Exploring a Question Group Project
Child and Adolescent Development 169
As a future educator or helping professional, what kinds of things do you wonder about related to children’s learning and development? Perhaps you wonder why some children are more eager to learn than others. Is it learned or are some youngsters just more engaged and curious than others? Can this eagerness to learn be taught? How? Or, maybe you’ve always wanted to know the most effective way to prepare children for formal, K-12 education. What’s the “best” way to go? Play-based or academic preschools? Montessori? This project is an opportunity for you to ask a question that you are curious about related to child development and motivation. Each group will develop a question related to motivation, identify a setting in which to explore this question, create a method(s) by which to answer the question, and then investigate the question.
1. Ask a question.
Your group will come up with a question related to child development and motivation. The possibilities are virtually limitless and should be based on the interests of individuals in the group. To get you thinking, examples of questions might be:
• How intrinsically motivated are children who attend school in non-traditional settings (e.g. Waldorf, home schooling, or other non-traditional setting)
• How do the arts contribute to academic achievement or engagement?
• How do health issues (e.g. cancer, cystic fibrosis, etc.) impact children’s learning and motivation?
• Is there a particular learning model that is most effective for engaging autistic children?
• What’s the best way to teach math and science that gets youngsters excited about learning?
• How can toys and play facilitate learning?
These examples are intended to help you get started. Please do not feel limited by them as you and your group formulate your questions. All group members should contribute to question formulation. One or two group members should not decide upon the question. This question is due on February 18, and should include:
*Research Question(s)
*Background Research: a summary of research that has been conducted on the topic.
*Methods: how will your group attempt to answer your research question(s)?
2. Identify a setting. Once you’ve formulated your question, your group will need to decide upon a setting in which to answer it. Some settings that you might consider:
• A preschool (e.g. Waldorf, Bing Preschool, Challenger, or a play-based preschool)
• A museum
• A hospital
• A non-traditional academic setting (e.g. a school for autistic children, a non-graded elementary, middle, or high school, a toy store, or computer lab)
• An after-school or summer program or camp
3. Develop your methods
How will you go about answering your question? This step will require two tasks:
a. Background research: your group should familiarize itself with your issue. Each group member should read and contribute information from at least two peer-reviewed research articles on your topic of interest. The background research will be helpful to you in refining your question and will also help to connect whatever you discover from this project to literature in the field
b. Observation and Interview. Once you’ve decided on a question and a setting, and your group has done its background research, you’re ready to go out into a real-life setting to do your observations and interviews. For example, if your question relates to learning in a non-traditional setting, you might contact the school or program and arrange to observe the program in action. You could also interview teachers and/or administrators about the program ‘s curriculum and on its philosophy on motivating its students. Please note that each group member must do a minimum one-hour observation. This can be alone or with other members of the group.
Each student will submit a 3-5 page summary. The paper should include:
• Summary of his or her contributions to method development (e.g. use of interviews or observations)
• A description of his or her contribution to background research, which should include at least two peer-reviewed references.
• A review of the research collected by you and an integration of this research with the Explore a Question hypothesis, methods and results. How do the results of your project fit with what has been found in the literature?
• Conclusion. Recommendations for practice and for future research.
• Reference page with your references.
4. Reporting your discoveries
Each group will prepare a presentation of approximately 20 minutes, which will describe:
• Your question and how it was developed
• Your methods of gathering research. Here, you might include video, photos, or any other visual or creative aid to describe your methods.
• What you discovered. Here, you will share with the class what you discovered from observing students and interviewing teachers and administrators. You might include graphs and charts, slides or demonstrations to illustrate your findings.
Each group member should present some part of the findings.
THE GROUP PART HAS BEEN DONE ALREADY!
I. Research Question: How does integration of the arts into daily curriculum motivate students’ engagement?
II. Background Research
Ruppert (2006) discusses the importance of providing students the opportunity to experience learning through the arts. Not only will it help them increase their skills and knowledge, but have a successful future as well. The study of the arts, however, seems to be fading from schools. It is important to teach students with art, as it does impact their academic achievement.
A large reason for the way arts education is today is because of the changes in the national education policy over recent years. One change was the Educate America Act of 2000; this was the first time the arts was acknowledged in core curriculum. The U.S. Department of Education and the National Endowment for the Arts fund, track and gather information on arts integration in schools. A Harris Poll done in May 2005 showed a large percentage of strong public support for arts in education.
There have been gradual changes in the education system, which have taken actions to remove the arts as core subjects and even from schools entirely. In 2002, legislation called the No Child Left Behind Act was signed by President Bush into law. One of the most important aspects of this legislation was to “close achievement gaps between students” using a more unified school system that allows students to be successful (Ruppert, 2006, p. 7). This has led to progress in the perception of arts as critical to education and achievement in school (Ruppert, 2006, p. 6-7).
Studies have shown that students who are involved in the arts benefit academically and socially. Students who take art classes are able to implement what they learn and apply it in other classes. A study done in Los Angeles demonstrated how students who take any art class perform better in standardized tests. The reason is that students are taking what they learn and applying it to their academic life. Students are not only implementing what they learn from art into the other subjects but also in the SAT exam. There is a correlation between students who take any arts class and high performance on the SAT.
Further research has found that integrating the arts into education has helped students improve in many academic areas. These include reading and language skills, mathematics, thinking skills, social skills, motivation to learn, and creating a positive school environment. Drama is helpful to foster reading and literacy skills in children when they are given the opportunity to act out the stories they are reading. This helps them to improve in the area of reading comprehension. High school and junior high school students who participated in music class scored higher in math because rhythm helped them to understand proportion, patterns, and ratios. Students who participated in dance became stronger creative thinkers. Those students who were asked to think critically about visual art improved in the area of science. Performing arts also helped to improve students’ confidence and self-esteem.
In order to make sure that students have success in their lives, it is important to to understand that the arts does matter in academic education. Strong support should be given to the students and their families to be involved in arts related activities. When students have the chance to learn and experience the arts, their creative and social skills improve and they are better able to communicate with the outside world.
III. Methods
a. Classroom observations of teachers who integrate different art forms into their daily curriculum.
b. Interview teachers who integrate the arts into their teaching.
c. Use success stories from Artspiration.com to reach out to schools who use arts integration
d. Email interview questions to leaders of arts integration; those who are advocating for arts integration with other subjects.
e. Observe classrooms that focus on different art forms: theatre, visual art, music, or dance in their daily routine.
Use the order calculator below and get started! Contact our live support team for any assistance or inquiry.
[order_calculator]