The Benefits of Integrating the Visual & Performing Arts with Academic Curricula for Students with Special

Needs
Tehya Baxter, M.Ed.
INFORMATION FOR TEACHERS OF DIVERSE CLASSROOMS JULY 2013

The Arts in the Classroom

For decades, research has documented the value of the arts in education. Higher-order thinking, creativity, persistence, active engagement, critical thinking, communication, and self-awareness have all been extensively documented as perceived benefits of integrating the arts into academic classrooms (Gullat 2007). With the national emphasis on high-stakes standardized testing, arts programs have become the first to lose funding during budget cuts. However, the irony lies in the elimination of the very programs that have been proven to better students academic achievement. A misinformed stereotype links the arts with frivolous fun, ignoring the wellsupported claims of the myriad ways that art benefits students socially, emotionally, and academically. For students with special needs, integrating art into the academic curricula can be especially powerful. The visual and performing arts provide unique opportunities through which teachers can assess understanding of academic concepts, motivate and engage learners who frequently disengage in whole-class activities, and offer a more openended form of communication and self-expression. For students who have learning, behavioral, or emotional disabilities, integrating the arts into IEP goals can be the key to student success.

The arts allow differentiated instruction by:

Offering alternative assessment Motivating and engaging learners

Issue Date

Providing a tool for communication

A diverse fourth grade class illustrated their personal silhouettes and wrote acrostic poems using their names, providing an outlet for both verbal and nonverbal creative expression and communication.

Using the Arts as Alternative Assessment

When standardized paper-andpencil tests do not present an accurate picture of what a student knows, or when a student is not capable of taking such tests, integrating the arts into the classroom can provide another way to document and check students content understanding. In an online survey of 139 classroom teachers working in K12 inclusive schools in Arizona and California, researchers found that most elementary teachers believed that they could effectively teach and grade students with special needs using modified instruction, including assessment (Kurth 2012). A classroom teacher and Visual and Performing Arts Methods professor in the Teacher Preparation program at the

University of California, San Diego (UCSD) remembered her experiences with a fifth grade student with severe learning disabilities during an interview. He had a really hard time with any kind of reading or any kind of writing, but he was really into drawing and that became a way that he was able to communicate his understanding about what was going on. It was a really good pre-writing activity so he could draw his ideas before he went to try to write about them. He could use drawing for reading comprehension to show how he was making sense of what he was reading. Rather than confining this student to standard forms of assessment, this teacher was able to allow her student to express his understanding in a way that made sense to him, a way that simultaneously allowed him to shape his classroom identity not as the kid who couldnt read but as the kid who was a really good artist.

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A fourth grade student (A.M.) with severe learning disabilities impacting her processing in reading and writing was able to express her science content understanding through conversation and art projects requiring scientific observation. Even though A.M struggles to read the dense situational descriptions of each question on district-mandated science benchmark standardized tests, participation in arts-related activities to reinforce the material helped her immensely. In a science unit that included no arts integration, A.M. scored 28%. However, after finishing a unit that integrated visual art, music, dance, and science, A.M. saw a 30-point increase, scoring 58%.

Using the Arts to Motivate and Engage All Learners

While traditional schooling thinks of students as passive recipients of knowledge, integrated arts education becomes inherently

engaging because lessons require active learning by doing. When interviewed, the director of two non-public schools in Southern California serving students with developmental disabilities spoke of the value of the daily use of the arts in her classrooms. Therapeutic approaches (like music and dance therapy) collect data and measure progress in goals not related to the arts that are

achieved by using the arts as a vehicle for learning and mastery. We do this because 1. It works based on the data we have collected and 2. The students really love it (particularly music) and are highly motivated to participate and attend. Students at her school sites have been proven to meet their IEP goals through arts curricula: dance,

drama, and music have all been used to support skill development in on task behavior, persistence in skill acquisition to mastery, and how to work as part of a group as well as work-related behavior, such as following directions, working independently, and appropriate social skills. She thinks, the arts can be a HUGE motivator for many children. Including them as part of an instructional approach or as reinforcement makes lots of sense.

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X.R., a fourth grade student with severe emotional disabilities, prone

to self-hurt, violent language, and refusal to participate in wholeclass instruction, remained calm, focused and on-task with no physical or verbal outbursts during a two-hour integrated arts and science lesson. Though X.R often obsesses over ink pens and ripping paper, he took pride in his artwork, asking the teacher for additional paper to fix a piece he had intentionally ripped, showing his motivation, engagement, and desire to produce his best work.

Using the Arts as a Tool for Communication

The visual and performing arts offer a bridge that allows students who cannot, will not, or dont want to communicate through conversational language an alternative way to express what they are thinking. Students learn to transform their feelings and ideas into an art form that they can share with others to convey a message (Gullat 2007). Research has seen improvement in communication skills based on student participation in artsrelated activities. A causal link was found between classroom drama programs and verbal skills, connecting not just to the readers theatre texts used in the initial lessons, but transferring to new reading material as well

(Gullat 2007). Many teachers have noted an increase in their students selfconfidence after participation in arts-integrated curricula (Glass 2010). Dance in particular was noted to help the communication skills of students with mildmoderate disabilities at two nonpublic schools in southern California. In addition to being fun, the primary gains [students] have had are in working as a group, social skills, self confidence, communication, and coordination. They love to dance! explained the director of the schools. For non-verbal students, the arts can be a powerful form of communication. A mother of a non-verbal student who communicates his love for music by smiling, laughing, and clapping, repeatedly mentioned in an interview that, Being

nonverbal doesnt mean my son cant communicate. Drawing, dancing, and playing instruments offer avenues of self-expression that do not require words.
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C.S., an autistic fourth-grader with severe processing disabilities, is in a moderate-severe special needs classroom, but is mainstreamed for science lessons. After listing words to describe observations of his live goldfish (which he named Casper) and participating in an ecosystem dance and rap over a week-long period, he used the vocabulary he had generated to write this haiku.

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Recommendations & Implications

Arts are a powerful tool to differentiate instruction for all learners in the classroom, but, used properly, they can become the key to success for students with special needs. By integrating arts into the academic curricula, classroom teachers have the opportunity to give a voice to students who may remain silent in a traditional classroom. Without making students feel different through modified or simplified exams, the arts provide the teacher with an alternative way to document and assess students understanding of content. Because of their multiple entry points, the arts open doors to universal access, giving a space for even nonverbal students to communicate. Students whose strengths lie in intelligences that are not traditionally favored in classrooms are given opportunities to express what they know. All art mediums also require active participation, providing the intrinsic motivation and engagement that many students may not find in other whole-class activities. By being given the option to choreograph a dance or paint a picture that expresses their understanding, students are allowed the option to express their understanding in a way that makes sense to them. As classroom teacher and Visual and Performing Arts Methods professor at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) explains, I think using a rubric, letting kids know what you need to show, and then giving them opportunities to show that not just through an exam or through an essay but through any of the arts is a really great way to differentiate instruction and it's a really good way for teachers to get more information about their students.

Resources
Glass, G. (2010, Spring). A quality arts education can enhance a students academic performance. American Teacher, 10-12. Gullat, D.E. (2007). Research links the arts with student academic gains. The Educational Forum, 71(1), 211220. Kurth, J., Gross M., Lovinger S., & Catalano T. (2012). Grading students with significant disabilities in inclusive settings. The Journal of International Association of Special Education, 12(1), 41-57.