How the Arts Can Save Education

Erica Rosenfeld Halverson is a professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. In 2020, she received the Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award. Visit Erica’s website at ericahalverson.com.

• ContentsForeword  Ellen Weinstein ixAcknowledgments xiIntroduction: Something Extraordinary of Its Kind 1We Built This City … on Educational Research 3 Learning In and Through the Arts 4 Improv as the Model for Good Teaching 5 Reimagining Curriculum Through the Lens of Design 7 The Arts Take Center Stage 8 Taking the Arts to School 9 1. Whoop It Up! Sock It to Me! 11Whoopensocker (n.): Something Extraordinary of Its Kind 12 Telling Stories, Adapting Stories, and Performing Stories 14 Telling Stories 17 Adapting Stories 24 Performing Stories 25 “The Joe” 26 2. We Built This City … On Educational Research 30A Place for Cognitive Science (and Cognitive Science in Its Place) 30 The New Literacies 35 Culturally Relevant and Sustaining Pedagogies 40 Bringing Cognitive Science, the New Literacies, and Asset Pedagogies Together Through the Arts 43 3. Learning in and Through the Arts 46An Argument in Favor of Transforming Learning 46 How Can the Arts Reshape Learning? 48 Representations + Identity + Collaboration = Learning! 66 4. Improvisation as the Model for Good Teaching 68What Is Improv? 69 Improv Is Good Teaching 70 What Does Teaching-as-Improv Look Like? 77 What Do We Do Now? 83 5. Reimagining Curriculum Through the Lens of Design 84Why Talk About Design? 85 Three Things! 88 From Curriculum to Design 99 6. The Arts Take Center Stage 100Act I: The Accountability Machine 101 Act II: The Rise of STEM 104 Act III: Putting the Arts at the Center 110 7. Taking the Arts to School 113Big Idea 1: Honor Risk-Taking as an Essential Feature of Teaching and Learning 113 Big Idea 2: Embrace Identity and Representation as Core Ideas, but Do Not Mistake One for the Other 119 Big Idea 3: Taking Collective Responsibility 125 Every Idea Is a Good Idea 129 Notes 130References 133Index 141About the Author 151