University Schedules Statewide Conference on Arts and Education

MORRILTON, Ark. – Future and current teachers will learn about the power and importance of incorporating art in the classroom at the second-annual ARtful Teaching Conference on April 1-2. The conference sponsored by the University of Arkansas will be at the Winthrop Rockefeller Institute on Petit Jean Mountain near Conway.

The Center for Children and Youth in the College of Education and Health Professions and the Brown Chair in English Literacy in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences invited artists, university students and educators to the conference.

“We’re very excited about this event,” said Christian Goering, director of the Center for Children and Youth and associate professor of English education. “The first ARtful Teaching Conference was a tremendous success. We had such a positive response from the attendees, and we want to carry that energy into an even better program this year.”

Eleven colleges and universities in Arkansas are expected to be represented, up from seven institutions last year. In addition to the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, they are Arkansas State University, Arkansas State University-Mountain Home, Arkansas Tech, Harding University, Henderson State, Hendrix College, John Brown University, University of Arkansas at Fort Smith, University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff and University of the Ozarks. Each school will bring students in the process of becoming licensed elementary and secondary teachers and the faculty members who are preparing them.

“The goal of the conference is two-pronged,” Goering said. “With the pre-service teachers, we want to introduce them to arts integration at an early stage of their careers. With the faculty and administrators, we want to encourage them to make arts integration strategies a basic part of their curriculum.”

Goering was appointed as the first director of the Center for Children and Youth in 2010. The center is designed to address issues of intellectual growth, social development, literacy, the arts, and techniques for addressing generational or regional poverty issues. This will be accomplished through teacher professional development, pre-service education, research, curriculum development and dissemination.

The conference this year focuses on the visual arts. Session topics range from photography as a teaching tool to utilizing the arts to aid English language learners. Other participating organizations include the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Thea Foundation and the Little Rock School District.

A growing body of research points to the important role of arts in education. In 2011, the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities noted that “arts integration models – the practice of teaching across classroom subjects in tandem with the arts – have been yielding some particularly promising results in school reform and closing the achievement gap.”

“Professor Goering and I are strong believers in using the arts to teach the whole student,” said David Jolliffe, holder of the Brown Chair in English Literacy and professor of English.  “Whether it is history, science or English, art serves as not only an effective way to teach subject matter, but also engages students in different modes of thinking.”

Supported by the Brown Foundation and the Walton Family Charitable Support Foundation, Jolliffe directs programs to increase literacy in Arkansas, such as community-based tutoring, professional development workshops for teachers, summer workshops and reading programs.

Along with offering instruction and strategies to participants, Goering and Jolliffe see the ARtful Teaching Conference as a professional exchange, where attendees will learn not only from presenters, but from each other.

“This is a great opportunity to see and hear from my colleagues across the state,” Goering said. “These colleges and universities are preparing our next generation of teachers, and we want Arkansas to be at the forefront of the arts integration movement.”

For more information on the ARtful Teaching Conference, contact conference coordinator Hung Pham at hkp001@uark.edu.