Literary review:

After reading the summary of a report entitled ‘Arts in the Secondary Schools: Effects and Effectiveness’ (Harland, Kinder, Lord et all) I felt compelled to write this review. Their research question was ‘Does the involvement in the arts in secondary school boost general academic performance?’ The study was conducted over several years performing case studies on ‘five secondary schools in the United Kingdom with strong arts reputations’ and examining the GCSE results of over twenty seven thousand students from 152.  The qualitive information collected from the case studies was primarily based on students own opinions and the quantative data based on the exam results.

When starting to read this report I saw a lot of similarities to my own inquiry which sparked my attention, upon further reading element of their research continued to crop up which didn’t sit right with me. Firstly they state that they reviewed results for 27,607 students from 152 schools and distributed questionnaires to 2,269 students in 22 schools. Now the report does not make this clear but from these numbers I can assume that their conclusions have been based on all yr 11 students and not just those who have opted to take one of the creative arts subjects for GCSE.  Thus some of the questionnaire answers have come from students who might not have studied an arts subject for nearly two years; surely this data will skew the results. Student opinion was strongly considered when drawing their conclusions and even though students’ opinions are very useful I do not think I would have based my findings primarily on these opinions as at this age they are not always able to see how subjects can benefit each other, plus there is a strong chance that their opinions have been based more on an emotional response than fact for example a students experience with a particular teacher might sway their responses.

During the first module I made an entry in my in my journal commenting on how frustrating I was finding it trying to get the yr10 students to take the knowledge that they had learned in History about the second world war and the years that immediately followed and using it to draw conclusions about the social and economical state of American as a reason for the emergence of the pop art movement. When it was explained to they could understand this link but unless it was pointed out for them they would not make use of the knowledge they had learned in other subjects. Now this clearly is not because one subject does not help with the understanding of the other subject as I do not believe that anybody could dispute that an understanding of certain historical events will help you to understand the reasoning behind certain art movement rather I believe it is because teachers do not make these cross curriculum connections more obvious to the students. I am aware that this is something teachers should be doing as I have noticed them adding it into their lesson plans when they are undergoing lesson observation but then forget about it the rest of the time. I believe that highlighting these links is vital to improve the students overall understanding. At the moment I believe that there is too much of a barrier between subjects too often have I heard students make comments like I love Drama but hate English and it is not explained to them that the two are intricately linked, one could not be without the other.

The study concluded that ‘no relationship existed between studying the arts in secondary school and performance on national exams.’ These findings were unlike the conclusions drawn from similar investigations conducted in schools in the United Sates, their reasoning for this was ‘perhaps in the United States academically strong students are advised to study the arts, while in the United Kingdom, academically strong students are not encouraged to study the arts.’ From my experience of working in a secondary school I believe that this is the case and to further stigmatise the subjects, it is reviewed by other subject teachers as an ‘easy option’ and this belief filters down to the student. In the opinion of someone who has not only studied the subject for over a decade and taught it, I can confirm that this is not the case. The standard of analytical writing on not only their own work but also the works of others is expected to be of as high a calibre as would be expected in an English exam. This subject also asks you to view and think about things in a different way, pieces of work are not merely made for the sake of making them; they have more meaning or depth behind them. This is not always obvious and different people might have conflicting views on the meaning of a piece, but we ask the student to form an intelligent, independent opinion. How is this dissimilar to what they are asked to do in English with literature and poetry, and how could having more practice at thinking and writing in this way not improve your English level?

To study art at any level takes a huge amount of self discipline and self motivation, something which teenagers are not always renowned for, this is also the case with the other arts but I speak mainly about the study of fine art as this is where my expertise lays. If students do not have a certain level of self motivation and discipline they will not be successful on this course as there are not enough taught hours scheduled on the timetable to get the work done, this is unique to this subject and is understood by most of the students early on in the course and I struggle to see how developing the skill of independent learning could not be beneficial in the study of all other subjects especially when it comes to prioritising revision.

This study has also stated that most of their qualitive data had been collected from schools with strong arts reputation; I believe that this choice of screening was a mistake, how can you comment on the effectiveness of a subject if you only look at the top end and do not take a cross section of schools? Theses findings do not show an accurate depiction of the whole country. In spite of the fact that state secondary schools cannot restrict entry due to academic performance exemplar schools tend to attract exemplar pupils meaning the influence of the arts might not have such an obvious effect on the performance academically as it would if you were to look at an underachieving school. The school I currently work in would be considered an oversubscribed, under achieving inter city school and it is clear how much the study of art helps their literacy level and general use of vocabulary, this might not be the case of all such schools but I believe that other school demographics should have been taken into consideration when collecting their data. This is why I plan to investigate three contrasting schools; my schools will differ in location, pupil demographic and budgetary constraints so that I know that if any trends do emerge I could assume that these trends might reflect most schools nation wide.

In conclusion I believe that this investigation carried out to highlight the effectiveness of the teaching of the arts in secondary schools was flawed to the point that I do not believe that the conclusions that they have drawn effectively reflect the overall teaching of the arts in secondary schools in the UK. Further more I believe that the research question ‘does the involvement in the arts in secondary school boost general academic performance’ is rather a redundant one as we have already established that there are different learning styles, some people learn better with visual aids and working problems out through trail and error, while others learn best in a more tradition learning environment  of reading and memorising, thus the focus should be how can we as teachers be more creative with our teaching styles and incorporate some of the methods used in teaching the arts and other practical subjects to accommodate the different learning styles we will encounter.

References:

• Harland. J, Kinder. K, Lord. P, Scott. A, Schagen. I, Haynes. J, Cusworth. L, White. R and Paola. R, (October 2000) ‘Arts Education in Secondary School: Effects and Effectiveness’ The National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER), Berkshire, UK.