ESSAY-HOW ARTS IN EDUCATION CAN HELP TEACHING AND LEARNING PROCESS

Arts in education are basically having art integrate in all learning subjects. It is
divided into three units; music, art and movement. Arts in education play a big role in our
daily teaching and learning session. According to Dr. Sharifah Norul Akmar Syed Zamri
(2006), students must be able to comprehend three different skills in which are reading,
writing and arithmetic but students must also empower art. Art should be the fourth basic
literacy skill emphasize in education. This is because Arts in Education plays an important
role in the process of learning and teaching. So another fact thrown in is art does not solve
problems, but makes us aware of their existence," (Magdalena A.) has said. These two
statements concurred that art plays a magnificent role both inside and outside education.
Other than that, arts education does solve problems. Years of research show that it's
closely linked to almost everything that we as a nation say we want for our children and
demand from our schools: academic achievement, social and emotional development, civic
engagement, and equitable opportunity. Involvement in the arts is associated with gains in
math, reading, cognitive ability, critical thinking, and verbal skill(Fran Smith, 2014) . Arts
learning can also improve motivation, concentration, confidence, and teamwork. Fran smith
stated that strong arts programming in schools helps close a gap that has left many a child
behind. "Arts education enables those children from a financially challenged background to
have a more level playing field with children who have had those enrichment
experiences,''(Eric C.),
Arts in education can promote fun teaching and learning process. As stated in the
introduction phase, there are many benefits that can be ripped from art education. But I will
go more specific on how art education can impact the teachers and students in the class.
The first one is teaching and learning process is making fun through the integration of art in
education. Why is that? Teaching is more fun when there are integration of various art
elements. The integration of arts in education makes traditional teaching methods like chalk
and talk bore students out. Arts education makes students feel more comfortable and easier
to understand a topic taught. When learning becomes fun, it opens the students' mind many
possibilities. According to Mariko Nobori, arts integration uses teaching practices that have
been shown in brain-based research to improve comprehension and long-term retention. For
example, when students create stories, pictures, or other nonverbal expressions of the
content they are learning. A process researchers call elaboration. They are also helping to
better absorb the information. So, the arts bring in fun learning, fun learning brings in many
possibilities. One of the lesson how arts in education is used, in a science classroom you
might see students choreographing a dance using loco-motor and non-locomotors
movements to demonstrate their understanding of rotation versus revolution of the planets
(Mariko N. 2014). So all the points and facts above clearly shows arts in education benefits
the students.
The Arts in Education improves cooperation. Arts in education gradually engage
students which in a way encourage cooperation. It seems that when arts various elements is
brought into the lesson. Fun is brought in too, when that happens the lack of cooperation will
occur. Now, Group activity requires each individual move and interact cooperatively to
achieve mutual success. Actions contained in Art In education include visual arts, music and
movement have a pointless social interactions are interlinked through the sense of touch.
Mariko Noribo I quote again; But that that engagement can also be leveraged to boost
academic growth and improve discipline seems like a secret that really needs to be
revealed. When you see how the kids embrace these lessons, hear them tell how art helps
them remember concepts better, and learn about the improvements teachers have noted in
student understanding and retention, it makes you wonder why more schools aren't
integrating the arts in every class. The quote above confirms that the implementation of arts
indirectly promotes discipline. Which in a way improves cooperation with students. This will
allow teachers to carry their teaching and learning process, this will indirectly benefit teacher.
The teacher need to be creative and apply more element on arts in education.
Other than that, It improves social skills. It assists the development of intellectual,
personality, and social students (John Dewey, 1919) noted. So in teaching when all students
have the opportunity to participate in activities, activities like interests and abilities, it will form
an ideal situation that could meet both social goals and desires of possession accepted as
members of the group. Students wants themselves to be accepted as a member of a group
and at the same time is treated with love. Arts in Education activities, the need to be
pampered at least met through praise and encouragement given as soon as they present
exciting activity. Friendly relationship between the pupils and students can create a
harmonious atmosphere. To prove my point, there are a growing body of evidence suggests
that arts learning and arts integration help develop key cognitive skills needed for academic
success, as well as promote the social and emotional strengths that lead to academic
achievement and positive behaviours and relationships( Sherry B. & associate) . another
point shown to back this up is, evidence from a wide range of school suggests that arts
experiences can be instrumental in resolving conflicts, deterring problems with attendance
and disruptive behaviour, and building self-respect, self-efficacy, resilience, empathy,
collaborative skills, and other characteristics and capacities that are linked to high student
achievement( Sherry B. & associate). We see that art can bring much impact to the student
social level and even improve it. The teacher can also benefit from this because using art in
the lesson, the social gap between students and teacher become thinner. Therefore,
teachers can approach easily to study and analyse their learning potential. Overall, it
benefits more to the students side than the teacher said.
Beside that, It promotes cognitive skills. According to the House Dictionary, Third
Edition (1996), discovery can be defined as exploratory research aimed to find out
something that is not yet known. Exploration can be done in a way to explore. However, this
process requires a variety of materials and methods. Experience explore also is a learning
situation. Exploring conducted experiment, investigate and create using a variety of ideas
and materials. Exploration is divided into three categories: tools and materials, as well as
how elaboration and manipulation of ideas and content. So how does this relate to art in
education? Well, An interest in a performing art leads to a high state of motivation that
produces the sustained attention necessary to improve performance and the training of
attention that leads to improvement in other domains of cognition ( Sherry B. & associate).
Motivation is drawn out from the lesson and it lead to cognition which also mean discovery
learning is activated. An interest in a performing art leads to a high state of motivation that
produces the sustained attention necessary to improve performance and the training of
attention that leads to improvement in other domains of cognition( Sherry B. & associate).
Other than that, Training in acting appears to lead to memory improvement through the
learning of general skills for manipulating semantic information. So, art in education promote
cognition in students
Art in education gives student a chance to express their feeling and confidence level.
Feelings are reactions to stimuli received whether it is ready or not. In addition, the feeling is
also possible to provide a source of benefit and loss to a person. Teachers can get to know
the real feelings of students through behavior exhibited. Students who participate in activities
such as games can create an atmosphere of joy, free from emotional stress and can face
competition and challenge. Individuals with high self-confidence to do activities without
feeling embarrassed or worried about others' views of him. Therefore, each activity
performed must have the confidence to be able to guarantee its effectiveness.
Art in education makes teacher more creative in their lesson. With Art in education in
the primary school curriculum, teaching and learning will be more fun and student
participation is also better than the teachers will be more motivated and creative in planning
their lessons in preparation for the planned teaching will be more challenging, emphasizing
the intellectual, emotional, psychomotor and maturity of the pupils. Thus becomes the
motivation and encouragement to teachers to explore more new skills appropriate to the
performers his disciples. As a result of a good learning environment, teachers will also be
able to increase professionalism in their careers. Efforts to create a society of brilliant,
knowledgeable and strong.
Art in education helps link various areas in teaching and learning. Linking means
connecting various skills and knowledge of several subjects in teaching and learning. linking
will help students in brainstorm teaching content with their lives. Teaching and learning that
there is this correlation will produce a more effective learning. Correlation purposes in
teaching and learning is to increase the level of understanding students learn. In addition, it
also can build and train the minds of the pupils to be more active and creative while also
being able to help the achievement of the objectives of teaching and learning subjects
taught. For example, teachers who teach Visual Art entitled 'Animal'. Before the students
make the activity or activities to draw designs and patterns that associate with the animal,
the teacher first uncovers existing knowledge of pupils with a few simple questions and
simple. Among the activities for which can be done is to name the animals, imitating animal
sounds, stating how the movement of animals, classify groups of animals and so on. Here
the elements of science and art movements were linked. To connect with language and
music, teachers asked students to sing any song that has to do with animals. The students
were also asked to read poetry about animals. '
In art education, one of the elements is music. Music is an amazing tool for teaching
languages or English, especially to children. Good songs will bounce around in a learners
head long after their lesson is over. Young learners tend to pick up vocabulary, grammatical
structures, and the rhythm of the language simply by doing what they already love to do
which is singing. Music can serve a variety of functions in your classroom, at home, or even
in the car. Music can set a mood. Music can signal a transition from one activity to another
(for both the teacher and the student). Music can be a bonding experience. There are a lot of
ways music bring an impact teaching and learning process. The first is to manage the
energy level of the class. It is very hard to define what kind of energy level young children
are going to come to class with. One day, you have a class full of children bouncing off the
walls with energy (the next day, the same kids seem like they are moving in slow motion.
Music really helps to calm down a rowdy class, or give a lethargic class a needed boost of
energy. So music can improve determine the mood of the class, it can be said that arts in
education is a manipulative variable in the teaching and learning environment.
Beside music, we also have creative movement for arts in education, creative
movement helps increase the inner potential that the students already possess. This
element mainly helps increase self-confidence through movement. Dancing is a fine
example that helps increase the students confident in learning. other than that, it is fun and it
gives pleasure to student. By doing that, student will be able to absorb the lesson plan more
better because the affective filter is low. It is also a ground where student are able to use
their imagination, ideas and emotion. So, creative movement can bring amount of impact in
teaching and learning process.
In conclusion, I believe that arts in education plays a big role in developing the
student. Teacher only get a little benefit out of this. It seem that art in education may be
leaping stone in achieving a perfect teaching and learning session where both teacher and
students can understand it.