Quality: A Meaty Subject

What if I told you that I was gonna fix you a steak dinner, but when you came to my house to eat it the kitchen was infested with ants, the steaks had been sitting out all day and I served 'em on a paper plate? Very quickly, you’d realize that even a steak dinner can be an unenjoyable experience if the quality isn’t there. That’s why Big Thought holds Quality Panels - to make sure what Dallas is serving up in- and out-of-school is grade A, prime-cut teaching and learning…

The eighth triannual panel kicked off last Wednesday with a BANG! Fine arts teachers from Dallas ISD, community arts and culture pros, Big Thought staff and national arts education hotshots came together at the Meyerson Symphony Center (home of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra) to dig into arts programs in Dallas.

Our task was to go out into the community to watch teachers teach and children learn and then come together in groups based on discipline (theater, visual arts, music and dance) to talk about what we saw. We talked about strengths - how much better the training and support for arts education is now than when we began this process and what we can do to call attention to that. We talked about weaknesses - what's still not clicking, what we need to do to fix it and how we can share the responsibility.

It was an eye-opening experience for many - even veterans of the Quality Panels saw things that were new and different; and that, after all, is the point. We use this in-the-room research and observation to help us make arts education better both in- and out-of-school. It's not for our benefit...it's for the benefit of our community partners, who've stood with us for the last 20+ years to get fine arts back in the curriculum and in the hearts and minds of the citizens of Dallas. It's for the benefit of the educators, who deserve the support and opportunities to improve their techniques and discover new ways to reach children. Most important of all, it's for the benefit of the children of Dallas, who deserve an unparalleled education that prepares them for success throughout their lives.

Now: who wants that steak dinner?

5 Things We Know About Quality

Quality is perhaps the most important characteristic of a successful arts education and creative learning program. While it is a major accomplishment to increase the raw numbers of creative learning opportunities throughout a city as large as Dallas, the opportunities must also be high-quality to have an impact...thus that is an area on which we've focused our Research & Assessment lens for the last 2 years.

1. Get out your yardstick. Though it may seem too qualitative or subjective, quality of arts education and creative learning MUST be measured. One of the greatest contributions of Thriving Minds' work to date is the design of both a framework for understanding the dimensions of quality teaching and learning and a set of tools that measure it year to year.
   
2. It takes a village. Our effort to examine quality in this rigorous way has been aided by a team of nearly 50 practitioners and researchers, including local teachers, arts organization representatives, Big Thought staff and national experts in various creative learning subjects. It has been based on over one hundred observations followed by discussions and further refinements of the tools. In short, measurement of quality takes the participation and collaboration of many, many people, all committed to securing the best possible education for the city's children.
   
3. The more you know. High-quality learning opportunities require high-quality instruction. In order for today's teachers and instructors to be prepared and capable of teaching at a high level, they need to pursue continuing education and professional development. Data from the quality panels indicate that in-school and community instructors alike need to build more time for creative choice make as well as assessment and reflection into their curriculum. Professional development workshops have been designed to provide strategies to promote more of this type of teaching and learning.
   
4. Take time to make time. Another aspect of quality is in the area of teaching or instructional time. Quality panelists often found that instructors feel pressed for time and often this is why they feel unable to open their lesson to students input and creative choices. Thus, students are limited to always following instructions and never having time to innovate. Armed with this information, the Thriving Minds After-School Program decided to lengthen creative learning from 45- to 90-minutes instructional blocks.
   
5. The results are in. One of the most compelling studies we've done involves the creative work of students involved in ArtsPartners. Student writing was collected and compared before and after participating in community creative learning programs chosen to support classroom curriculum. Community programs strengthened students’ achievement. Here is an example of the change in one student’s writing, as illustrated in our research publication “Enriching Minds, Growing our Future.”

Supply, Demand & Quality

Supply, demand & quality of creative learning opportunities in the city of Dallas are the focus of much of our research and program assessment & development. We network with families, cultural providers, educators, community organizations and many other partners to determine the following:

1) Supply - what creative learning opportunities are available to the residents in each neighborhood of Dallas?
2) Demand - what creative learning opportunities are the residents in that area asking for?
and
3) Quality - what is the level of quality of the opportunities available?

The Wallace Foundation has a great collection of speeches and presentations on these and related subjects that have been gathered from a organizations nationwide, who, like us, are working to increase the quality and availability of creative learning (and arts education) throughout their cities. You'll find two of our presentations from the annual Americans for the Arts conference among the collection.

Got questions? We're happy to answer 'em - just email us to find out more about what we're learning.