Mar 9, 2019
Vidcast: https://youtu.be/vJAm-_EAjsQ
From the “spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down” department, Johns Hopkins School of Education reports that the fusion of contemporary arts such as dancing, singing, rapping, and drawing into traditional science lessons increases student interest and retention of the subject matter. The educators studied some 350 5th grade students in 6 Baltimore schools.
In this crossover study design, one group of students received the arts-enriched science class and the other group the straight science curriculum. In the second part of the investigation, the groups were reversed.
The data demonstrated that the art-science combo lessons covering chemistry-environmental science and life science-astronomy were retained three times better than straight science instruction by those students at a basic reading level. Those students with more advanced reading skills and academic performance derived no benefit. I’ll bet they did have more fun.
Breathing life into potentially dry educational material on any subject is a winning strategy. This study also suggests that the technique can help academically challenged students excel in potentially frustrating courses of study and love school a whole lot more.
#science #arts #singing #dancing #rap #drawing #healthnews
Mariale M. Hardiman, Ranjini Mahinda JohnBull, Deborah T. Carran, Amy Shelton. The effects of arts-integrated instruction on memory for science content. Trends in Neuroscience and Education, 2019; 14: 25 DOI: 10.1016/j.tine.2019.02.002