Seton Hall University eRepository @ Seton Hall Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs) Fall 12-11-2018 Narrative Inquiry Into the Barriers to and Facilitators of Teacher Implementation and Sustainability of Arts Integration in an Urban Public School District Cheryl McClendon reinvent035@gmail.com Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.edu/dissertations Part of the Educational Leadership Commons Recommended Citation McClendon, Cheryl, "Narrative Inquiry Into the Barriers to and Facilitators of Teacher Implementation and Sustainability of Arts Integration in an Urban Public School District" (2018). Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs).edu/dissertations/2611 NARRATIVE INQUIRY INTO THE BARRIERS TO AND FACILITATORS OF TEACHER IMPLEMENTATION AND SUSTAINABILITY OF ARTS INTEGRATION IN AN URBAN PUBLIC SCHOOL DISTRICT BY CHERYL MCCLENDON Dissertation Committee Dr. Elaine Walker, Mentor Dr. Daniel Gutmore, Committee Member Dr.
Trina Yearwood, Committee Member Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Education Seton Hall University 2018 © 2018 Cheryl McClendon Approval Abstract To improve the overall quality of education within under-performing schools across the United States and, in particular, to improve outcomes for diverse learners, it is imperative to find ways to increase the adoption of evidence-based practices. This study aims to illuminate the barriers and facilitators that confront teachers in the sustained implementation of arts integration using a scientifically research-based Constructivist methodology. Arts Integration (AI) has been proven to increase students’ literacy, mathematics, and critical thinking skills. For decades, the U.
Department of Education has funded research studies revealing the efficacy of arts integration. Data, however, indicate a lack of sustained implementation of arts integration, most notably in schools where interventions targeting student literacy development are sorely needed. As observed in many schools hosting government- funded arts integration programs, AI curricula and strategies are often not sustained beyond the exit of the teaching artists and the depletion of grant-based funding. This qualitative study utilizes an educational ecosystem as the theoretical framework.
The levels of the ecosystem are the microsystem (the individual teacher), the mesosystem (school culture), the exosystem (accountability structures), and the macrosystem (American public schools). The study, designed as a narrative inquiry, draws narrative accounts from participating teachers and teaching artists through semi-structured interviews. Interview questions elicit data to address the five research questions: 1. How do teachers describe how personal values, dispositions, idiosyncratic understandings, and experiences influence their ability to adopt arts integration as a routine pedagogical practice? iii 2.
How do teachers describe how school culture influences their ability to adopt arts integration as a routine pedagogical practice? 3. How do teachers describe how accountability and support structures influence their ability to adopt arts integration as a routine pedagogical practice? 4. How does the difference between teachers’ described experiences and teaching artists’ described experiences help us to understand the barriers and facilitators to the teacher implementation and sustainability of arts integration? 5. What factors influence change in the pedagogical practice of teachers in urban public schools? Qualitative data analysis revealed the following salient findings: • Only one participating teacher had pre-service exposure to arts integration.
• All teachers who participated in the study implement arts integration on a superficial Service Connection* level. • Professional development support for participating teachers was provided through weekly visits from Educational Arts Team of teaching artists during the number of weeks allotted through the grant. • Student-to-teacher and teacher-to-student interaction were facilitative and positive. • None of the participating teachers planned standards-based arts-integrated lessons.
• Teachers conveyed that the level of arts integration implementation within any school was contingent upon principal buy-in, which was sporadic across schools. *Service Connection – A superficial level of curriculum integration where concepts and outcomes are learned and reinforced in one subject by using material and resources from another subject, with no specific outcomes from the servicing subject (Bowie, 2009). iv No teacher’s practice exhibited a consistent implementation of arts integration. Teachers accounts revealed widely varying levels of strategy adoption and usage with a greater percentage of teachers exhibiting low-level, superficial implementation.
Barriers to implementation existed at all levels of the ecosystem. The highest percentage of barriers existed at the exosystem comprising school and district accountability structures. The highest percentage of facilitative elements reflected the microsystem, indicating that individual teachers expressed interest and satisfaction with the program and valued the collaboration. Generalizations and conclusions drawn from this research study were as follows: School and district buy-in is essential to the sustainability of arts integration.
Competing curricular priorities and mandates indicate incoherence and impede sustainability of arts integration. Scheduling must facilitate planning, collaboration, professional development, implementation and reflection. Collective and individual values and mission must align with the underlying ideology and methodology of the program. v Acknowledgements This has been a journey for me.
I undertook this challenge—the pursuit of my fourth and final degree—years ago, just as I was offered the principalship of a struggling Title I school in New York City. During the first three years of my principalship, I successfully completed all of my doctoral coursework as well as successfully set my school on the right track. None of this was accomplished singlehandedly. I could not have turned around my newly adopted school without the buy-in and committed efforts of several members of my school community.
They believed in me, and I in them. Every day, I traveled back and forth across the Hudson River. On one side, I worked doggedly to meet the needs of my school and the community to which I was dedicated. On the other side I worked to meet the rigorous challenge of honing my leadership skills at Seton Hall University.
Elaine Walker, my mentor, has been very supportive of me in this arduous, prolonged pursuit. Walker, I am eternally grateful. I would also like to thank my committee members, Dr. Gutmore and Dr.
Yearwood, for their valuable feedback during this process. Carmine Tabone and the entire EAT crew—thank you so very much for opening up your practice to me. Throughout this process, I sought the solace of home. To my greatest supporter, my life partner, my “home”, my “tech assistant”, Donna Lea Ward, I owe endless gratitude for all that you do, all that you are.
Last, but most, thank you, God. Thank you, God. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract. vi CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION.
1 Arts Integration Program Studies. 2 Classification of Teacher Implementation of Arts Integration. 7 Purpose of Study. 10 Significance of Study.
15 Limitations and Assumptions. 15 Definition of Terms. 16 CHAPTER 2: REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE. 18 Macrosystemic and Exosystemic Impact.
19 Equity, Socio-Economics, and the Arts. 23 Rationale for Arts Integration. 30 Brain Research and Transfer Theory. 32 Standards-based Arts Integration.
33 The Arts and Writing–Semiotics. 34 Arts Integration at the Mesosystemic and Microsystemic Level. 37 Summary of the Literature Review. 44 Context of the Study.
45 vii Participant Selection. 47 Data analysis began with collecting and charting preliminary demographic data for each teacher. Measures for Ethical Protection. 50 Role of the Researcher.
50 Data Collection and Instrumentation. 54 CHAPTER 4: RESEARCH FINDINGS. 56 CHAPTER 5: SUMMARY, CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS. 82 Discussion of the Findings.
83 Recommendations for Policy, Practice, and Future Research. 100 APPENDIX A-1: INTERVIEW CODING PROTOCOL. 101 APPENDIX A-2: SEMI-STRUCTURED INDIVIDUAL INTERVIEW QUESTIONS – TEACHER – 45 MINUTES. 102 APPENDIX A-3: SEMI-STRUCTURED INDIVIDUAL INTERVIEW QUESTIONS – TEACHING ARTIST – 30 MINUTES.
104 APPENDIX B: ANALYSIS TOOLS. 105 APPENDIX B-1: ELEMENTS FOR SUSTAINED AI. 106 APPENDIX B-2: ELEMENTS OF CONTEXTUAL FIT. 107 APPENDIX C: TEACHER INTERVIEWS AND CODING.
108 APPENDIX C-1: PAT INTERVIEW. 109 APPENDIX C-2: CORY INTERVIEW. 115 APPENDIX C-3: JODY INTERVIEW. 121 APPENDIX C-4: VAL INTERVIEW.
121 APPENDIX C-5: JORDAN INTERVIEW. 131 APPENDIX C-6: SHANNON INTERVIEW. 137 APPENDIX C-7: VINNIE INTERVIEW. 143 APPENDIX C-8: IZZY INTERVIEW.
146 APPENDIX D: TEACHING ARTIST INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPTS. 150 viii APPENDIX D-1: BLAIR INTERVIEW. 151 APPENDIX D-2: SANDY INTERVIEW. 155 APPENDIX D-3: MARION INTERVIEW.
159 APPENDIX D-4: ALEX INTERVIEW. 166 APPENDIX D-5: TEACHING ARTIST FOCUS GROUP INTERVIEW. 171 APPENDIX E: IRB APPROVAL………………………………………………………………………180 ix LIST OF TABLES Table 1. Three Arts Integration Implementation Typologies.
Comparative Demographic Data. 49 x LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. The cultural ecosystem of education. Teacher-response coding table.
79 xi 1 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION “I am not saying that standards, assessment, curriculum and professional development are wrong things to do. I am saying they are seriously incomplete theories of action because they do not get close to what happens in classrooms and school cultures.” Michael Fullan, 2006 At a time when students across the country are struggling to meet increasing cognitive demands, educators are hard-pressed to find, adopt, and sustain strategies that work. The pedagogy at the heart of this narrative inquiry is arts integration; its evidence- based, constructivist methodology focused on enhancing the critical thinking and literacy skills of inner-city elementary school students. Constructivist-oriented pedagogy places the learner at the center of learning.
Through inquiry, engagement, exploration, making connections, problem solving, and social interaction, learners actively build students’ critical thinking skills, knowledge, and understandings (Bruner, 1996; Vygotsky, 1987). It was in the early twentieth century when arts integration emerged (Burnaford, 2007, as cited in Snyder, Klos, & Grey-Hawkins, 2014). Intent upon restructuring disparate course offerings, American schools reorganized curricula by themes and integrated the arts. Since then, however, the prioritization of the arts and arts integration has undulated throughout the history of American Education.
The eighth adaptation of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), No Child Left Behind (NCLB) of 2002, affected curriculum narrowing across the country (Cawelti, 2006, as cited in Volante, 2012). In a conciliatory effort to include the arts and to disseminate information about model school-based arts programs, the United States 2 government authorized the Arts in Education program (Americans for the Arts, 2014). Since 2002, the Arts in Education program has received an average of thirty-two million dollars per year from the United States Department of Education to fund programs focused on improving the critical thinking and literacy skills of students in high poverty schools through the arts. The Arts in Education Model Development and Dissemination Grant (AEMDD) is a three- to four- year competitive federal grant.
Since 2002, AEMDD grants have funded one hundred eighty-five projects, including rigorous arts integration program evaluation studies (Performing Arts Alliance, 2016). Arts Integration Program Studies Amongst the notable AEMDD funded projects is the Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education (CAPE), established in 1992, which is a six-year demonstration project that sustained partnerships between twenty-three Chicago-based public schools, thirty-three arts organizations, and eleven community-based organizations (Burnaford, 2007). The primary focus of this network is on fortifying the arts in the public schools of Chicago. A seminal research study that emerged from this collaborative examined eight schools that participated in the arts integration project.
Ten teachers from each of the eight schools participated. Participating teachers planned two comparable academic units of study for implementation: one arts-integrated and one non-arts-integrated. Researchers observed instructional implementation and interviewed students. Students’ writing samples from their non-arts and arts units were scored for changes in depth of knowledge, analytic assessments, and affective responses.
Pre and post-writing samples were also rated. CAPE schools showed growth along several measures of student achievement. CAPE schools attained stronger standardized test scores than other Chicago schools of similar demographics (DeMoss, 2000). Findings 3 revealed that, on average, students in CAPE schools out-performed students in similar demographic, non-CAPE schools on standardized tests (DeMoss, 2000; Morris, 2002).
In 2010, the Supporting Arts Integrated Learning for Student Success (SAILSS) model, funded by an AEMDD grant, was implemented at Bates Middle School, a low performing school that was targeted for restructuring within the state of Maryland.