What the data says
Study: An Analysis of Creative Effect on Interdisciplinary Practices in Art Education- Hyungsook Kim, 2018
Participants: 41 sixth-grade students (5 male, 36 female)
Duration: 100 hours (Aug 2013–Jan 2014)
Test Used: Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT Type A – Language and Shape)
Objective Does teaching art in connection with other subjects (science, language, environment, humanities) make students more creative?
Results:
-Creativity improved overall after the art-based interdisciplinary program.
-Students became better at generating new and original ideas (fluency + originality).
-Students also showed more open-mindedness and persistence in creative tasks.
-Some traits (like abstract thinking and fine detail) did not change, which suggests creativity improved mostly in idea generation rather than refinement.
-The program proved that art integrated with other subjects can be an effective way to teach creativity and assess it scientifically using TTCT.
Study: The Effects of Arts-Integrated Instruction on Students’ Memory for Science Content: Results from a Randomized Control Trial Study- Mariale M. Hardiman, EdD, Ranjini Mahinda JohnBull, PhD, Deborah Carran, PhD (2017)
Participants: 350 fifth-grade students across 16 classroooms.
Duration: two 3-4 week sessions, fall 2013
Method: two groups- control (traditional curriculum) and variable (art-integrated curriculum)
Test Used: ANOVA- Analysis of Variance
Objective The study aimed to determine whether arts-integrated instruction led to better retention of science content compared to traditional instruction.
Results: Using arts-integrated instruction to teach science content was as effective as or better than conventional science instruction in increasing long-term memory for students’ science content knowledge.
Two addition significant findings:
1- Students who were in the arts-integrated class for the first session performed better in the second, traditionally taught session. The researchers hypothesized that students, “may have transferred some creative insights and arts competencies to their learning strategies within the conventional science lessons in the second session.”
2- data suggests “that students who perform at lower levels of reading achievement may benefit more from arts-integrated methods than their higher performing peers.”