Goering Co-Edits Special Issue of International Journal on Arts Integration Research

Chris Goering, associate professor of English education, recently co-edited a special issue of Pedaogies: An International Journal, with Margaret-Mary Sulentic Dowell, a professor of elementary education at Louisiana State University. The issue consists of seven research studies on arts integration from around the world, varying from spoken word poetry to dance to program evaluation.

Pedagogies: An International Journal is an official research publication of the National Institute of Education, Singapore. The journal, according to its website, "brings together emergent and groundbreaking work on all aspects of pedagogy in response to transforming communities and student bodies, new knowledge and forms of communication. Most importantly, the journal provides a space for discussions on how educators might address these issues and improve teaching and learning in formal and informal settings."  

"Arts integration — briefly, the educational approach of accessing curricular and art goals by having students create through an art form — positions students differently in their learning, moving from variations of passivity in school to being active, in charge of connecting content and skills in meaningful, evocative, and profound ways," Sulentic Dowell and Goering write in the editors' introduction to the issue. While both editors are working in a variety of capacities with arts integration today, neither had access to the approach early in their experience as classroom teachers, a fact still true for many teachers. 

In Arkansas, Goering helped found the ARTful Teaching Conference that occurs each spring and brings together teacher educators, university administrators, and pre-service teachers in an effort to make arts integration accessible to every pre-service and inservice educator in the state. He also co-founded the ARTeacher Fellowship program with Crystal Bridges and the Walton Arts Center designed to create arts integration fellows at the secondary level. Recently, a gift from the Windgate Foundation helped bring the Arkansas A plus program, a research-based whole-school network with a mission of nurturing creativity in every learner through an arts-integrated approach, under the umbrella of the College of Education and Health Professions.

Articles from the journal are available in print and digital formats and can be accessed at the journal's website.