/second grade instructor at Malcolm Price Laboratory School at the University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, Iowa. She specializes in inquiry-based literacy and science instruction and integrated project work. Allison Barness is an Instructor at Malcolm Price Laboratory School at the University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, Iowa. She teaches her first graders through project-based and inquiry-based instruction. She specializes in Early Childhood Education and Literacy Instruction. Katie M. Decker is a first/second grade instructor at Malcolm Price Laboratory School at the University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, Iowa. She specializes in literacy education, CEESTEM (Center for Early Education in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), and integrating Spanish in the elementary school classroom.

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