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“Educators across our country are opening young minds, fostering innovation, and developing imaginations through arts education. Through their work, they are empowering our Nation's students with the ability to meet the challenges of a global marketplace. It is a well-rounded education for our children that will fuel our efforts to lead in a new economy where critical and creative thinking will be the keys to success.”¹ -- President Barack Obama

“Arts learning experiences play a vital role in developing students’ capacities for critical thinking, creativity, imagination and innovation. These capacities are increasingly recognized as core skills and competencies that all students need as part of a high-quality and complete 21st-century education….one that includes learning in and through the arts…”² --The National Task Force on the Arts in Education

21st Century Skills

With the vast social, cultural, technological, and economic changes our nation is experiencing, as well as those we have yet to imagine, many are reconsidering what knowledge and skills students need to be successful in the 21st century. The question under consideration is how to create “a new learning environment consistent with the cognitive and expressive demands of the 21st century.”³

Answers are coming from various places. The Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21) has been working since 2002 with educators, civic and community groups, and business leaders to define and advocate for the knowledge and skills they perceive as essential for 21st century success. In 2011, there are sixteen P21 Leadership States⁴ and numerous organizations such as Pearson, Apple, and Blackboard, involved as Strategic Council Members⁵. The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development/ASCD developed a position statement in 2008 titled “Educating Students in a Changing World”⁶ and in 2009 dedicated an issue of Educational Leadership to teaching for the 21st century⁷. Other groups have been examining the needs of 21st century learning, including The College Board’s National Task Force on the Arts in Education⁸ and The American Institutes for Research with the Metiri Group and the North Central Regional Educational Laboratory⁹.

What are 21st Century Skills?

Many organizations have described 21st century skills. This article focuses on the skills articulated in P21’s Framework for 21st Century Learning¹⁰. The Framework identifies four overarching Student Outcomes as well as the Support Systems needed¹¹. The Student Outcomes include (1) the Core Subjects and 21st Century Themes; (2) Learning and Innovation Skills (also known as the 4Cs - communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity); (3) Information, Media, and Technology Skills and (4) Life and Career Skills.

How do the arts/arts integration contribute to the development of 21st century skills?

1. Core Subjects and 21st Century Themes

   The arts are one of the core subjects in 21st century learning. To demonstrate how learning in and through the arts builds 21st century skills, P21 has also collaborated with six arts education professional organizations to create a Skills Map for the Arts¹² that provides examples of how the four arts areas (dance, music, theatre, and visual arts, which collectively include the media arts) help develop many 21st century skills and outcomes including curiosity, imagination, creativity, and evaluation skills. The introduction to the Skills Map states:

   “Collectively, the examples in this document demonstrate that the arts are among society’s most compelling and effective paths for developing 21st Century Skills in our students.”¹³

   The Arts Skills Map also describes how all the 21st Century Themes (global awareness; financial, economic, business and entrepreneurial literacy, civic literacy, health literacy and environmental literacy) are supported by arts learning.

2. Learning and Innovation Skills/4Cs

   One of P21’s central goals is to fuse the core subjects with the 4Cs: communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity. This “fusing” suggests an interdisciplinary approach to teaching and learning. Arts integration is inherently interdisciplinary; it demonstrates ways to accomplish this “fusion.” Through arts integration, students develop dual content knowledge (in both an art form and another area of the curriculum) as well as develop skills in the 4Cs.

   Communication

   The first C in the P21 Framework, learning to communicate, is central to arts integration. Students communicate their emerging understandings through an art form. The medium for communication is the art form itself. Each art form has a language and symbol system through which students interpret information and communicate their ideas. For example, acting, storytelling, puppetry, and performance poetry develop skills in oral communication. Students develop written communication skills through such art forms as playwriting and poetry and develop non-verbal communication skills through dance, music, theater, and the visual arts. Additionally, arts integration engages students in metaphorical thinking, which enlarges the power of their communication.

   Collaboration

   The Framework’s second C is collaboration. When students engage in arts integration they usually collaborate in small groups to solve problems. Even when students work individually, they also draw on peer input. In all cases, students enlarge their understandings when they see how others think and react to their thinking. Arts integration provides opportunities for students to learn to be open and responsive to diverse perspectives, work respectfully with their peers, make necessary compromises, and share and accept responsibility.

   Dennie Palmer Wolf’s research has documented the extensive collaboration (and communication) inherent in arts experiences. The research found that when students create original operas they were engaged in “more sustained and coherent collaboration over time”¹⁴ than when they were involved in other curriculum areas.

   “…students progressively develop judgments about how well their work is expressing what they want to say and they find ways to talk to one another about it and to make decisions about how to adjust the work to enhance the quality.”¹⁵

   Critical Thinking

   The Framework’s third “C” is the ability to reason effectively, make judgments and decisions, and solve problems, among other things. When students are involved in arts integration, they develop critical thinking skills as they make judgments about how to solve problems that have no single right answer.

   Creating in the arts involves critical thinking and “sophisticated intellectual engagement:”¹⁶

   “The arts are not just expressive and affective. They are deeply cognitive. They develop essential thinking tools: pattern recognition and development; mental representations of what is observed or imagined; symbolic, allegorical, and metaphorical representations; careful observation of the world; and abstraction from complexity.”¹⁷ –David Sousa

   Creativity

   The Framework’s fourth “C” is the ability to think creatively, work creatively with others, and implement innovations, among other things. Creativity is a hallmark of arts integration. Students engage in the creative process as a way to construct and demonstrate what they know and understand. The creative process requires students to solve problems by imagining a wide range of solutions; by exploring and experimenting with the most promising solutions; by creating a product (e.g., dance, musical composition, collage, digital story, poem); by reflecting on, assessing and revising their products; and sharing them with others.

   Judy Willis, in her Whole Child blog, points to research that shows that creativity correlates with the brain processing associated with the highest forms of cognition. She states:

   “…neuroscience and cognitive science research are increasingly providing information that correlates creativity with intelligence; academic, social, and emotional success; and the development of skill sets and the highest information processing (executive functions) that will become increasingly valuable for students in the 21st century.”¹⁸

   Although the creative process exists in many fields, the arts are one of the most accessible and powerful ways to build the creative mind in the classroom. Stanford University’s Elliot Eisner makes the case that our encounters with the arts are critically important because the arts are a way to cultivate our imaginative abilities, offer a variety of means for representing our imagination in material form (inscription), and provide opportunities to edit and adjust the representation to achieve the quality, precision, and power for effective communication.¹⁹

3. Information, Media, and Technology Skills

   The arts include the use of media and technology as means of communication. When students are engaged in arts integration, they develop skills in accessing and evaluating information (in both the art form and the other curriculum area). They communicate their developing understandings using a variety of ways including digital media and technology.

4. Life and Career Skills

   The P21 Framework identifies Life and Career Skills which include various dispositions or habits of mind²⁰. These dispositions are aligned with those developed through arts integration. Students have opportunities to:

   • Solve problems having more than one right answer. Through arts integration students engage in the creative process which develops flexibility in thinking, tolerance for ambiguity, and a perspective that experimentation involves missteps which are a natural part of learning.
   • Develop initiative and self-direction to solve problems and manage their work with increasing independence. When students are engaged in arts integration, they make choices and direct their own work with ongoing feedback from the teacher or other students. Over time they accept increasing responsibility for their learning.
   • Work collaboratively and develop social skills. Through arts integration, students gain experience in clearly stating their ideas, and listening to and respecting their peers’ ideas.
   • Be both productive and accountable. In arts integration, students learn manage their projects so they can produce results within a limited timeframe. They learn to set and meet goals, prioritize, and engage in a process that leads to a product.
   • Take on leadership roles. Arts integration is student-centered learning. As a result, students have many opportunities to lead as well as to be a responsible group member. Since arts integration thrives in a supportive learning environment, students learn to encourage others to do their best.

Conclusion

Arts integration makes a significant contribution to the development of 21st century knowledge, skills, and dispositions. Through the development of critical thinking, creativity, imagination and innovation, arts integration offers a powerful way to create “a new learning environment consistent with the cognitive and expressive demands of the 21st century.”²¹