Abstract
This research proposal outlines the values that may be identified from the cross-curricular, and interdisciplinary merging of the visual arts with other subject areas. I have limited my investigation to integrating the visual arts with history, mathematics, and chemistry, to ensure the research remains viable and practical. Multidisciplinary merging of subject areas can address students’ differing learning styles, creating a broader understanding in that ways of gaining knowledge are diverse, not limited by one source at a time. Investigating the issue may provide constructive ways to improve student learning, such as: increasing engagement, forming connections between diverse previous knowledge, and extending conceptual thinking abilities.
Keywords: visual arts, history, mathematics, chemistry, interdisciplinary, British Columbia, post-secondary education, multidisciplinary, learning, qualitative research, methodologies, knowledge.
Objectives and Context
My research will investigate what positive learning outcomes might be realized through the integration of visual arts within the British Columbia post-secondary curricula of history, mathematics, and chemistry. Qualitative and interdisciplinary in nature, my research will explore the positive values of integrating differing disciplines, and developing the symbolic understanding that allows for communication across these academic fields of interest. The process will be experimental, examining the thoughts and opinions of participants learning from combinations of disciplines not commonly integrated.
Works of art tell their own stories, creating a visual narrative which can be analyzed and interpreted to reach an understanding of the overall meaning of a piece, and how it relates to the social context of its time. Past practices, like the long tradition of storytelling in communicating life experiences, can inform the way we search for present-day understanding: “…the arts should be used as a means of making meaning of all that is learned” (Davis, 1999, as cited in Gullatt, 2008, p. 14).
My personal experience learning history through art history demonstrated that the integration of the two disciplines of art and history enhanced the value of learning in both subjects. Engaging in the multidisciplinary learning of art history broadened my thinking beyond the scope of the single academic discipline history, and motivated me to discover more about the merging of disciplines.
Another personal experience that inspired my interest in this research area was visiting the Art/Science exhibition put on by post-secondary level fine arts and chemistry students, in which they took a multidisciplinary approach to learning from one another about colour theory and the periodic table of elements. “In the spirit of collaborative, cross-disciplinary learning and practice”, the chemistry students explored “the colour of each element as a molecule” and the fine arts students “interpreted [the] information into abstract colour compositions” (Bise et al., 2019). Engaging with materials from across disciplines allows for discovery of the interrelationships between seemingly diverse fields of thought, and aids in the development of an appreciation for the ways in which different subject areas enrich and extend the generation of ideas.
Preliminary Literature Review
Much of the literature I examined pertained to Kindergarten to Grade 12 strategies for including arts within curriculum. I identified a research gap in applying a merging of the visual arts with other subject areas within post-secondary education, a gap which my research will investigate.
Enhancing Student Learning Through Arts Integration: Implications for the Profession provided detailed background on the importance and growing recognition of students becoming knowledgeable with regards to the inclusion of the arts: “arts-integrated programs are associated with academic gains across the curriculum as reflected in standardized test scores” (Gullatt, 2008, p. 14). My research may show that similar gains can be achieved in post-secondary education.
Sanz-Camarero et al. illustrate the difficulties in moving forward with the acknowledged benefits of including the arts in science, technology, engineering, the arts, and mathematics (STEAM), in their article The Impact of Integrated STEAM Education on Arts Education: A Systematic Review: “although the evaluation of artistic competency development has had positive impacts, it has been contemplated in very few studies” (2023, p. 1139).
Five Ways of Integrating Arts and Science: A Framework for Planning and Analyzing Arts-Science Education in Early Childhood, illustrates how integration can be valuable, even at a very young age (Areljung, 2023). Young children learn naturally through play, and through interacting with their environment. Multidisciplinary learning is becoming common practice in Kindergarten to Grade 12 classrooms, and I believe multidisciplinary initiatives can be extended to include mature learners throughout the post-secondary education experience.
Methodologies
The methodologies most appropriate and productive for my research are Content and Text Analysis, supplemented by aspects from An Application of Two-Eyed Seeing: Indigenous Research Methods with Participatory Action Research, Arranging (enchaînement), and Notating.
The basis of the Content and Text Analysis methodology is analyzing text data to determine how often certain words, phrases, categories, ideas, or emerging themes appear, and how much text space is devoted to each. Content and Text Analysis “potentially has a high degree of validity and reliability in terms of precise sampling, providing clear empirical evidence for research findings, and in allowing for replication and generalisation” (Seale & Tonkiss, 2018, p. 404).
The logical organization of the Content and Text Analysis methodology will provide me with an opportunity to personally direct the interpretation of the data collected and coded. I plan to use student feedback surveys, journal articles, course syllabi, and interview transcripts in my research. Material can be re-examined and recoded in the same way interview participants can be reinterviewed to look for further insights and emerging trends.
Data collected in relation to my research topic will be coded. Data coding involves using either predetermined categories of interest, or categories that develop from reading the text data. Computer software will be used to help lessen the labour-intensive process of coding by searching texts as an efficient and accurate way of “producing keyword lists and word frequencies, identifying main ideas, analysing patterns of word use, comparing vocabulary between texts, and producing full concordances that list and count all words that appear in a text and then enable the context of particular words to be explored” (Seale & Tonkiss, 2018, p. 407). This large amount of computerized information will be available to facilitate informed decisions about coding categories, and to proceed with analyzing and interpreting content.
Content and Text Analysis can be much more than just counting words and placing them in categories. Interpretation of how the various categories inform will guide my inquiry towards finding meanings and understandings of how coded data can be related and integrated to elicit answers to my research question. Computer-assisted methods can help in this phase of the study as well.
An Application of Two-Eyed Seeing: Indigenous Research Methods with Participatory Action Research discusses the practice of bringing together indigenous worldviews with western ways of understanding the world. The metaphor of one eye examining indigenous ways of understanding the world, and the other eye focusing on western patterns of thought provides a method for creating an inclusive environment through which to carry out my research inquiry. Ensuring participants with varying views of the world have a voice in the carrying out of the research is a value that contributes to the inclusivity of my research.
In Arranging (enchaînement), author Harmony Bench explores the qualitative method of arranging by relating it to the long-standing concept of enchaînement from classical ballet. Enchaînement refers to the linking together of steps from standardized, pre-existing movements to produce dance compositions. Different arrangements result in a repertoire of original dances. “Arranging as a method is concerned with crafting relationships of contingent interdependency; it draws attention to internal coherence and sense-making through the juxtaposition and co-articulation of units of information and their relations” (Bench, 2018, p. 41). As one moves through the process of arranging and rearranging, linking together various arrangements of data, visiting and revisiting earlier enchaînements can reveal additional insights and understandings. By analyzing different arrangements of data, Arranging (enchaînement) will likely reveal further insights and understandings to support the interpretations arising from Content and Text Analysis.
Notating is the symbolic representation of ideas and perceptions. Information represented symbolically can be classified, organized, examined, interpreted, and communicated freely to a specific group or individual familiar with the symbols. “These progressive forms of notating, again, will eventually vanish or establish new patterns to capture and to compose the world we live in” (Wedell, 2018, p. 121). As my research is interdisciplinary, exploring the positive values of integrating differing disciplines, the concept of Notating will contribute to developing the symbolic understanding that allows for communication across the academic disciplines involved in my research.
Ethical Considerations
Integrity will guide my commitment to ensuring that all participant voices are heard, and any implications from participation are fully understood. As a researcher, I will prioritize maintaining respectful, trusting, and open relationships with the participants. Engagement between researcher and participants is of great importance to me, as is the distribution of the new knowledge that I am hoping to generate from this research project. Participant information will be handled responsibly, and with informed consent. Although I accept some situations may require an innovative approach, the interests of all participants must be respected—acceptability must be met with flexibility and common sense. Ultimately, in conducting my research, attention to research ethics will be a top priority.
Reflection
The field of visual arts has always been one of great personal interest. Before delving into my research, I intuitively knew that focusing on the arts would be personally rewarding, and therefore natural for me to research. One of the challenges was narrowing down a vast field of study. Traditionally, elective credit courses provide breadth for students of other disciplines, and I felt in that same way, the visual arts hold the potential to empower students to make connections and deepen their understanding in other subject areas. Artists bring knowledge and experiences that can be applied to real-world problems. Combining a background in the visual arts with other academic disciplines can enrich a student’s learning experience. My curiosity about the value of integrating the visual arts into the curriculum of other disciplines in an interdisciplinary manner led to my research focus, and narrowed my research question to: what is the value of integrating visual arts into the educational curricula of other disciplines, in an interdisciplinary manner? Based on continued peer and instructor feedback throughout the remainder of MAIS 602, as well as everything I learned through the readings, I refined my research question further: what positive learning outcomes might be realized through the integration of visual arts within the British Columbia post-secondary curricula of history, mathematics, and chemistry? This enquiry explores the values that may be identified from the cross-curricular, and interdisciplinary merging of visual arts with other subject areas, and limits my investigation to history, mathematics, and chemistry, to ensure it remains viable and practical. While I considered the feedback from my peers to omit “positive” from the outcomes, and further limit the number of disciplines studied, I ultimately decided against these suggestions. Looking at negative outcomes would broaden, rather than narrow the scope of my study, as this would require me to examine both positive and negative outcomes, where my interest lies in the positive outcomes. Additionally, I prefer to look at the visual arts combined with more than one other subject area, to gain comparative information across disciplines.
References
Areljung, S. (2023). Five Ways of Integrating Arts and Science: A Framework for Planning and Analyzing Arts-Science Education in Early Childhood. Studies in Art Education, 64(1), pp. 9-22.
Bise, M., Chepal, S., Chua, K., Dansereau, C., Daubney, S., Detruz, C., Dhaliwal, C., Goodwin, M., Harsh, Lee, S., Liu, K., Lu, D., Lun, T., Lukas, M., Ping, D., Qui, J., Singh, A., Smith, E., Av-Shalom, O. Almeshkhas, H., Asere, S., Babar, B., Bains, S., Basram, B., Dhanoa, J., Ghatora, A., Gill, S., Hefnawi, N., Klair, S., Klein, N., Nyereyegona, C., Prasad, S., Vanderlip, L. & Zhao, L. (2019, May 1-Jun 30). Art/Science. Fine Arts Galleries. https://finagallery.squarespace.com/recent-shows.
Bench, H. (2018). Arranging (enchaînement). In Lury, C., Fensham, R., Heller-Nicholas, A., Lammes, S., Last, A., Michael, M., & Uprichard, E. (Eds.). Routledge Handbook of Interdisciplinary Research Methods (pp. 41-16). Taylor & Francis Group.
Gullatt, D. (2008). Enhancing Student Learning Through Arts Integration: Implications for the Profession. The High School Journal, 91(4), pp. 12-25.
Peltier, C. (2018). An Application of Two-Eyed Seeing: Indigenous Research Methods with Participatory Action Research. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 17 (pp. 1-12).
Sanz-Camarero, R., Ortiz-Revilla, J. & Greca, I. (2023). The Impact of Integrated STEAM Education on Arts Education: A Systematic Review. Education Sciences, 13(11), p. 1139.
Seale, C. & Tonkiss, F. (2018). Chapter 24: Content and Text Analysis. In C. Seale (Ed.), Researching Society and Culture. (4th ed.; pp. 403-427). SAGE.
Wedell, M. (2018). Notating. In Lury, C., Fensham, R., Heller-Nicholas, A., Lammes, S., Last, A., Michael, M., & Uprichard, E. (Eds.). Routledge Handbook of Interdisciplinary Research Methods (pp. 116-121). Taylor & Francis Group.
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