Mercyhurst+College+AEI

Mercyhurst Institute for Arts Based Teacher Education Mercyhurst College, Erie, Pennsylvania**
 * Program Narrative for

This congressionally authorized earmark will fund the initial three-year phase of the Mercyhurst Institute for Arts Based Teacher Education at Mercyhurst College, Erie, Pennsylvania.


 * Mission –** The Mercyhurst Institute for Arts Based Teacher Education (MIABTE) is committed to transforming the teaching and learning process of professional teacher training at the elementary school level by endowing that process with a foundation of fine and performing arts. The essential methodology for the Institute is based on concepts of aesthetic education. The purpose of integrating aesthetic education into teacher preparation programs is to ensure that the arts and imagination will assume a critical role in the education of all children. The more specific purpose is to enable teachers-in-training to understand the power of artworks as objects of study and to learn the ways of knowing the world as they are provided by experiences in the arts.


 * Strategies –** Applied specifically to the Teacher Education Program at Mercyhurst College and to public schools in the region, the Institute will develop a variety of strategies to accomplish its mission. By serving as a resource center, the Institute will affect the content of the curriculum of the Mercyhurst Teacher Education Program by providing access to innovative teaching strategies and methods, teaching artists, field experiences, workshops, special courses and live performances. In addition, it will gather and disseminate research data on the effectiveness of an arts-based environment on the development of elementary school children. The results will provide a comparative perspective from which to measure the relative effectiveness of the arts for improving the learning skills of elementary students.

The MIABTE will bring the Lincoln Center Institute experts to the Mercyhurst campus in each of the first two years of the program. They will work with specially chosen Fellows of the Institute chosen from among the arts and education faculties at Mercyhurst College. This group will in the first year develop the “Introduction to Arts Based Education” course for teachers in training. This interdisciplinary course would be based on analytical skills like those used at the Lincoln Center for Arts and Education and would create a personal commitment to the arts on the part of the education students which subsequent courses in the program could build on. In the second year, they will develop an elementary education/early childhood arts-based course. This would be designed to demonstrate ways to infuse the arts into publish school classrooms, not as handmaid to teach other disciplines, but as another dimension from which to view other disciplines. This effort would ultimately be done within the existing courses in the Mercyhurst education curriculum, as well. In addition, the Fellows of the Mercyhurst Institute will visit the Lincoln Center Institute in each of the first two years of the program to gain more advice and expertise on developing these courses.
 * Mercyhurst Institute for Arts Based Teacher Education –** As part of the process, the MIABTE will develop and maintain an affiliation with the Lincoln Center Institute for Arts and Education, and will make use of its guidelines and its experts in aesthetic education. Since its inception in 1994, the principles espoused by the Lincoln Center Institute have spawned more than 25 similar institutes and centers nationwide. These autonomous, yet affiliated, centers sustain an ongoing relationship with the LCI, which provides guidance, artist/teacher training, on-site assistance and counseling, networking, teaching and management strategies, research data, and other support for the purpose of guiding public school teachers and those in training, in the use of the arts in the classroom. As yet, no such affiliate exists in northwestern Pennsylvania. Mercyhurst intends to take the initiative in providing this benefit to the region through the establishment of the MIABTE.


 * Structural Organization:** The Institute will have a lean organizational chart. The director will be responsible for coordinating the project, including negotiations with faculty and educational institutions, programs, artist teachers, training, and guest performances. Directing the MIABTE will be Dr. Kathleen Bukowski, the associate dean of the Hafenmaier School of Education and Behavioral Sciences and chairperson of the Mercyhurst College Education Department. She is also an associate professor of education.

Operation – The basic work of the Institute will be conducted by especially selected and trained personnel designated as Fellows of the Institute. During the first year, four fellows will be chosen from among the Mercyhurst College arts faculty and two from the education department faculty. They will work together, and with the Lincoln Center Institute specialists, to develop courses for teaching college education majors. The first year they will develop a course for the teaching of the arts. The next year the number of fellows will increase. In addition to the six fellows noted above, two elementary teachers from the School District of the City of Erie will be added. They will take part in implementing the teaching strategies and techniques developed the year before. The involvement of the two public school teachers will be part of a working partnership between the MIABTE and the Erie School District. The MIABTE will keep this group of fellows for the third years of the program, too. As noted above, during the second year of the program, the arts and education faculty fellows from Mercyhurst will develop the second course with the assistance of the Lincoln Center Institute for Arts and Education. This second course will be an arts-based program for elementary education and early childhood. The year after it is developed, it, too, will be taught to students majoring in education at Mercyhurst. As part of this program, the MIABTE will make use of local and regional performing artists in the second and third years. They will bring the arts alive to education students, as well as the children where the program is demonstrated. Using local and regional artists will keep costs down and make use of the wealth of talent available in northwest Pennsylvania. The MIABTE will also use a variety of materials to assist in teaching visual arts, drama music, sculpture, and dance.

The need for Mercyhurst Institute for Arts Based Teacher Education – Advocacy for the arts in education has increased gradually over the years. Research documenting the long-range effects of such activities has shown some startling results and the statistical evidence is overwhelming that engagement with the arts leads to a multitude of coping and otherwise practical skills with which to lead a meaningful and satisfying life. A report issued by the Arts Education Partnership of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts: Critical Links: Learning in the Arts and Student Academic and Social Development, is a wide-ranging review of over 62 studies that reveal important relationships between learning in the arts and cognitive capacities (thinking skills) and motivations that underlie academic achievement and effective social behavior. Student improvement in reading and language development, literacy, writing, mathematics, fundamental cognitive skills and capacities, motivations to learn, effective social behavior and social skills were all linked through research to exposure to the arts. Moreover, one of the critical research findings is that the learning in and through the arts can help “level the playing field” for youngsters from disadvantaged circumstances. The arts have remained tangential to the calling of teaching. It is generally assumed that this entire dimension of life is to be dealt with in the school only if the student is “gifted” or if he or she wants to act in a play, paint a picture or play an instrument. For the rest of the student body, such matters are left entirely to chance. This is where the Mercyhurst Institute for Arts Based Teacher Education comes in. Everyone from this comprehensive program will have the opportunity to become teachers who use the arts as part of their teaching methods and also become leaders in the field as they take their place in various school systems.


 * Assessing the impact of the Institute –** An annual pre- and post-survey (Year 2, Year 3) of pre-service teachers enrolled in the elementary and early childhood program will be administered, assessing the knowledge and application of aesthetic education. The MIABTE will also survey annually (Year 1, Year 2, Year 3) regional partners, soliciting evaluation of course and practica development, and standards-based applications. End of Year 2 and Year 3 tool kits, as well as post-Symposium surveys will be developed by the MIABTE and distributed to all partners and the June 2006 and June 2007 Symposium/Workshop held at Mercyhurst College.