Research+Poster+Content

 **INTRODUCTION**

 As part of Arts Educator 2.0 Year 3, the Yellow CIG developed the following assumptions:  1. Working on a large-scale collaboration improves student inspiration and motivation.  2. Working on a large-scale collaboration reinforces the idea of career choices in the arts.  3. Working on a large-scale collaboration reduces attendance issues and promotes teamwork.  4. Working on a large-scale collaboration improves general attitudes about the arts.

**line of inquiry**  The following line of inquiry was derived from these assumptions: How can working collaboratively cause improvement and/or growth in motivation and inspiration?

 In an effort to prove or disprove this line of inquiry, the Yellow Collaborative Inquiry Group (CIG) developed a project that involved students from nine area schools and spanned multiple grade levels. The project included visual art as well as original musical compositions, and centered on the theme of “Earth Day,” which was celebrated on Friday, April 22nd this year. The exhibit spent one week at each school and was shared with thousands of students, teachers, administrators, and parents! This study attempted to measure the project’s impact upon student attitudes and the frequency of ideas that students generate.

 **METHODS**

 Prior to beginning the unit, each teacher administered a creativity pre-test followed by a pre-project survey that was also part of the pre-test data collection. The creativity test was developed by the Panamericana School of Art and Design, and is comprised of rows of X's or O's. The objective was to draw as many pictures as possible that originate from these X's and O's in order to measure student frequency and fluency of ideas. The pre-test survey included the following questions, and students recorded their answers using the Likert scale.

 1. How difficult did you find this activity?  2. Do you feel your answers are creative?  3. Do you feel this would be easier to complete with a group?  4. Do you feel you wanted more time to complete this activity? <span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> 5. Did you feel nervous while completing this activity?

<span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> After the survey, each teacher developed their portion of the project within their own individual classrooms based on the National Standards for Arts Education and the Pennsylvania Academic Standards. The music educators in the CIG led students in the creation of musical instruments made from an eclectic array of recyclable materials. The students then discussed methods for composition and created original musical pieces for use in the exhibit. The art educators focused on using recycled materials to create artwork and created pieces solely inspired by earth conservation. The students used materials such as fabric scraps, paper towel rolls, wood scraps and eco-felt. Other projects inspired by earth conservation included a stop-motion photography video and a collection of shells to create haiku poems.

<span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> Once each individual project was complete, the CIG members compiled all of the materials into an art and music exhibit for the purpose of traveling and sharing. During its visit to each school, CIG members conducted lessons based on the exhibit. The students were first given background information about each piece of art and were guided in a reflective discussion. They were then given time to interact with the artwork while listening to the student-composed original music.

<span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> Finally, the students involved in the making of the exhibit were given an identical creativity test and post-project survey. The results of these tests were compared to the results of the pre-tests and the following results were compiled.

<span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> Note: Procedures from the project were in alignment with the following PPA Academic Standards for Arts and Humanities.
 * 9.1 Production, Performance and Exhibition of Dance, Music, Theatre and Visual Arts.
 * 9.2 Historical and Cultural Context
 * 9.3 Critical Response
 * 9.4 Aesthetic Response


 * RESULTS**

All of the CIG members noted increased creativity in their students, but had varied results concerning specific data. Their individual, more detailed data can be found on each teacher’s individual wiki page(s) and/or on their hard copy individual poster. Throughout this project, all teachers in the Yellow CIG demonstrated increased knowledge of teaching as well as a strong ability to teach standards based arts education.


 * CONCLUSIONS**

The results have been an educator’s dream. The children involved in the project wanted to further expand upon it after seeing the entire exhibit come to fruition. Their learning fostered further learning! Other students that experienced the exhibit had a strong aesthetic response, and all were quite interested in learning the details of the project, even expressing interest to do the project themselves in the future. Administrators and faculty at the schools were extremely impressed by the student-generated work and further validated the success of this collaboration.