Finding Questions Everywhere

"The Skills Connection Between the Arts and 21st-Century Learning"

In his article, Bruce D. Taylor writes of how our education system is wedded to a 19th-Century model that is conflicting with our 21st Century society. We are teaching what to know but not how to think. Taylor's answer: the arts. Taylor has a Gardner/Pink mentality of how right-brained thinking and creative skills will set our students up for success as citizens in "an increasingly complex, conceptual, and globalized 21st-century society and economy." Taylor also connects the arts to emotion, as something that matters to us. Our students' response to school is often boredom, which shows they are emotionally disengaged. If we incorporate the arts in school, we can create engaging and authentic learning experiences. Further he discusses how teachers often feel confined to the prescriptions defined by individuals far removed from the classroom and the understanding of our students' needs. To this he feels that teachers should be able to be creative in their lesson ideas and approaches to their classrooms. Overall, his argument is for artistic thinking and approaches in every content area.

A potential research question is how can an arts approach in other content areas result in engaging, meaningful learning experiences? A method to answering this question would perhaps be in observation of content areas utilizing right-brain thinking strategies and lessons with meaning-making in mind. This would have to be in comparison to these same content areas, but in classrooms that are using the current approach of teaching to the test.

My hope would be that a classroom which emphasizes creative problem-solving, critical thinking, multimodal forms of learning and responding, concepts and big ideas, and personal connections would result in a class of students engaged, excited and eager to learn.