ARTinED – A new approach to education using the arts

Comenius Multilateral project  (2011-2014)

School systems that rely on teaching primarily through the spoken and written word do not reach those students who struggle with curriculum and instruction based on verbal proficiency. These may have other kind of intelligence different from verbal and logic, such as visual /spatial/bodily/kinaesthetic, musical, interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligences. Intelligences that  Dr. Howard Gardner fully explained in his seminal works.

The ARTinED project directly meets this challenge by using the arts as a key component of any school subject, which means teaching curricular subjects through the arts.

When we wrote the project application form and thought of giving the arts the place that they deserve in the development of learning of human beings, we felt that embedding the arts in the teaching of every discipline would be fantastic and the results exceeded the expectations. We loved working with children’s creativity and freedom and we found a vast scientific back up to our ideas.

PROJECT WEBSITE   http://www.artined.eu/

Project coordinator

Fondazione Nazionale Carlo Collodi, Italy

Partner countries

United Kingdom, Romania, Spain, Sweden and Turkey

Target group

Primary school students and teachers,  school authorities, curriculum experts

Objectives

Research on the use of art in children’s education and best practices across Europe

Creation of a Repository of articles  and on the use of arts in children’s education

Writing the pedagogical background and create lesson plans

Preparation for piloting environmental education

Piloting  in schools

Evaluation and analysis of piloting

Preparation of In-Service training course (offline and online)

Testing the In-Service teacher training  (twice)

Dissemination and sustainability

Quality assurance

Project  description

The workflow was implemented through a series of work packages and an innovative methodology and practices including diverse art-forms throughout primary school curricula were produced. The project partnership has expertise in all the differing art specializations that enabled a complete evaluation across the spectrum of the arts.

The arts applied in the project were: creative writing and poetry, music and drama, dance and   choreography, visual arts.

A complete pedagogic example in using the selected art-forms was applied to environmental education.

The resources produced were piloted as a test study at a local and European level, in primary schools in the UK, Italy, Romania, Sweden, Turkey and Spain, the results analyzed and the final resources adapted to the results of the piloting.

The ARTinED in-service teacher training course, with 40 hours in 5 days, was also designed and delivered twice, in Italy and in Spain.

The project was disseminated thoroughly and the outputs and results fully exploited by the partners and stakeholders. In Sweden, a new school based on ARTinED methodology was opened, as a model for the whole country.

The project website is very descriptive and includes detailed information on the resources, freely available, on the project activities and the teacher training.

We warmly suggest to visit it!