Different Ways of Knowing - The Galef Institute

The Different Ways of Knowing Arts Integration Framework™ Accelerates Achievement for All Students and Student Groups

Our approach to bolstering student success for all children and heterogeneous groups through and with the arts is supported by a body of research in a variety of disciplines and perspectives on teaching and learning. New research over the past few decades indicates that the arts are as much a form of intelligence as the development of literacy and mathematical skills. The research indicates that the arts help students:

Tap prior knowledge. All learners approach novel situations or new learning tasks with their rich knowledge base (intellectual, social, emotional, and practical knowledge domains). But schools typically do not encourage nontraditional learners to build on what they already know. These learners thrive in an arts-rich and supportive environment that begins with and builds on student strengths, rather than continually reinforce what they don’t know.
Gain much-needed opportunities for real-life learning. Nontraditional learners benefit from classroom experiences that reflect real life rather than those that narrow experience to what can be learned from the chapter of a textbook. Real-life projects and arts-infused learning provides these students with curious moments, unusual opportunities, interesting projects, and tough problems to solve.
Practice important habits of mind. Nontraditional learners use the arts to enhance their abilities to connect different lines of inquiry to each other, so that learning events end not only with the question, “What did you learn?” but also “What will you learn next?”
Be perceived differently by their teachers. The arts help expand the views of educators about what can and should take place in the classroom and unlock teachers’ beliefs about what students can accomplish.
Learn with and from each other. Nontraditional learners, like all learners, work best in collaboration with others, when they are not isolated, but are part of a community of learners that invites dialogue, exchange, and project negotiations.

Integrating the Arts in the Curriculum

The Arts Integration Framework's strategies incorporate the performing arts (music, dance/movement, drama), visual arts, literary arts, and media arts (film, television, and video). Each art form brings with it a set of skills and possibilities that provides students different ways to understand themselves and the world around them.

In the Different Ways of Knowing classroom, the use of arts-in-learning strategies increases content learning—math, science, social studies/history, and English/language arts—in three distinct ways: accessing and assessing prior knowledge; deepening learning and higher-order thinking using metaphor and analogy; representing new knowledge using multiple symbol systems through products of learning

Accessing and Assessing Prior Knowledge
A distinguishing feature of the use of the arts in the Different Ways of Knowing classroom is in helping students call to mind their previous knowledge and understanding of a subject. When the arts are used in this way, more students become actively engaged in the lesson. When used as a “hook” in learning, the arts provide more students a chance to actively participate, thereby “leveling the playing field.” All students, not just the ones that are linguistically oriented, are given a chance to draw on their prior knowledge and use it to prepare for new learning. Different Ways of Knowing classrooms honor the information and understanding students bring to learning.

For example, students beginning a unit on multiples listened to a passage of music with identifiable beats. They identified the beat and clapped their hands on every beat. Then they divided into two groups. The first group clapped on every third beat, the second group clapped on every fourth beat. They clapped together on the twelfth, twenty-fourth, and thirty-sixth beat—experiencing the common multiples of three and four. In this way, music was utilized as a dramatic bridge to motivate students and help them understand how to find the common multiples of numbers.

The use of the arts also allows teachers to immediately assess how ready students are to learn new concepts and skills and assists teachers in developing appropriate instructional strategies that help students broaden and deepen their understanding. For example, in a language arts class, students selected a word, phrase, or concept from a chapter in their book. Forming first an image in their minds, they sketched it on large sticky notes. One student’s sketch of “three forks in a river” depicted three forks (utensils) standing upright in a river. The student’s literal translation of “three forks” demonstrated his unfamiliarity with traveling down a river and the limited connection of his personal experiences to the chapter’s content.

Deepening Learning and Higher-Order Thinking Using Metaphor and Analogy
Students who are given the opportunity to use the arts as part of new learning develop the patterns within the brain that help them retain the knowledge, deepen their understanding, and create a greater opportunity for them to apply the learning in new ways in the future. By creating metaphors and mental models, students are more likely to store the new learning within the brain. Different Ways of Knowing students are given many opportunities to create metaphors for their learning, to experience learning in several linguistic and non-linguistic forms, and to think about their learning in order to create mental models.

For example, in a social studies unit on Ancient Greece, students explored the strength of symbols as a means of expression and then created symbols to represent their personal interpretations of an aspect of Greek civilization (e.g., aesthetics, city-states, mythology/religion, philosophy). Students first selected, and then reviewed what they learned about, an area of Greek civilization that most intrigued them. They then researched a variety of symbols in sources both modern (magazines, television, CDs) and ancient (pottery, coins, sculpture, architecture) and explored the specific meaning of the Greek symbols to Greek culture (the beauty of the human body, the supernatural perfection of the gods). After reviewing effective symbol-making techniques, students designed their personal symbols and then identified a short phrase or action word to describe it. Students then wrote a Greek myth using their symbols and their names in which the symbol played an essential role.

Representing New Knowledge Using Multiple Symbol Systems through Products of Learning
A common use of the arts in support of content learning is students’ demonstrations of what they have learned. In Different Ways of Knowing classrooms, students give oral presentations, draw pictures, create flow charts and diagrams, enact significant episodes from literature, dance a story, perform role-plays from historical events, and create videos to show what they know.

For example, students in a science class completed a unit about body systems with the creation of a multimedia marketing campaign designed to communicate the benefits of good nutrition and exercise to general health, fitness, and the body. Prior to designing their campaign, the students invited a marketing/advertising professional to speak to them about designing an effective marketing campaign, including print, television commercials, public service radio advertisements, how to “pitch” to a prospective client, and knowledge of the audience. Applying and analyzing the information they had heard, students in small groups designed representations of their points-of-view and understanding of the content in which they integrated the visual, literary, and media arts with dramatic arts to create original and compelling marketing campaigns that each group presented to their peers in formal presentations. All students participated in evaluating the demonstrations of learning using a rubric that included criteria such as use of the various art forms, understanding of content, and the quality of written work and persuasive arguments.

Arts in Support of Literacy

According to a recent compendium of arts research, “Research shows consistent positive associations between dramatic enactment and reading comprehension, oral story understanding, and written story understanding . . . Having enacted a story (as opposed to having the story read to them . . .) children are better able to retell the story, to recall more details, and to put the story’s elements in the correct sequence. Studies of older children show impacts of drama on reading skills, persuasive writing ability, narrative writing skills, and children’s self-conception as learner and readers” (James S. Catterall, “Research on Drama and Theater in Education,” in Critical Links: Learning in the Arts and Student Academic and Social Development, Arts Education Partnership, 2002). The Different Ways of Knowing classroom uses drama, the visual arts, music, and dance in this way to enhance reading and writing across the curriculum.

Different Ways of Knowing’s strategies and tools for engaging students through the arts in order to learn content and demonstrate knowledge are particularly effective for nontraditional learners—including disabled and ESL learners and high-poverty and minority students—for whom more of the standard approaches to teaching and learning will not work. These students have diverse learning styles, unique ways of mastering content, and special learning challenges that require strategies targeted to how they learn best.

The Continuum of Artistic Development™

Different Ways of Knowing teachers come to understand the function of the three-phase learning Continuum of Artistic Development—natural, creative, and artistic expression—that enables them to support learners in arts and content learning. These phases overlap as each student finds individual ways of creating.

|_________________________________|___________________________________|
Natural > Creative > Artistic

Natural Expression
During the natural phase of expression, students access content and conceptual knowledge through the arts based on their prior experience of one or more art forms that result in expressing content (i.e., geometric shapes with simple hand and arm movements or line drawings).

Creative Expression
In the creative expression phase, students move beyond the boundaries of natural expression to concentrate on the process of creative problem solving in which they explore the elements and principals of art forms in order to make more sophisticated conceptual connections through metaphors that apply and integrate knowledge and skills across multiple disciplines. Students focus on extending and deepening their understanding of content (e.g., more complex geometric shapes or social studies concepts such as relationships) and participating in the process of making original works of art.

Artistic Expression
In the artistic expression phase, learners develop a strong sense of their individuality, style, audience, and aesthetic judgment. They represent new knowledge symbolically that may also reflect historical and cultural contexts and an awareness of real-world situations that influence their artistic choices.
Below is an example of the artistic development continuum in the visual arts (Karolynne. Gee, Visual Arts as a Way of Knowing, Los Angeles: The Galef Institute/Stenhouse, 2000).

Below is an example of the artistic development continuum in the visual arts (Karolynne. Gee, Visual Arts as a Way of Knowing, Los Angeles: The Galef Institute/Stenhouse, 2000).

A Learning Continuum of Artistic Development

Artistic Phases	Characteristics	Drawing Examples
Natural Expression	Minimal formal instruction Students use prior knowledge and experiences
Creative Expression	Facilitated learning about the elements of art and principles of design Students develop and apply art skills and techniques in original works Students begin to reflect on their own expressions and the artwork of others
Artistic Expression	Students become aware of historical and cultural contexts and learn about making aesthetic judgments Students focus on mastery and personal style and on audience Students work to develop a high degree of artistic competence Students express and invent original approaches to making art Students understand the power of artistic expression

Bibliography

Catterall, J. S. 2002. “Research on drama and theater in education.” In Critical links: Learning in the arts and student academic and social development. Washington, D.C.: Arts Education Partnership.

Catterall, J. S. 1995. Different Ways of Knowing: 1991–94 longitudinal study of program effects on students and teachers. Los Angeles: UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies.

Gardner, H. 1983. Frames of mind: The theory of multiple intelligences. New York: Basic Books, Inc.

Gardner, H. 1993. Multiple intelligences: The theory in practice. New York: Basic Books, Inc.

Gardner, H. 1994. The arts and human development. New York: Basic Books, Inc.

Gee, K. 2000. Visual arts as a way of knowing. Los Angeles/York, ME: Galef Institute/Stenhouse Publishers.

Gilligan, C. 1983. In a different voice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Jenkins, J. F. 1969. A foundation course in art for young adolescents. Art Education, 22 (1): 32–34.

Sarason, S. 1999. Teaching as a performing art. New York: Teachers College Press.

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