This case study investigates the factors that challenge and support preservice teachers' (PST) arts integration beliefs and practices. The participants include a total of 74 PSTs enrolled in a mandatory university arts course at a large Southern university across three consecutive semesters. Concurrent with arts class enrollment, PSTs are also enrolled in their capstone, semester-long, student teaching experience. The authors used PSTs' end-of-semester reflections and the primary data source. Findings illustrate that PSTs can be creative through arts integration within teaching and learning, while still acknowledging challenges at the school level. The authors detail how they revamped existing elementary preservice arts classes to focus on arts-integrated instructional practices. In addition, findings illustrate the need for strategic inservice training for mentor teachers on the efficacy of arts integration in elementary settings and for administrative support for the arts at the school level. Because teacher candidates must confront a variety of tasks necessitating creative and adaptive thinking in an era focused on standards and high-stakes testing, learning about, engaging with, and infusing arts-integrated learning into teacher preparation aligns with the ideals of a liberal arts education (Lorimer, 2012, p. 86). In the United States (US), complex questions confront public education in the 21 st century and require that teacher educators assume an active stance in improving teacher quality. Historically, political interests, spurred by the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) (2001) and the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) (2016), both reauthorizations of the original Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) (1965), have resulted in a preoccupation with formulaic, packaged, and scripted curricula (Altwerger, 2005; Coles, 2003) and high stakes tests (Garan, 2002, 2004; Johnson & Johnson, 2006) that silence teacher voices and stifle creativity, particularly in high stakes discipline-specific areas, such as literacy and math (Allington, 2002b). Within the past several decades, personal and political forces have intensified (Allington, 2004; Garan, 2002; Schneider, 2014, 2016), shaping the types of instruction public school children, especially urban elementary children, receive, narrowing curriculum and teaching to content specifically presented by a state high stakes test. Escalating mandates derived from NCLB (2001) and ESSA (2016) legislation have increasingly dictated how educators, especially elementary teachers, teach in the US. For instance, often the literacy "forced" on urban elementary children does little to foster creativity (Finn, 1999; Meyer, 2010). Within the last 15 years in many elementary schools, social studies and science have been short shrifted, simply because they are not high stakes tested subjects (An, Capraro, & Tillman, 2013; Center on Education Policy, 2006). Of particular note, 71 percent of America's school districts have reduced arts, science, and social studies in...
When the COVID-19 pandemic closed her university campus, Jamie Hipp had to move her popular arts integration class for preservice teachers to a virtual format. She was surprised to learn that her students wanted more than regular sessions during their scheduled class times; they wanted additional opportunities for “real teacher talk” about going on interviews, setting up a classroom, and other practical matters that weren’t being covered in their preservice program. Hipp set up a series of virtual sessions on topics of interest to students, in addition to regular class sessions. The sessions went so well that Hipp intends to continue having them, even after the pandemic is over and her campus reopens.
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